Why does Legacy exist?

[reaperbong]

Just to get it out of the way I really despise this format and hate the fact that it was created in the first place.

All emotion aside though I'd really like to hear a few opinions from people on the following:

• Is Legacy killing Vintage? How bad of an effect is Type 1.5 having on Vintage?
• Why is it worth it for WOTC/DCI to have 2 Eternal formats? Instead of 2 smaller fringe communities wouldn't common sense dictate to have 1 large community to shore up and draw in as large of a player base as possible?
• If it is proven that budget/powerless decks can be viable in Vintage, doesn't that in essence prove that there is no reason for Legacy to exist?
• Do you think there is a chance for Legacy to die out/be canceled as a format in the future? How long will we be stuck with 2 Eternal formats?

Any answers/opinions to the above would be appreciated. I can of course elaborate further thoughts/reasoning behind any of these inquiries.

Thanks

[Anusien]

Legacy has official Wizards of the Coast support.  If you push for one at the expense of the other, it may be Vintage that dies.

[andrewpate]

Legacy is actually more similar to every other Constructed format than Vintage is, since it involves bannings for power level reasons.  Only Vintage eschews this practice.  So if we were to streamline the system and eliminate one format, Vintage would certainly be the one to go, since it is the anomaly.  I see Vintage as fulfilling a completely different purpose from every other format:  it's basically Wizards saying, "Here's a place where you can play with ALL of your cards, even Black Lotus."  If anything, the strange part is its grouping with Legacy as "Eternal formats," when Legacy is much more similar to Extended than it is to Vintage.

[jro]

Legacy and Vintage are referred to as Eternal formats because cards do not rotate out.

I wonder: How many people that will play at GP:Chicago this weekend would still play were it Vintage rather than Legacy?  The average Legacy Grand Prix attendance has been 770 players (reference).  How many players do you think a Vintage Grand Prix would attract?  Are players going to show up when they are seriously constricted in their deck choice by a lack of money?  There's a big difference between the $200 it takes for a Standard deck or the $500 for a Legacy deck to the $3000 it takes for a powered Vintage deck.

And, seriously, nobody wants to play budget decks.  If your plan for increasing interest in Vintage involves promoting budget decks for serious competitive environments, give up now.

In direct response to the questions you posed:
1) No.  I'd imagine it's having a good effect because people acquire Vintage staples in order to play Legacy.
2) Because people will actually play sanctioned Legacy events.
3) No.  For the reasons andrewpate listed.
4) No.  Hopefully we'll be stuck with them forever.

[Matt]

They both exist because satisfy a significant player demand. I own dual lands, FoW, and other old goodies, but christ on a pogo stick I hate vintage, and that's before we start talking about cost. Would you have me quit magic instead?

[reaperbong]

Well it's definately hard not to resent the format when 50 people show up for a Legacy tournament and then 15 for Vintage the next day (even with proxies). I understand that Legacy has official support but isn't this the sole reason that Vintage doesn't have official support? I apologize because I don't know hardly anything about Legacy, I only got back into Magic a few years ago and when I got out back around Alliances there was no such thing as Legacy of course. So if someone could maybe inform a bit of history i'd be greatly interested, when was Legacy even created?

Legacy has official Wizards of the Coast support.  If you push for one at the expense of the other, it may be Vintage that dies.

But how could Vintage die when it is so tied into the secondary market? People will always want to play with the older expensive cards they own, so couldn't Vintage only die out if the secondary market collapsed? The demand for these cards will always exist as long as the format to play them exists, hardly no one would pay for and collect these cards if they were unplayable of course, so in this way isn't it true that Vintage will always be held up by the secondary market?

I don't think the same can be true for Legacy, I see it as being superficially supported/created by WOTC. If the support wasn't there and was somehow shifted to Vintage then I think it would naturally die out as people would move to either Extended or Vintage with no problem. Vintage has proven that is can still thrive with only the secondary card market as support, so what's on the real? Legacy is fake to me, it would just die out if it recieved the same kind of 'support' as the Vintage format.

[Godder]

Legacy was created because WotC wanted a tournament format for cards that have rotated out of Extended. After much debate and thought, Vintage was rejected because of the cost and scarcity of the staples and the refusal to consider proxies (as long as WotC makes its money from cards, they will never officially support proxies, and have made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion). Consequently, the old Type 1.5 was given its own banned list, and is now the WotC-supported format for old cards (currently, that's Odyssey Block and earlier).

[zeus-online]

I actually loved the idea of legacy when they announced it, but i hate the way it turned out in the end.

But i wouldn't want to spoil other peoples fun, so long live legacy

/Zeus

[Mr. Nightmare]

Well it's definately hard not to resent the format when 50 people show up for a Legacy tournament and then 15 for Vintage the next day (even with proxies). I understand that Legacy has official support but isn't this the sole reason that Vintage doesn't have official support? I apologize because I don't know hardly anything about Legacy, I only got back into Magic a few years ago and when I got out back around Alliances there was no such thing as Legacy of course. So if someone could maybe inform a bit of history i'd be greatly interested, when was Legacy even created?

Legacy has official Wizards of the Coast support.  If you push for one at the expense of the other, it may be Vintage that dies.

But how could Vintage die when it is so tied into the secondary market? People will always want to play with the older expensive cards they own, so couldn't Vintage only die out if the secondary market collapsed? The demand for these cards will always exist as long as the format to play them exists, hardly no one would pay for and collect these cards if they were unplayable of course, so in this way isn't it true that Vintage will always be held up by the secondary market?

I don't think the same can be true for Legacy, I see it as being superficially supported/created by WOTC. If the support wasn't there and was somehow shifted to Vintage then I think it would naturally die out as people would move to either Extended or Vintage with no problem. Vintage has proven that is can still thrive with only the secondary card market as support, so what's on the real? Legacy is fake to me, it would just die out if it recieved the same kind of 'support' as the Vintage format.

Fortunately for the people who play the format, your biased, and completely ignorant view of Legacy is not shared by Wizards.

Each format has a small, but dedicated following (relative to to size of the Standard player pool, of course) and there's really no reason why one format must succeed at the expense of the other.  Perhaps if there were better prize support, or if the perception of the format were different (ie: you market it better), those Legacy players would have played in both events.  Stop pointing the blame at other people, or trying to figure out how you're the victim, and ask yourself if you could have done something to change how the outcome occurred.

[reaperbong]

^^^^
I can tell right now you have no love for Vintage so don't go catching feelings just because I dissed your format, it's not that serious.

IMO Legacy sucks ass for real, no restricted cards only banned cards? Like what the hell, when I first heard of this I couldn't believe it was serious. What kind of 'eternal' format is so weak you can't even play with 1 damn Sol Ring or Demonic Tutor? I watched one Legacy tournament and there were like 10 Fairy decks. LOL, fuckouttahere with some Faires.

I see I get no support though and the anti-Legacy movement won't happen. Vintage players have fun when Legacy continues to blow up and your Tournaments are canceled to bank on all the teenagers trying to win dual lands.

real talk.

Thanks for all the comments from others as well, I've been educated a bit. Anyone know how old Legacy is btw?

[Mr. Nightmare]

^^^^
I can tell right now you have no love for Vintage so don't go catching feelings just because I dissed your format, it's not that serious.

Actually, I love vintage.  It isn't played in my area, but that's not representative of my opinion of the format at all.  I've traveled on multiple occasions to go to vintage events, as players in NE can attest to.

IMO Legacy sucks ass for real, no restricted cards only banned cards? Like what the hell, when I first heard of this I couldn't believe it was serious. What kind of 'eternal' format is so weak you can't even play with 1 damn Sol Ring or Demonic Tutor? I watched one Legacy tournament and there were like 10 Fairy decks. LOL, fuckouttahere with some Faires.

I see I get no support though and the anti-Legacy movement won't happen. Vintage players have fun when Legacy continues to blow up and your Tournaments are canceled to bank on all the teenagers trying to win dual lands.

real talk.

Thanks for all the comments from others as well, I've been educated a bit. Anyone know how old Legacy is btw?

You're coming off like you have some real, intelligent insights into the issue here.  It makes me want to take your opinion seriously - of a format you admittedly have no experience with.  If your sole complaint is that they're "Stealing your players," what makes you think that with advocates like you, those players would even be interested in Vintage to begin with?  They're obviously not being persuaded by your eloquence.

Again, I'll remind you to ask yourself if the problem is Legacy, or if they're uninterested in Vintage because you haven't done a good enough job promoting?  To me it seems like you're blaming luck and mana screw for your lack of playskill.

Legacy was born in 2004, by the way.

[reaperbong]

Advocates like me? My eloquence? Why do you have to be a dick about it? You don't know me. Thanks for the quick reply though, sarcasm or not.

The root cause for a lot of my concerns is that WOTC supports one format and not the other, it's as simple as that. How can we compete with something like Grand Prix? They have access to the type of advertising that brings in 700+ players to an event. Vintage is doomed to obscurity until both formats are supported like this. Logic may dictate that with this kind of push by the game creators themselves, backed by a multi-national corportation of course, that they are paving the way to convert as many players from Vintage over to Legacy as possible so they can make money off them. Fuck that, why would we be happy to let WOTC sac Vintage so they can build up a profit base out of Legacy? What about the secondary market? Anyone who's ever purchased a Mox has been thrown under the bus (along with the dealers) because WOTC believes you should not have any return on your investment.

Surprised that Legacy is so young though, so I guess it could go anywhere from here, only 4 years from inception. Hopefully the way is down

Look, this is what Legacy is I'll tell you: it's an idea cropped up in some corporate boardroom to bring Vintage players into the fold of profitability. Fuck the quality of the game, and fuck the free market, they are willing to see it all go in order to have total control over as much profit as possible. Legacy players stay losing because you're being played by WOTC Hasbro.

real talk.

[Mr. Nightmare]

Advocates like me? My eloquence? Why do you have to be a dick about it? You don't know me. Thanks for the quick reply though, sarcasm or not.

The root cause for a lot of my concerns is that WOTC supports one format and not the other, it's as simple as that. How can we compete with something like Grand Prix? They have access to the type of advertising that brings in 700+ players to an event. Vintage is doomed to obscurity until both formats are supported like this. Logic may dictate that with this kind of push by the game creators themselves, backed by a multi-national corportation of course, that they are paving the way to convert as many players from Vintage over to Legacy as possible so they can make money off them. Fuck that, why would we be happy to let WOTC sac Vintage so they can build up a profit base out of Legacy? What about the secondary market? Anyone who's ever purchased a Mox has been thrown under the bus (along with the dealers) because WOTC believes you should not have any return on your investment.

Surprised that Legacy is so young though, so I guess it could go anywhere from here, only 4 years from inception. Hopefully the way is down

Look, this is what Legacy is I'll tell you: it's an idea cropped up in some corporate boardroom to bring Vintage players into the fold of profitability. Fuck the quality of the game, and fuck the free market, they are willing to see it all go in order to have total control over as much profit as possible. Legacy players stay losing because you're being played by WOTC Hasbro.

real talk.

I'm simply calling a spade a spade.  Or, in this instance, an ignorant person ignorant.  That's not the same as stupid - I'm not calling you stupid, just uninformed.

Legacy is not there to "get money from vintage players."  In fact, I'd say that when it comes to playing Legacy, there is more resistance from vintage players than there is from any other format, specifically because they see it as "vintage lite," rather than its own independent format (which is what it actually is).

If you're wondering why there are no Vintage GPs, then look no further than Power, Power, and Power.  WotC has made it patently clear that they do not support the proxy system, and the barrier for entry to a Vintage GP is simply too high.  There are enough complaints already from pros on how hard it is to get Forces and Duals.  They'd flat out revolt if they had to come up with infinite sets of power, too.  You'd have literally hundreds of players deciding not to play in the event because of the expense.  Not to mention how the eBay prices would skyrocket if such an event were announced.

There is no incentive for Wizards to create a one-off Vintage GP.  There is no incentive for them to alienate their player base by making one of the biggest events of the year cut off to thousands and thousands of potential players.  Why would they bother doing something like that that's basically guaranteed to be a failure?

It's not some corporate money making scheme.  It's not a conspiracy by the evil empire to take your hard earned "Secondary market" money.  I"m sorry your vintage event only had ten people.  Have you considered its because players think Legacy is more fun?

In short - it isn't Legacy that's holding vintage back - it's vintage.  It has always been, and will always be, the root of the problems with the format.  Proxies help, sure, but not when it comes to sanctioned events.

[reaperbong]

It wasn't my Vintage event, stop making assumptions just because I have Tournament Organizers next to my name. Our Vintage events do fine by the way, unlike your situation in the US.

I have to disagree with most of what you're saying though. Think of all they could have done besides creating Legacy? They could have easily just reprinted Power and banned them in Standard. What's stopping them from reprinting any of these cards besides their own asinine 'reserved' policy? Or they could have just printed a card like a 'Tap: Sacrifice this card, look through opponent's Library and remove from game all Power 9 cards (Power 9 is Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall ect....) or hell why not, 'look through opponents Library and remove all cards from Legends or older from the game' You know they can think up and do whatever they want so there's no excuse. I can think of a ton of creative solutions that would make them money and leave us with one solid eternal format rather then an entirely new format out of the blue like Legacy.

[Mr. Nightmare]

It wasn't my Vintage event, stop making assumptions just because I have Tournament Organizers next to my name. Our Vintage events do fine by the way, unlike your situation in the US.

I have to disagree with most of what you're saying though. Think of all they could have done besides creating Legacy? They could have easily just reprinted Power and banned them in Standard. What's stopping them from reprinting any of these cards besides their own asinine 'reserved' policy? Or they could have just printed a card like a 'Tap: Sacrifice this card, look through opponent's Library and remove from game all Power 9 cards (Power 9 is Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall ect....) or hell why not, 'look through opponents Library and remove all cards from Legends or older from the game' You know they can think up and do whatever they want so there's no excuse. I can think of a ton of creative solutions that would make them money and leave us with one solid eternal format rather then an entirely new format out of the blue like Legacy.

Well, for one, Legacy wasn't "Out of the blue."  It was an evolution of 1.5, which existed for as long as Type 1.  It was on the request of Vintage players like yourself, asking for the banned and restricted lists of the two formats to be separated, that spawned the birth of Legacy to begin with.  So, if Legacy is the problem, it looks like Vintage is really to blame again.

Also, none of your solutions are realistic.  Reprinting power isn't likely to attract many more players to Vintage, but it is likely to alienate the people who already own it.  And seriously, Power 9 Extraction?  That's just ridiculous.

You should probably read this:
The article that Birthed Legacy

[reaperbong]

I'm leaving work now and will read the article when I get home. Thanks for the link and for your time. Honestly I only started this thread to solve what I did not understand, which is of course, why the hell does Legacy even exist? lol later..

[Mr. Nightmare]

No problem.  I'll be heading out to play in the GP today anyway, so I was pretty much done, too.  I'll try to have fun with my crappy format at my 800 player event this weekend.  I hope your Vintage event fires!  Good luck!

[LordHomerCat]

No problem.  I'll be heading out to play in the GP today anyway, so I was pretty much done, too.  I'll try to have fun with my crappy format at my 800 player event this weekend.  I hope your Vintage event fires!  Good luck!

Man, that's pretty cold.

[Mr. Nightmare]

I hear it's supposed to be cold in Chicago this weekend, too!  Bring coats, people!

[JewLightning]

I am 100% with you Reaperbong I fucking hate Legacy it's so lame about the only cool thing about it is 4x Brainstorm, but other than that and Aggro Loam I hate the format. I wouldn't want to see it abolished though because players enjoy it, but I am on your side about it being super lame.

[herbig]

Honestly though if I wanted to flip a coin and wait 20 minutes while my opponent took his first turn every match I'd play Vintage.  At least Legacy isn't over turn one every game.  No thanks, I'll stick to my Dwarven-Charbelcher deck, I win like every week with it and I don't need fancy duels or moxes to do it.

[Oath of Happy]

One thing that really gave legacy a huge push was the restriction of brainstorm in vintage.  Brainstorm was one of those cards that everyone just loved to play with.  If they were ever to restrict drain in vintage, while unbanning it in legacy, vintage would just fold up and die.

As far as legacy leaving, legacy is putting up much larger numbers than vintage, which is all that wizards cares about, so it would be vintage that dies first.

[Shock Wave]

Interesting discussion. I play both Vintage and Legacy. Up until the advent of Legacy, I can say that Wizards had not made a dime from me in a long time. It was only until the announcement of Legacy GPs that Wizards starting getting some of my money. My situation is not unique at all. I know many players who played Vintage exclusively and did not spend any money that found its way into Wizard's (Hasbro's?) pockets until the advent of Legacy. I find it hard to believe when discussing the benefits of introducing Legacy, tapping the Vintage player base was not mentioned.

That being said, I find the suggestion that Legacy is "stealing" Vintage players quite amusing. That sounds like rather puerile reasoning to me, but what do I know.

[ashiXIII]

Honestly though if I wanted to flip a coin and wait 20 minutes while my opponent took his first turn every match I'd play Vintage.  At least Legacy isn't over turn one every game.  No thanks, I'll stick to my Dwarven-Charbelcher deck, I win like every week with it and I don't need fancy duels or moxes to do it.

lol @ your perception of Vintage

Interesting discussion. I play both Vintage and Legacy. Up until the advent of Legacy, I can say that Wizards had not made a dime from me in a long time. It was only until the announcement of Legacy GPs that Wizards starting getting some of my money. My situation is not unique at all. I know many players who played Vintage exclusively and did not spend any money that found its way into Wizard's (Hasbro's?) pockets until the advent of Legacy. I find it hard to believe when discussing the benefits of introducing Legacy, tapping the Vintage player base was not mentioned.

That being said, I find the suggestion that Legacy is "stealing" Vintage players quite amusing. That sounds like rather puerile reasoning to me, but what do I know.

I'm not sure if you guys realize this or not, but Wizards doesn't get your money at GPs. In fact, running GPs costs WotC a ton of cash.

Posts combined, please refrain from double posting - Eastman

[andrewpate]

Ok, yes, Legacy steals players from Vintage.  By which I mean to say:

Like Vintage, Legacy has a huge barrier of entry, mostly in the form of dual lands.  I just grabbed a random Top 8 decklist for one of the better decks in Legacy currently, Dreadstill, and added it up on Star City's shop.  The deck costs $957.00 to assemble.  Of that, $494.50 is spells, $462.50 is manabase.  And n.b. that this is one of the most rare-intensive spell lists in the format, including Phyrexian Dreadnought, Stifle, Engineered Explosives, Pithing Needle, and of course Force of Will.  Now consider this:  of that $957.00, $754.50 is made up of cards that aren't legal in any non-Eternal format!

Of course, this comes as no news to anyone on this site.  Fact is, building a deck for an Eternal format and also keeping up with normal Constructed is very nearly the same as keeping up with two different card games, like playing both Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh.  But that $500 manabase (and Dreadstill is only three colors!) does also work in Vintage.  So it would be obvious to anyone that a lot of potential Vintage players would also be potential Legacy players.  Compare to Standard vs. Extended.

But think of it this way:  does anybody complain about Standard stealing players from Extended?  Sure, Standard is much more popular.  And sure, Standard decks are much cheaper to build.  But you know what else?  Every store in the country hosts a Standard tournament every week, sometimes more than one.  Plus, Standard is routinely played at the Pro Tour, at Nationals and Worlds, and at Champs, Regionals, and what have you.  There's tons of support!  Extended usually gets one PT, a PTQ season, a couple of GPs, and occasionally a few rounds at Worlds.  Why build a $500 Extended deck when you can play your $300 Standard deck ten times as often?

It's the same with Vintage.  Outside of the midwest, the Atlantic coast, and Western Europe, there IS no such thing as Vintage.  Legacy gets GPs, occasional PT-level support (see Worlds), hell, I just drove 20 min. to a Legacy GPT a couple weekends ago, vs. no Vintage event having occurred within a 6 hour drive of my apartment at any time in living memory.  And I love Vintage!

So yes, Legacy does "steal" Vintage players insofar as the pool of potential players overlaps quite a bit and many of those players end up playing more Legacy than Vintage.  It is simply a reality that Vintage is a vanity format that will always remain localized around pockets of enthusiasts.  This wouldn't change a bit if Legacy ceased to exist, and in fact it might damage the amount of Vintage that gets played, since people outside those hot spots would have no reason to buy non-Extended cards at all.

[Shock Wave]

I'm not sure if you guys realize this or not, but Wizards doesn't get your money at GPs. In fact, running GPs costs WotC a ton of cash.

You seem to be implying that because Wizards may not turn a profit at these events that it is not "getting" money. If I go to this event, Wizards will receive my money. If I do not, my money stays in my pocket. Do we agree?

[LordHomerCat]

I hear it's supposed to be cold in Chicago this weekend, too!  Bring coats, people!

Sadly it is always cold in Chicago.

Windy too.

[Godder]

I get that there are strong feelings about the creation of Legacy, but please keep posts civil.

[Tha Gunslinga]

Why does this thread exist?

Just to get it out of the way I really despise this thread and hate the fact that it was created in the first place.

All emotion aside though I'd really like to hear a few opinions from people on the following:

    * Is this thread killing Vintage? How bad of an effect is this thread having on Vintage?
    * Why is it worth it for this thread to exist?  Instead of one small format criticizing another one, couldn't we be 1 large community to shore up and draw in as large of a player base as possible?
    * If it is proven that this thread is a bad idea, doesn't that in essence prove that there is no reason for reaperbong to exist?
    * Do you think there is a chance for reaperbong to die out/be canceled as a TMD member in the future? How long will we be stuck with him?


Any answers/opinions to the above would be appreciated. I can of course elaborate further thoughts/reasoning behind any of these inquiries.

Thanks

You've been warned repeatedly about antagonism and flaming.  Verbal Warning for violation of Rule 2, Inflammatory Posting.    -DA

[herbig]

lol @ your perception of Vintage

Am I incorrect on this?  Vintage is a distortion of the game and totally not what Richard Garfield had in mind when he designed it.  The game is played totally without an attack step, unless you're casting Mana Drain I guess.

a bunch of stuff

You just copied and pasted the original post, replacing "Legacy" with "this thread."  Do you think we're dumb?


Legacy exists because it gives people like me, who can't afford duals and blue cards, with a chance to compete even at the highest levels with whatever deck I feel.  I've had lots of success with my mono black discard and mono green land destruction, which both require 0 nonbasics and only a few really expensive cards (damn Birds..)