Aaron Forsythe asks how Wizards can support Vintage

[enderfall]

Well, I guess you could technically "make your own format" and just use Vintage as the template. But yes, it should be listed.

[gkraigher]

"Invent your own format" doesn't apply to Vintage since Vintage is a format that exists and is format recognized by the DCI.  

The slide literally reads, you can play any format for Friday Night Magic except for Vintage.  

If you listened to the live feed, you hear Rich Hagon gloat about being able to play powerful Magic formats on FNM like Legacy, and other format's he loves like Winston Draft.  I will spare you from the details of what a Winston Draft is because it makes me want to vomit.  

[portland]

Winston is a decent format, but takes too long to draft for most FNM players...

[Norm4eva]

I know we're sad about excluding Vintage, but omg Emperor. I've been trying to get the guys at work to try Emperor for like 18 months. I kinda gota give a +1 for that.

However, the exclusion of Vintage sucks. Big time. Especially considering some of the things that made that list - Invent-a-Format? Back Draft? The only formats I can think of which aren't on there are Vintage and like... Rainbow Stairwell

[DubDub]

I emailed Helene Bergeot about this topic this morning.  Here's what I wrote:

Hi Helene,

I am a longtime Magic player who came back to the game after graduating from college.  I had the good fortune and foresight to buy in to Vintage after falling in love with the format when Shards of Alara was the newest set to be released.  In my opinion, there is an elegance to the Vintage format that many other Magic formats lack.

I was severely disheartened to see that Vintage was left off the list of newly viable FNM formats.  Given the exhaustive list that appeared during the announcement, the deliberate exclusion of Vintage is offensive.  To include "invent your own format", but not a DCI Sanctioned format like Vintage, formerly called Type One because it WAS Magic, is offensive to the few who know and love this format.

The release of Vintage Masters online is not far in the past, thousands of people are watching the Vintage Super League each week, and yet again Vintage is left to fend for itself in the paper realm.

I understand you may be concerned that allowing people to play Vintage will cause them to question the Reserve List.  I understand you may be concerned that new players can have more fun with a white-bordered Fastbond and some Jace vs. Chandra copies of Gush than they do with the newest mythic planeswalker, even if they don't have a Black Lotus.

In early September Aaron Forsythe tweeted, "What underplayed Magic format would you like to see more focus/events for, either in paper or online?"  And then he stated, "Vintage is a popular answer."

It's quite unfortunate that the message the community gave to Aaron didn't make its way to your team, or worse if your team willfully ignored that message.

Everyone knows that Vintage FNMs would have been very few and very far between.  Perhaps there would have been zero run in 2015 whether Vintage was an option or not.  The cost of listing "Vintage Constructed" was so small, so very nearly costless, that I can't help but take offense from the omission.

Thank you for your time,
William

Her email address is "helene.bergeot@wizards.com" if you want to contact her yourself.

[Samoht]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

[fsecco]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

FNM is sanctioned, so there can't be proxies.

[Norm4eva]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

Yeah, this. They cannot start having FNMs with legal proxy decks; it will beg the question in the other formats and kids will whine about not being able to proxy $5 cards in Block Constructed. Siege Rhino is expensive for some people, man.

So if it's no proxy, well... I think we can anticipate how that will go. That would be The Great Experiment, right -- the longstanding theory of Vintage enrollment has been something like

• Start with budget and/or proxy list if you can't just buy in
• Be good enough at Magic to win and/or save up for those Moxen
• ...
• Your deck is now fully powered and you can thumb your nose at those without power, like a true Planeswalker

So if that actually works on a larger scale, and if Vintage is really as "worth it" as everyone says it is, then there shouldn't be any problem here, right? Zero proxy FNM Vintage *should* grow the living hell out of the format. What could possibly go wrong?

[Hrishi]

In theory, sure. In practice, how many stores would actually run FNM Vintage? I can't even imagine too many stores would switch to something like Legacy FNM, for example.

That being said, even a single store running an FNM Vintage would be awesome. It's too bad.

[Norm4eva]

In theory, sure. In practice, how many stores would actually run FNM Vintage? I can't even imagine too many stores would switch to something like Legacy FNM, for example.

That being said, even a single store running an FNM Vintage would be awesome. It's too bad.

Well, that's kind of my point...

I could see a store being willing to dick around with popular formats like Commander, maaaaybe even Legacy since some folks will have stuff from before 8th Ed just lying around waiting to be played, so they'll treat that as the greybeard format. But even that has problems for the same reasons as Vintage -- when someone shows up with a 'real' Oath deck and many others are playing their mostly-Modern-with-some-card-I-really-liked-from-Urza's_Block deck, the fun will leave the room at an alarming rate.

[Hrishi]

Honestly, that problem would occur even in a Legacy FNM. Imagine someone showing up with a top tier legacy deck against random piles, the same thing you described would occur! It is certainly not restricted to Vintage alone.

[KrauserKrauser]

The "no one will ever run it" argument is patently ridiculous when a whole slew of formats were listed that will likely never be played at FNM.

Wizard's Tower?  Rochester Draft? Vanguard?  Who even owns the Avatars anymore?  The list is chock full of formats that will only get played as an experiment since they appeared on the list.

Why should Vintage be excluded from the same, especially when Aaron Forsythe himself saw that it is a format that many people are interested in and feel is under supported by WotC?

Would anyone ever successfully lobby for a Winston Draft or Star FNM if it were not included in the list they published?

The exclusion is inexcusable.

[vaughnbros]

The exclusion is inexcusable.

Agreed.  The exclusion had to have been intentional, and it is a direct slap in the face to vintage.  Essentially telling us that they don't care about our format at all.  At least they finally let one of our own TO's run vintage worlds now.

[yugular]

a system where players who could prove ownership of actual physical reserve list cards could get MTGO versions for free would be nice....never gonna happen but it's pretty much what's keeping me from buying in right now.  Hard to justify spending a couple thousand dollars on replicas of cards I already own.

I would be ok with that. As long as I get paper power because I own it in mtgo already.

[Samoht]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

FNM is sanctioned, so there can't be proxies.

Thank you for quoting my post and saying the same thing! I love when people agree with me!

[thecrav]

The announcement on the WotC site says "any format." Not listing Vintage during the stream seems to have been an oversight. However, between the ongoing Vintage Super League and having Randy in the booth, it seems quite odd that they'd remember to list formats like Tribal Wars and forget Vintage.

[fsecco]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

FNM is sanctioned, so there can't be proxies.

Thank you for quoting my post and saying the same thing! I love when people agree with me!

You said that FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event. I said it couldn't ever happen. So I have no idea why you're saying it's same thing...

The announcement on the WotC site says "any format." Not listing Vintage during the stream seems to have been an oversight. However, between the ongoing Vintage Super League and having Randy in the booth, it seems quite odd that they'd remember to list formats like Tribal Wars and forget Vintage.

I'm sure anyone will be able to organize Vintage FNMs if that's what we want. Not including it on the list is the problem. That's why I posted this information inside this thread and didn't create a new one.

[Samoht]

I believe the issue has to do with proxies and their inability to promote their use. FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event and that more than anything else is the downfall in my estimation.

FNM is sanctioned, so there can't be proxies.

Thank you for quoting my post and saying the same thing! I love when people agree with me!

You said that FNM would almost always be a proxied Vintage event. I said it couldn't ever happen. So I have no idea why you're saying it's same thing...

Because I said the inability of it to be proxied would be its downfall?  

[thecrav]

The announcement on the WotC site says "any format." Not listing Vintage during the stream seems to have been an oversight. However, between the ongoing Vintage Super League and having Randy in the booth, it seems quite odd that they'd remember to list formats like Tribal Wars and forget Vintage.

Forsythe has now confirmed this on Twitter

[fsecco]

Just to clarify: as I said earlier, I'm sure they meant Vintage to be playable as a FNM format. The fact that it wasn't on the slide, though, shows a lot how they're not even thinking of really supporting the format. That's about it. Shows how Aaron asked this question on Twitter, got a "Vintage!" answer and... they kept ignoring the format.

[Hrishi]

Will a Vintage FNM happen somewhere?

[WotC_Ethan]

  Don't get so upset, please! We weren't trying to exclude the Vintage community from FNM; it was a simple oversight.

  We value you as the keepers of the Eternal flame that is Magic's original format. Go play Vintage at FNM! The more the format shows up in our Organized Play database, the more the powers-that-be will pay attention to Vintage!

[The Atog Lord]

Ethan, thank you very much for posting this. I know I feel much better.

[serracollector]

Well this is good news. im gonna be convincing my local store to start vintage fnm soon

[DubDub]

I sent a followup email to Helene begging her pardon for my reaction, and thanking her for including Vintage as a possible FNM format.  Now we've got to make it happen!

[Norm4eva]

Well, hey, all right.

Now to see if that zero proxy thing works out as well as the vocal minority suggests.

[fsecco]

Well, hey, all right.

Now to see if that zero proxy thing works out as well as the vocal minority suggests.

We're probably gonna have very, very few Vintage FNM's worldwide, if any. But that wasn't the issue, right?

[MaximumCDawg]

This all makes me love my local store much more.  Weekly sanctioned Vintage has devolved into weekly Legacy alternating with Vintage, but it's still head and shoulders about what you all report having.

[ben_berry]

How about this as something they could do.

"Raise the level of awareness of the Vintage format within the corporation."

Inexpensive, no legal entanglements, low risk.

[WotC_Ethan]

I believe that awareness and interest in Vintage is higher at Wizards now than it's been in many years. Vintage Masters and the Vintage Super League were/are popular. Also, many people in the company have had the chance to actually play Vintage for the first time, because each Wizards employee has a MTGO account with 4X every card in it. Not everyone who tries it likes it, of course, but even the people who don't enjoy it at least understand it pretty well now.