Limiting legacy by the deck's price
Legacy forum
Posted on Nov. 26, 2018, 11:21 a.m. by Odaka
Hello,
First of all, sorry if my English is very bad, I am not a native :D
My story is quite ordinary, it seems. I used to play Magic as kid and recently we started again with friends. Naturally, we bought some new cards and join them to our old cards to make new decks. Since we don't want to get ruined by this game we always manage to build reasonable budget decks and keep the essential: the fun ;)
At some point, when we are proud of our deck we want to try with someone outside of our small circle: a small contest for example. Since we are using some very old cards we are in the legacy format.
And that's the problem. In front of us, there are people with decks whose value is more than 10 times ours. In other words, we don't have any chance against them.
Whatever the beautiful speech you can have, MTG stays a pay-to-win (or pay-to-not-lose) game.
Well this consideration and the fact that the actual Legacy format is very difficult and expensive to join, why not limiting the format by the total cost of the whole deck. For example, have Legacy50 which is Legacy but the total price of the deck is below 50$, or Legacy100 below 100$,...? This allows to keep the accessibility to the whole card's pool and limiting the "potential power" of the game. It's quite similar in fighting's sport where the weight defines the category.
It's the reflection we had with friends and I am curious of what do you think. It's impossible that we are the only one to have thought about this. Maybe there is reason why it doesn't exist.
SynergyBuild says... #3
My issue is how you would check the prices of cards. If you base it off of TCGplayer or any specific online market place, changes in card prices would allow your deck to be illegal, requiring you, before every single game to check that a card hasn't spiked. This format sounds like trash IMO.
Pauper is what you want, but as there is no dedicated, organized paper banlist, it won't matter.
Also, just player like budget legacy burn for $200, there are cheap storm varients, etc. I have even seen good budget control lists for around $500. Obviously that might be too much for some, but just work up to it. Proxy if you are okay with that.
November 26, 2018 1:03 p.m.
There are a number of insurmountable problems with the creation of a price-based official format.
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Wizards would have to declare some website, be it TCGPlayer, StarCityGames, etc. as the "official" site for determining a card's price. This absolutely should not happen. In addition to giving the chosen site disproportionate power in the secondary market, Wizards tying itself to a specific secondary provider would create its own string of problems.
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Card prices are changing all the time based upon the meta, and some changes can happen pretty quickly. A deck that's barely legal one day, might easily be illegal the next day. Not only does this mean investments could be wasted, it effectively forces deckbuilders to take fluctuations into account. Legacy 50 effectively is "Legacy 40, so you can have some buffer."
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Splitting a format weakens not just the format being split, but other formats as well. Take Modern, for example. Many players at FNM might be running $100.00 budget Modern decks. However, if there were a format capped at $100.00, they would probably be pretty quick to jump-ship and switch to the format where they are at the top of the cost-curve. That's not healthy for Modern.
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There are plenty of options for budget-conscious players. As Boza mentioned, Pauper is a pretty popular format, with a relatively low buy-in. There are plenty of places where you can find budget Commander players.
November 26, 2018 1:27 p.m.
WizardOfTheNorthernCoast says... #5
Juste don't play competitive Legacy. You're right to play for the fun, just keep it at it would be my best advice. That's what a game should be above all, fun. Of all my friends, I'm the only one left playing and it might be because I got greedy for power and started to buy super expensive cards they couldn't keep up with.
Going competitive means :
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You'll play against more linear strategies, which are the opposite of fun (except for burn <3). Especially in Legacy, where T1/2 combos are a thing, you'll end up being pretty much bored if you have a casual deck.
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You'll meet some people you sometimes would have prefered not to. Don't get me wrong, lots of players at my LGS and in the community are great, but you also have the fat greasy salty nerds who will hate you for playing this or that deck or simply for making a good play/win against them. Because for some, MTG is all there is. Once again, if you value fun more than anything else, that's a reason to not play competitive :) Trust me, as a Burn player I've had that a lot. Sometimes makes you wonder why you even bother travel and playing IRL against 'like-minded' people to get such behaviors and reactions.
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As to why there isn't such a Legacy100 format, the guys above gave you all the reasons I could come up with.
The solutions I'd give you are :
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If your main objective is to test a new build, I'd suggest you do so online or proxy the cards so you can see how it goes.
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If you want to find new players to play against, why not create a Facebook/WhatsApp group to find people around you who would be interested and see if you can build your own small community? You don't have to create a worldwide Legacy100 format for it to work, you know ;)
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Everybody talked about it, but the Pauper format is great. It's cheap, fun, and was given a competitive scene recently. Now you have a meta with good and bad decks, of course, but that's the best budget option there is out there atm :)
Peace out!
November 27, 2018 4:51 a.m.
Thank you for your answers!
I didn't know about pauper. But the problem and difference is still the same, you don't have access to every cards.
The fact that the price can move quickly days to days is a problem, I agree. But there are tons of solutions :)
- updating the price only once per month, or only every 3 months, etc
- keeping the average value of the last x months, it will smooth the variation
- etc
For having the value of the price, only one source is not enough and not fair yes. But it's really simple to have a scrapper which goes through hundreds of websites and takes the average value between them, or the minimum/maximum.
The people will optimize their deck to fit in a category and reach the best curve-cost. As results, those winning cards will eventually become more expensive and the deck will be out of the category. New decks will come and so on. It regulates itself. And that is, from my point of view, the best part of this idea. We won't see always the same cards or proxies as it is now. At least, by categories. It joins a bit the idea behind the commander format.
I don't think it will weaken the format. The "LegacyUnlimited" will still be the same and the lower Legacy will attract the casuals.
The goal is to have a category which allows you to have access to every magic cards without automatically implying lands/cards worth 300$. Along all the formats in Magic, there is a void for this that commander and pauper do not fill.
November 27, 2018 8:11 a.m.
SynergyBuild says... #7
Now you just have overlooked a lot of the arguments against your idea.
Standard rotation is yearly. This will happen 4 times more often, which isn't just undesirable, but is downright unplayable for many players. Averaging over months means that any new cards, in which prices cannot be averaged in the same way, can be absurdly swingy in price, having the same issues.
There also is a popular, rotating (like your format), and highly supported format with little price on landbase. It is called Standard.
Not to mention that banlist needing to be upheld in this absurd format would be nearly impossible to predict prior to trying it, Making a format that reaches that far back in time will lead to very strange circumstances. Banning the same cards that legacy has done won't account for the changes that you have made to the format, so unchanged Legacy100/50/$# will be super broken or toxic.
Self-regulation based on prices, causing broken decks to get too expensive, then being banned will lead to a cycle in which they become cheaper, getting back into the format. This cycle will occur in around the 1 to 3 month cycle or less based on your previous estimated rotation times. This alone is awful, and will drive players out of the format in droves, if there are even droves in the format.
You have described a perfectly awful format, one of regulations that won't work, of a format with no testing, of a format that is too large to account for, and one that is aimed at casuals, when there are much, much better formats currently than the one you describe.
November 27, 2018 8:42 a.m.
I said one or three month like this but you can change it with an update once per 1 year or X years.
There will be a rotation between bad and good cards yes every X time. But it's better than nothing as it is now. Magic is a TCG, the market is inherent to the game and a better evaluation of the power of cards than WOTC. The actual legacy format is dying because the market is not taken in account.
Anyway, more than the form, it's the idea that is interesting here. Magic still have problems to attract casual meaning that the actual solutions don't work.
Thanks for your point of view, seems this idea is not popular :(
November 27, 2018 9:02 a.m.
Using a cost amalgamation algorithm is much more complicated than you'd expect, as it has to be able to correctly search, identify, and compile information from many sources, each with different formatting. Since it's not selling new packs, it's an expense Wizards would pay without receiving a large return on the investment.
If you increase the time to 1 year, that's going to defeat the purpose of your format. A card that's fantastic in the format will rise in price as demand increases; after a year, it's likely these "good" cards will already be in the 10+ dollar range. This is exactly what we see in Standard--cards that are not playable in other formats sit around $10-12 while they're usable in standard, then plummet after rotation.
The market is indicative of power, as that's where the demand comes from, but there are plenty of expensive cards (such as many Reserve List cards) that are downright unplayable.
Legacy is fine--it's supposed to be an elite format with fast, brutal, or otherwise broken decks. Wizards is addressing these problems with reprints of key, non-Reserve List cards, which is much healthier than further diluting the legacy player base. Your solution wouldn't save Legacy, it would splinter it.
Causal MTG players have plenty of outlets--most game stores have casual nights, or allow players to come and play kitchen table, or have casual Commander games, or prereleases, or sealed, or any number of other fun, low-budget options.
November 27, 2018 9:38 a.m.
WizardOfTheNorthernCoast says... #10
I think MTG can't trigger interest from casual players for other reasons than its price tags. First, you have options to build fun decks for cheap if you really want to (pauper has been mentionned but you could do so in basically any format disregarding the competitiveness of your deck).
Second, because it's a geek game by essence, you will not be interested if you don't have this nerdy mindset. Take someone who not into fantasy AT ALL and try and sell him a cardgame where goblins fight vampires. Not gonna happen.
Third, the rules are really, really complicated. It takes years to fully understand what's going on, grasp the way the stack/priority works, etc. Casual players don't take time to learn those kind of stuff because they're, well, casual players.
As for why Legacy is dying : it's mostly the reserved list's (or WOTC's if you prefer) fault. People can't afford to pay 150€-200€ for a biland. Heck, I myself spend a lot of money on the game and wouldn't buy an ugly-ass land for that price. It prevents people from getting into the format (unless you go mono colored, so basically B Reanimator or R Burn), so the player base shrinks and the events get more rare (at least from what I can see here in Belgium).
November 27, 2018 9:43 a.m.
SynergyBuild says... #11
I learned the game in a matter of two months, which isn't good, don't get me wrong, however I understood the stack the first day, layering of static abilities was my issue.
Also, Mono Black Reanimator or Monored burn xD never heard of D&T? You can build GB Nic Fit with Overgrown Tombs instead of dual lands, and still be very competitive of like a 400 dollar deck, or cheaper. Legacy is a great format right now. You can build up a deck and play reasonably competitively at like the price of modern.
November 27, 2018 12:31 p.m.
WizardOfTheNorthernCoast says... #12
SynergyBuild Now I ovelooked this, but it might be the best point made by all of us so far and the very reason to end this thread, honestly.
'Making a format that reaches that far back in time will lead to very strange circumstances. Banning the same cards that legacy has done won't account for the changes that you have made to the format, so unchanged Legacy100/50/$# will be super broken or toxic.'
Boza says... #2
But why? Three things:
At that point, what is the difference between Legacy50 or Legacy100 and an existing format such as Pauper?
Can this format even be called Legacy, without the defining cards for the format?
Additionally, you can play all the Legacy you want at any time for 0$ - use proxies! The only thing you cannot do with Proxy Legacy is play in sanctioned tournaments, which you are already doing in terms of Legacy.
November 26, 2018 11:27 a.m.