Star city and wizards no longer support legacy?
Legacy forum
Posted on Jan. 2, 2016, 6:50 a.m. by Deckologist
I finally dusted off the old dredge deck and went to play at my regular FNM and as I walked in I noticed most of my meta was missing. I figured it had just been a really long time and they had moved on until I asked around and I was told star city and wizards pretty much gave up on legacy. Is this just an attempt to push people into modern or was the legacy community as a whole just that small?
elementalheroflamewingman says... #3
No reprint of original duals = less legacy players over time.
January 2, 2016 9:29 a.m.
michaelwkraus says... #5
Every month here in Pittsburgh pa, a huge legacy tourney is players, about 40-50 ( in legacy, that is big) just do some searching in your area....or try to,start a tourney yourself..
January 2, 2016 10:09 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #6
As far as I can tell, Wizards of the Coast hasn't really changed their level of support for Legacy. They schedule a couple Legacy GPs each year but then leave the rest of the events up to the other TOs to organize (Star City, Card Titan, etc.).
Star City has significantly changed their level of support, pulling way back on the number of Legacy events scheduled for Open weekends. If your Legacy friends are missing from FNM, they either lost interest on their own or misinterpreted the true meaning of the news from Star City.
January 2, 2016 10:38 a.m.
filledelanuit says... #7
It's also still winter break so people may not be here. I also played legacy at FNM. Dredge was the only deck with blue cards in it. It was kinda weird.
January 2, 2016 2:59 p.m.
its purely an attempt to get more people into limited, standard and then modern
Basically wotc wants legacy dead because legacy players dont buy product, they get a deck thru the secondary market, and play it for years without ever spending another dime.
January 7, 2016 6:51 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #9
On this article, here, Elaine Chase explicitly stated that WotC is not attempting to "kill" legacy and vintage, but she did not state what the company is doing to support those formats, so, I wonder: what is WotC doing to support legacy and vintage formats? As legacy is my favorite format, I hope that they are doing something to support it.
January 17, 2016 3:58 p.m.
They support them by making them accessible on MTGO, that's their logic.
January 18, 2016 6:24 a.m.
alanwescoat says... #11
Basically, Wizards insisting on maintaining the Reserved List is really hurting Legacy. There are about nineteen reserved-list cards, the general dearth of which completely hamstrings Legacy. Ten of those are the genuine dual lands, which are just basic staples for the format. Even if you have them, most other players cannot afford to get them, making the player pool very small.
Beyond that, increasing genuine numismatic value is now ensuring that some of those cards are leaving circulation, not to mention those who quit actively playing MTG but will not part with their cards. On top of that, despite the fact that it is not on the Reserved List, Wizards refuses to reprint Force of Will, basically stroking those running the secondary market by abandoning its intellectual property while retaining it as property while simultaneously refusing to allow proxies. It would be one thing if you could buy one of each dual land and proxy up to three more of each, but it is quite another to need full playsets of cards which trade for as high as they do, especially when it requires a large base of players who can all have those cards as well.
It is basically much like the reason why you do not see polo leagues all over the place. It is a really expensive sport. Try putting a team of people together each of whom can afford to own and maintain a horse for the purpose of playing a game. Then consider that multiple teams are needed to make a league. Horses are naturally expensive. MTG cards are artificially expensive.
In addition to those twenty cards, Vintage is hamstrung by another seventeen cards which Wizards refuses to make available while also refusing to allow to be proxied. Chief among these are the Power Nine.
Basically, Wizards could fix this whole problem by spewing out millions of packs of 100 cards containing one of each of the sixteen Vintage-restricted Reserved-list cards which are most important and a playset of the next twenty-one most needed cards for Legacy and Vintage and retail the pack for a year at $60 for those 100 cards as a "thank you" to the players. While trade in the originals would slow to a trickle for a while, the sudden influx of millions of new players would eventually lead to an increase in value of the oritginals, along with an instant massive price increase in all other Legacy and Vintage staples which were not reprinted in that pack.
Basically, everyone's Legacy and Vintage cards would become vastly more valuable because it would become within the realm of easy possibility for just about anyone who can afford to play any form of MTG to build at least one good Legacy or Vintage deck, meaning that thousands and thousands of more games could be played, and even the newest and tiniest of stores with the sparsest populations could even host weekly Legacy events in addition to Standard and Modern instead of waiting years and years for the player base to accumulate cards.
Furthermore, the formats will further diversify because millions of new players will be contributing creativity and innovation to the formats.
The following cards need to be put into the pack I have described:
Legacy:
1. 4x Badlands
2. 4x Bayou
3. 4x Plateau
4. 4x Savannah
5. 4x Scrubland
6. 4x Taiga
7. 4x Tropical Island
8. 4x Tundra
9. 4x Underground Sea
10. 4x Volcanic Island
11. 4x Bazaar of Baghdad
12. 4x Library of Alexandria
13. 4x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
14. 4x City of Traitors
15. 4x Gaea's Cradle
16.4x Moat
17. 4x Nether Void
18. 4x Lion's Eye Diamond
19. 4x Mox Diamond
20. 4x Force of Will
Vintage:
21. 1x Ancestral Recall
22. 1x Black Lotus
23. 1x Fastbond
24. 1x Mox Emerald
25. 1x Mox Jet
26. 1x Mox Pearl
27. 1x Mox Ruby
28. 1x Mox Sapphire
29. 1x Time Vault
30. 1x Time Walk
31. 1x Timetwister
32. 1x Wheel of Fortune
33. 1x Tolarian Academy
34. 1x Yawgmoth's Will
35. 1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
36. 1x Memory Jar
37. 4x Mishra's Workshop
There. That should be the Magic: The Gathering Vintage and Legacy Starter Pack of 100 cards, which would retail at $59.95 in an unlimited printing for one year. Wizards (and, by extension, Hasbro) would make tens of millions of dollars, the Vintage and Legacy scenes would explode, the prices of other Vintage and Legacy staples would rise more than the temporarily frozen values of the cards which were reprinted, the originals would eventually go even higher in value because of the influx of new players and the return of older players who had not kept up with the game, and every tiny shop in the world would suddenly have the capacity to host regular Vintage and Legacy events.
Everyone would be happy. All Wizards has to do is the right thing, which is to manufacture and sell the product I have described.
February 6, 2016 9:15 a.m.
alanwescoat says... #12
Sorry, Library of Alexandria needs to be moved to the Vintage list as a 1x, making a total of 97 cards instead of 100.
February 6, 2016 9:29 a.m.
Whilst I wish Wizards would do something like this, they are far more likely to produce a Vintage Masters style product as $$$
February 8, 2016 4:05 a.m.
secondwhiteline says... #14
I really don't get the logic of the Reserved List after all this time. Haven't they done enough to maintain the value of those cards, to a degree that's detrimental to newer players? Is reprinting a Black Lotus going to kill hobby shops?
Also, why let a tournament format die when you can sell product for it? Why not do a Vintage Masters set every two years?
February 9, 2016 11:38 a.m.
alanwescoat says... #15
secondwhiteline, I think Hasbro needs to take the decision out of the hands of W.o.t.C. Originally, Wizards was marketing the cards both as playable and as collectible. They made a terrible mistake with Chronicles in reprinting too many valuable rares. At the time, their entire business was dependent upon the same dealers who were gouging customers for high-demand rares. As a consequence, people at Wizards made an even bigger mistake than Chronicles with the Reserved List.
Because of the promise made, keeping the Reserved List is not about anything making sense. It is entirely about keeping one's word, regardless of whether or not keeping that word makes sense or is beneficial to anyone whomsoever.
Accordingly, Hasbro needs to force that particular issue. Wizards owns extremely valuable intellectual property which it has abandoned. By extension, Hasbro owns that property. The pack I described, if sold at $59.95 would sell an absolute minimum of one million units worldwide. Even if the profit for Hasbro is a mere $10 per pack, that is $10,000,000 of pure profit simply for making intellectual property available to consumers, rejuvenating the game, making customers happy, and enhancing the long-term health of the secondary market.
Also, just for posterity, I need to tweak the list I put up a little. Library of Alexandria was in the wrong list. Also, since Fastbond is a $4.00 rare allowed only in Vintage and restricted, it will give re-sellers a chance to gouge a languishing card by jacking up the price when demand for Vintage and Legacy staples goes through the roof. When this set is released, you can expect Fastbond to shoot up to fifty bucks. Release of the M.T.G. Vintage and Legacy Starter Pack, while freezing sales on these particular cards, will cause prices of other cards which many re-sellers actually have in stock to go through the roof!
The tweaked list:
Legacy:
1. 4x Badlands
2. 4x Bayou
3. 4x Plateau
4. 4x Savannah
5. 4x Scrubland
6. 4x Taiga
7. 4x Tropical Island
8. 4x Tundra
9. 4x Underground Sea
10. 4x Volcanic Island
11. 4x Bazaar of Baghdad
12. 4x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
13. 4x City of Traitors
14. 4x Gaea's Cradle
15. 4x Moat
16. 4x Nether Void
17. 4x Lion's Eye Diamond
18. 4x Mox Diamond
19. 4x Force of Will
Vintage:
20. 1x Library of Alexandria
21. 1x Ancestral Recall
22. 1x Black Lotus
23. 1x Mox Emerald
24. 1x Mox Jet
25. 1x Mox Pearl
26. 1x Mox Ruby
27. 1x Mox Sapphire
28. 1x Time Vault
29. 1x Time Walk
30. 1x Timetwister
31. 1x Wheel of Fortune
32. 1x Tolarian Academy
33. 1x Yawgmoth's Will
34. 1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
35. 1x Memory Jar
36. 4x Mishra's Workshop
Hence, I am calling for a single packet of reprints comprising 96 total cards retailed a what is ludicrously expensive for a pack of 96 cards but what will be hailed as the greatest boon in the history of the game. It has to be an unlimited product like any regular set, and it has to have an M.S.R.P. that nearly all casual M.T.G. players can easily afford.
I think that one million units is an incredibly low estimate for worldwide sales. I would expect U.S. and Canadian sales to be several times higher than that, with European sales possibly being even higher, not to mention Asian sales, along with the rest of the world. They can even give a nod to the brick-and-mortar shops by simply agreeing to fill all pre-orders to them before any printings make it to national chain stores like Meijer and Wal*Mart. That will give the vicious sharks who gouge a chance to milk those who are unable to wait for supply to catch up with demand.
lemmingllama says... #2
The issue with Legacy is that few new people have been joining into it. The decks are expensive, and you can build multiple tournament ready Modern decks for the same price tag.
Also Legacy isn't being highly supported, currently they are pushing much more for Standard and Modern, and Wizards is pushing Draft. If you do want to do Legacy, larger Legacy tournaments at Opens and GPs are probably your best bet.
January 2, 2016 7:52 a.m.