Dear Wizards,
… We need to talk.
I’ve been chatting with some of the other formats and it seems like you just don’t give me the same attention that, well, anyone else gets. One thing led to another and I started reading some relationship advice books and I think we just don’t communicate enough. I don’t want to break up with you, but there are some things we need to talk about before we can move on in this relationship.
You Don’t Pay Enough Attention To Me
Admittedly, I was a little miffed when I saw that there would be no coverage of GenCon this year in the events section of your website. We’ve always had it in years past and it’s a great way for players to get a part of the GenCon experience without being there. Granted, nothing else about GenCon was covered as it unfolded, but it would have been nice to at least have some intern there blogging if nothing else.
More importantly, for a so-called World Championship, you did a poor job of getting the Top 8 decklists out or even discussing what won! Vintage isn’t happy about this, because unless you were there, it’s just about impossible to know at this time what was actually played. GenCon is the banner event for the format most years, so to be without lists over a week after the event makes me think that you don’t care enough.
We Don’t Go Out Often Enough
The Legacy Grands Prix have always had excellent attendance and are realistically, the only event that Wizards can really put on for Legacy. A PTQ format wouldn’t be approachable to most players (yet) because Legacy players tend to be geographically separated and the card availability would be an issue for a season-length event where it would not be for a single marquee event. The Worlds Legacy portion is good and should continue. What about a portion of a Pro Tour being Legacy? We’d get to see some of the stars of the game playing with all the greatest cards in the game, and it might spike interest in PTQs for Eternal players. I’d love to play some Standard if it could get me a plane ticket to play Legacy and other formats in another country. While I’m not interested in PTQing right now, it could quickly change if there were six rounds of Legacy to play through later on.
What I’m really asking for is another Grand Prix, and ideally, one a year. Chicago set a record for attendance; someone at Wizards should be trying to replicate that success. A yearly large event gives Legacy players something to look forward to. Bi-yearly or tri-yearly events make Legacy seem like something we do once in awhile but don’t pay attention to. That hurts my feelings, but more importantly, it makes the format stagnate and doesn’t attract new players. The Legacy format has proven that it can make money for Wizards at the GP level; let’s get more of it! It’s simply good business sense to have more events if they pay for themselves. While a Legacy GP doesn’t sell the same packs that a Limited GP does, all of the entry money going toward the tournament goes into Wizards’ pockets — they don’t even have to supply product for everyone playing. This factor makes them possibly even more lucrative than a Limited event. Support for GPs also strengthens community-driven tournaments, like the SCG $10K coming up in two weeks in Charlotte, NC. Even better than one Legacy GP a year would be an American GP and a European GP every year, but that’s the kind of thing you only get in Christmasland, where good things happen every day.
You Don’t Take Care of Me
Let’s talk about the banned list, Wizards. This list gives you a lot of control over the format, but you rarely use it. I’m not proposing more banned cards, I’m suggesting unbanning cards that are obviously safe. Dream Halls is the poster child here. There’s actually no objective way to make Dream Halls better than Lion’s Eye Diamond. I’ve run extensive tests and it’s a scientific impossibility. If we have one, why can’t we have the other? When the last banned list update rolled around, I expected to see something come off the list, or even see Legacy discussed a little in the article regarding the list changes. Instead, we got the sign that nobody at Wizards seemed to have put serious thought into what goes onto or comes off the Legacy banned list. While it may not matter a whole lot at Wizards headquarters, many people play the game frequently enough that they would appreciate a realistic banned list.
With the new Banned List update coming on Sept. 1st, this is a great time for you to talk about the format a bit more and prune the list. Most of all, I’d appreciate an article or at least discussion section that went over the official thoughts on some of the cards on the banned list. Anything from the official site about Legacy delights this player, because we so rarely get an idea of even what Wizards thinks of the format. I suspect that, as a format, it’s rarely played at Wizards. Can you pick up the decks once in awhile, guys? I promise you’ll have fun…
You Never Give Me Anything Nice
I think Wizards is not printing specific hoser cards or format-specific cards (Chalice of the Void for Vintage being an example), but could we get some cards designed to play in high-powered Eternal formats? Patrick Chapin had some very good card ideas for the purposes of “fixing” Vintage problem children like Time Vault and Yawgmoth’s Will. Can we get something that addresses Tarmogoyf or Sensei’s Divining Top? Even a colorless land that pings a player when they activate an artifact would be a consideration (and would get played to break up the Time Vault combo in Vintage). I’m not representing that Counterbalance is a ban-worthy threat in Legacy, but it is a card that really constrains players in what they can build and realistically play. Significantly, there’s no real downside to putting Counterbalance-Top into a blue deck, and I’d like to see some way of at least making Blue players gamble when they play with Legacy’s best strategy.
If we’re not going to print Legacy-specific cards, what about enemy-colored Fetchlands? I realize you want to get the fetch-Ravnica Dual combination out of Extended, but is it against hope to think we’ll ever see them? There are inherent problems with trying to print cards that will be played in Eternal formats, namely that they might be totally overpowered in the newer formats. We’ve gotten some really cool cards lately, like Vendilion Clique, Lorescale Coatl, Rafiq of the Many and Rhox War Monk. Can we get some non-blue awesome cards too? I suppose all I’m asking for is another Future Sight. That was a great set! Make another!
Apart from new cards, can we get some reprints of obscure, playable and unconscionably rare cards? FTV: Exiled was a great start, but we don’t even need to look at once-banned cards to find reprint-worthy choices. Strategic Planning is a fantastic card, on the power level of what we can expect from Blue these days, but at $100+ apiece, they’ll never be in a Legacy deck. Grim Tutor also commands a very high price and would be a very fair tutor for Standard if it were reprinted. Similarly, Imperial Recruiter might be a little out of the color pie, but it’s a fair effect for a fair price in Standard and Extended. Much like Trinket Mage, it gives players a lot of options for casual and competitive decks. But again, with Recruiter being so expensive, nobody will get to play with it like they should be able to. Recruiter’s price is also largely speculative, driven initially by the Imperial Recruiter Aluren deck my team cooked up several years ago for Grand Prix: Columbus, a deck that never went anywhere. Could we get a green color-shifted version at some point?
While Grindstone — Painter’s Servant is probably too strong to allow into Extended, Wizards can reprint Grindstone in tricky ways that would make the card more accessible and drop the ridiculous speculation-fueled price of the card. Let’s get another theme deck or duel deck based around milling, one of the most popular casual strategies ever, and sneak a Grindstone or two into the set. Make the set reasonably priced and you open up another deck for Legacy players. Alternately, it could be reprinted in the form of an FNM promo or something similar. The limited promotional reprint gives a way around the reserve list, which, if used in moderation, could be a good way to get cards like Phyrexian Dreadnought into players’ hands. While we’re at it, promo reprints of common Legacy cards are great too — the Chrome Mox from GP: Chicago was completely ridiculous and awesome.
…
I don’t know where we go from here, Wizards. Truthfully, you’ve been very good to the Legacy format and shown it a lot of support and attention over the years. I’m asking primarily for small changes, a little more attention here and there. While the Legacy community will never be as big or as important as Standard, it’s an important community that ties into the game not only Magic’s past, but its future. The more attention that the format gets, the more it gains long-term, committed players and stellar events.
Until next week…
Legacysallure at gmail dot com
P.S. No really, can we get those GenCon lists?