You visited this website, which likely indicates one of two things: either you are interested in this format, or you have a friend who thinks you should give this a go. Either way: you’re probably wondering if this expensive eternal format is worth it. If you’re a Standard player, you probably already ditched paper and moved to Magic Arena. If you’re a Pioneer or Modern player, you’re probably wondering why this wallet-daunting format is so popular (especially among old dudes, to be fair). The goal of this article is to inform you about the format, its charm and popularity and – if you’re convinced – what you can do to play!
What is Legacy?
First things first, let’s get started with the basics. Legacy is an eternal constructed format. This can be broken down into two things:
- Eternal, meaning you have the full assortment of cards to your availability, no matter in which set it’s printed. It’s all legal. Unless it’s banned, of course. Unlike Vintage, we don’t do restricted in Legacy. You can either play 4 copies of a card or none at all. This also means there is no rotation like in Standard. And the best part of all: you get to play your favorite archetype because there is something for everyone!
- Constructed, meaning you bring your own deck to the tournament, consisting of a minimum op 60 cards in its main deck and an additional sideboard of up to 15 cards.
Quick Reference: the Legacy banned cards list (Wizards of the Coast).
The thing about this format is that it grants access to the (almost) most powerful cards ever printed. There is no Power 9 like in Vintage or Old School, but you’ll notice soon enough that there are cards in the pool that are insanely powerful and very much banned in other formats. Unfortunately, this fuels some common misconceptions, like:
- The die roll probably dictates the outcome of the game, doesn’t it?
- Aren’t most games over in 2 or 3 turns?
- If you play X on turn 1, aren’t you just done?
I’m not going to lie, I have thought those things. Now that I’ve played Legacy for years I can however tell you that these are not true at all. A beautiful thing about playing the most broken cards in the game means that there are also broken answers to broken threats. Cards like Force of Will, Daze, Wasteland, Chalice of the Void and Karakas keep many broken turn 1 plays in check. Of course, some decks have absolutely busted 7-card hand possibilities that do something insane on the first turn backed up by protection. In practice however, this doesn’t consistently occur and many of these strategies fold to common sideboarding tactics after the first game. It’s very rare that a match gets decided by two of these insane games.
Is Legacy for me?
I think there’s something in Legacy for everyone. Obviously, playing a format like this requires some level of commitment. I’m not going to preach that it’s cheap. The goal of this website is to provide information about relatively reasonably priced ways to play this format. It can be quite daunting to get started into Legacy, but if you take it step by step it’s a very rewarding process. I’d recommend watching some content, there are tons of content creators out there and whether you watch some tournament or someone playing on MTGO doesn’t really matter. Whichever you prefer. Then if you get an idea of what deck you’d like to play, print it out and play with friends. MTGPrint.net is a great way to print out decent looking proxies for you to test any deck. Alternatively you can jump into any Discord channel that plays over the webcam or play on either MTGO or an alternative online play engine like Cockatrice, xmage or Untap. Once you found the deck you like, start buying into it. You don’t have to buy all cards at once, but you can make a budget or planning for yourself. Slowly transitioning your proxy deck into a real one can be a satisfying process if you ask me. Every mail day is a new joy! Once you’re locked and loaded, you can go and play in tournaments and meet the awesome Legacy community.
Is Legacy dead?
Frankly, this was a big concern for me when I got started into Legacy back in 2017. I used to play Modern in all competitive tournaments and back in that year there was usually 1 Legacy GP per continent per year. I decided to dive into tournaments and to my surprise there were a lot of other TO’s organizing all different kinds of tournaments for this format. Fast forward to 2020: during Covid lockdowns there were two things that affected Legacy:
- No tournaments
- A lot of players who wanted to play and organized all kinds of alternatives over the webcam
When the world opened up again, these players wanted to play again and there were so many who stood up and organized a tournament that we have to choose sometimes. Surely, they aren’t GP’s, but the community is so driven to keep things going that there are all kinds of things organized and created to keep the format alive. So much in fact that I feel like there’s more players than before. By lack of things like a GP, the European community has set up the ELM (check them out, it’s a really awesome thing) and TO’s like NRGSeries and Buffalo Chicken Dip are streaming their paper events regularly. Also shoutout to Anuraag Das who’s invested a lot of personal time and money into creating streams for big tournaments like SCGcon. I’m probably forgetting a million but there will be a list of content creators in the future. So, to sum it up: Legacy is definitely not dead!
