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Thanks for weighing in and to @volrathxp for the signal boost. Some thoughts: The idea wasn't to confirm my own view, but to weigh how players view the format. In that case I probably shouldn't have put the card availability comments in the OP, but that was what 1/x
I was thinking about the most. Card availability, the reserved list, speculators, all these things are huge points of contention in the legacy format. On MTGO, these barriers fall. Sure, cards aren't "free," but they are more realistic to budget for. That comes with a lot of 2/x
other baggage though. Respondents mentioned how the platform's capabilities impact deck choice, and I don't think that should be discounted. There isn't a uniform kind of player that is making different choices based on paper vs. MTGO. Some players don't like playing online 3/x
at all, for one. And then there are players whose playstyle most closely aligns with a deck like, let's say, Lands or Delver, but in paper could only piece together Manaless Dredge or D&T. There are also players who in paper would play a deck with an infinite combo, or 4/x
a particular card they are proud to own and want to use, and are willing to take the hit in win % as long as they get to do their thing, but if they switch to online, the resonance changes. When you have to click through your infinite combo, it's less appetizing to play it; 5/x
when your Russian Goyfs or test print City of Traitors are sitting in a box, you might not care that much about playing decks with those cards. "Different players have different goals" is not a revolutionary statement, but it is something that's being ignored in the drive 6/x
to over-rationalize every opinion about Legacy. There is no Legacy without players, and if it's not fun to play, even if it is "balanced" or each legal card "isn't bannable," the players will leave. We look at these challenge lists for an idea about a meta, but those have 7/x
fewer players than the SCG Sundays or even Classics that required a lot more of each entrant than "sitting on your butt at your computer all day." The format seems less vibrant viewed through the lens of the MTGO winner's metagame, but that's where the most games with this 8/x
ruleset are being played, especially for the foreseeable future. So taking all that into account: What do we have as a format? Would we be able to get 100+ players every two weeks for paper tournaments still? Or has the format become a playground for people who like a very 9/x
specific kind of format and philosophy? As I look through old cards for throwback formats, I think about how there was a specialness to figuring out your deck and your collection and the format that isn't met the same way by MTGO, despite ease of use and quality of comp. [end]
