Great article Danger. You make some excellent points on the potential inclusion (or rather, the lack of inclusion) of cards that were printed in the Master's ed. sets. Thought it made great sense with respect to how Wizards might try and maximize future revenue.
One issue that I'm not so sure on is the lack of inclusion of cards from Modern sets (8th ed. onward). Considering this is VINTAGE Masters, it would make more sense to me that they include any card that has been printed throughout Magic history (with a larger concentration of pre-modern cards). In my opinion, this would make the limited format a lot more fun, with powerful creature cards included that could compliment the powerful spells. By including cards that are also played in modern, such as Dark Confidant, they might be able to attract Modern players (which there are MANY) to a limited environment that might only otherwise attract eternal players. They may not need further attracting considering that POWER is involved, but it couldn't hurt. This would also provide the benefit of getting more of these cards into the system and allow for continued accessibility and growth for Modern.
Well written article Mike.
I have to agree with you, that WOTC has to be very careful with how rare they make the P9.
Nostalgia and prestige are important, but not as important as the seeing Vintage excel.
It is a precarious balance to say the least.
Just reading about Vintage on modo makes me very excited!
What you describe is price fixing, not hoarding. Price fixing is rife on mtgo but only because people are happy to pay jacked prices rather than hold out for price drops or to spend time searching for bargains.
Haven't played in Tribal all though I would love to play in it every week If I can and Miha is one of those guys that you enjoy playing with. A gentleman in the game I remember when he concede after learning that he is using a human tribe instead of soldier in a game I was playing him with.(as far as I remember) So who the heck are these guys that suddenly bullied Him..
Mr. Kuma in the beginning I thought Miha died or something that is why i kept reading.. (Scary)
I miss playing in PRE. My internet sucks these days and i have to disconnect to be able to join in gatherling after every game so I can't play with such hassle anymore. Plus my family is with me now and I am busy taking care of my baby daughter everytime I have the time so I just wish I could play.
Wish you all the best Miha whatever your decision about MTGO will be.
To all bullies out there try and bully me anytime I always am ready with my snipping stool to take pics of those hateful things you are gonna say.
In Theros, of course. I didn't think I needed to specify because we're getting at least a pure Human every set now (there was Imposing Sovereign in my previous evaluation article, and Seller of Songbirds before that). In fact, half a dozen? No, they're many, MANY more. There's 35 online, and we miss a lot of stuff from Portal Three Kingdom. A few of them are very well-known cards like Ali from Cairo, Peacekeeper and Merieke Ri Berit.
Although Pete is not really knowledgeable on the fine points of the format anymore, he is not completely wrong. Our decks are extremely expensive, just like they have always been. Certainly Legacy and Modern decks are creeping in our direction, but at the end of the day some people are simply priced out of the format. He is 100% correct about prize payouts as well. Classic has by far the lowest EV of any format, and for large amounts of time even our 2-mans have negative EV (putting 2 bucks in to win a pack of magic 20XX is often a losing transaction). If you tell someone they can spend $1,000 (or even $400) on a deck to play for M14 packs or $5 to play for the exact same prizes (via Pauper), only crazy people like us would choose the $1000 option. This needs to be fixed, and it can be fixed without altering pack payouts. Let's be honest, when you have a massive classic collection playing for std-legal packs is not exactly exciting. That's why RL eternal tournaments generally pay out in either power or dual lands...something that eternal players can actually USE. Paying out in packs + rare promos (playable cards limited to 64 or 72) would get me in the queue much more often than giving me more packs that I am just going to sell to a bot anyway. And that would cost WotC basically nothing in lost revenue (as paying out more packs would).
WotC also needs to implement a decent trading/auction house system (like MMOs have had for over a decade) to increase card availability and take market power away from the bots. A good chunk of the cost barrier to classic comes from the cards being in short supply, made even shorter by hoarders. Just look at the Promo FoW, they released a huge number of them and the price is basically where it was before, without really affecting the number of people playing Legacy/Classic. All that extra stock is sitting in the inventories of a hundred different bots, not doing anyone any good.
I think you dismiss the power of Bestow. Wait and see, it will have an effect, even in Tribal Wars Legacy where everyone loves the 1 mana removal spells, feisty mono red decks, and combo critters.
I found out why Darkslick Shores have gone up recently. It seems that U/B Merfolk is putting up strong results in the last week. Be sure to look out for it! (Can we please call the deck "Dimirfolk"?)
"Arena Athlete is the only Human that's not also something else. " Lovisa Coldeyes was oracled to Human only in the Gatecrash rules update. Arena Athlete is the second.
It's not what I consider unfun. Wizards has described mana denial and pure counterspell decks as unfun, and things that most Magic players didn't like playing against. Non-interactive combo is also on that list.
What I do know is that Classic events fire far less frequently than anything else with a Daily, and the events that do fire are firing with close to minimum players. I don't really know why. I do know some of your major archetypes are what Wizards considers unfun. I do know your decks are expensive. I know Classic is pretty tricky at times - I suspect a lot of new players are going to be blindsided by Key/Vault or Leyline/Helm, but every format has surprises. I have also played Classic, and I haven't noticed that the players are obnoxious or annoying, so I doubt that's a problem. That's what I know - the opinion is that the problems I identified are a cause of low player turnout. I could be wrong - but something is keeping players from getting into Classic. 50-100 players worldwide is not a lot. Standard Dailies often fire with twice that number of players.
Whatever the problem is, we need to do something to fix it. Relying on Wizards may not be the best idea. The formats that survive tend to help themselves. (Of course, with YSO and several other article series, both here and on Academy, and the Invitational series, I'm not sure what else to do. Maybe some deck tech and introduction to the format videos?)
And yet despite your quite correct statements about the number of Classic-only cards that are pricy, it still strikes many players, who even bother to look into to what wins, as a too expensive format. That Legacy is also expensive and maybe even more expensive depending on deck choices doesn't help the case that Eternal formats are out of the reach of many players.
It isn't nice that this idea gets blown up in the repetition but it isn't fair to say that Classic is cheap and accessible. It just isn't. What other Classic players have pointed out and I agree with is that you buy once and stay if you like the format and that higher price for the cards you never intend to sell again is worth it assuming you have the means. If you don't? *shrugs*, then perhaps the format isn't for you.
I recently sold off many of my duals (They priced upwards of $30 each on some and I am not currently very active so why not?) but as I was doing that I was thinking about buying back into a Shops deck. But looking at what many of the key cards in the archetype (whether you go tanglewire or aggro) cost these days I balked. It isn't that I couldn't have done it but that would have wiped out my reserve of tickets completely.
So Pete's point may be muddled in terms of some of the facts but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The gist is still relevant. If you want to play classic in any kind of competitive fashion you need $$$. (More so than other formats.) I am not saying that isn't a good thing. (And here the argument spins around to "what about the high price of Standard??" with some justification. However Standard is much more viable price-wise if you don't need every top tier card/deck. In fact it has become more so as there are more cards that are competitive in that format, and decks that can balance each other out.)
I think, it becomes less good when there are choke points due to availability piled on top of the very high prices. I am probably the last person to worry about this since I will likely never play a Classic DE, but as someone who has considered the angles I can say even with a decent 20k+ card collection online I don't feel that Classic is a good format fit for me price wise.
How is classic significantly more expensive than legacy?
Of all the Classic only cards, only 3 - Mana Drain, Workshop, and Vampiric Tutor, make it onto your cards over $25 list. Tutor is a singleton, so that doesn't even count. Of the cards you listed in your comment, 13 are restricted.
Almost every Oath deck runs less than 4 Show and Tells, with 2 being about the average, unlike Legacy, where 4 is the norm. I guess I can afford that $50 playset of Oath with the $170 I'm saving from not needing 4 Show and Tell.
LED's are also very rare in classic, and most consider them suboptimal in the deck they fit in best, Dredge.
Having a large Classic collection will normally allow you to play modern. It's not like Bob, Tarmo, Scavenging Ooze, and others aren't useful in Classic. There are certainly some cards that are Classic only, but it's not a large amount of money cards, as you seem to be saying.
I understand that Classic is an expensive format, but it doesn't help when self proclaimed fans of the format use their public platform to spread false, or poorly researched information.
Dredge, the last time I checked, can be made for less than $200, Affinity can be made for less than $750. The big blue control decks are pretty expensive, but they aren't even that strong in this format, and it's not like Standard and Modern don't have expensive decks. Fish decks can be made somewhat cheaply, and hatebears even more so, especially since Tarmogoyf has started to fade from use in Classic.
Pete, I am not trying to dish any "ad hominem" attacks here, but as you even state the classic piece is part of your opinion section - so it is not just you reporting the facts it is your opinion of the format from your facts right?
I agree with most of what you said and thank you for supporting classic in general. From reading your opinion on the state classic, I see your conclusions as classic is disappearing and that is due to a "bad"/not fun ("unfun archetypes") format (I guess due to oath and workshops), lack of deck variety able to win in the format, high cost to get into the format and lack of differentiated prize support for classic. In the past this might be correct, but I think many classic regulars might disagree with the first two points with recent classic events, I do. I think classic is very fun and has more diversity than most if not all other formats (just look at what PlanetWalls has been able to do).
The thing is that they can have different payouts for classic (or any other format) they are just not willing.
Yeah they can't have events with the same minimum players and same entry have different payouts, but they could change the variables.
The thing I am worried about is vintage. Because although vintage will attract new players to mtgo... They won't be that excited about the DE payouts.
Wizards could simply make the entry cost 10 tickets and increase prizes accordingly. I think the people who are willing to get thousand+ dollar decks are willing to put in a little bit more in entry (and I don't expect events to fire every three hours) . They could also offer promo cards and yes give out VM packs instead current standard.
What I really want to see them do is offer a vintage (and maybe legacy) equivalent to the MOCS. A big tourney you need to qualify for. Vintage will need something like that for the players to look forward to. Classic could have too....
I just hope that wizards does some things soon to get people excited/prepared for vintage. That means that they need to start offering some Med events to get the late adopters their duals. (Because I don't think they should waste ten rare slots in VM on them again.
Classic players, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just reporting.
I understand that you are unhappy. Don't take it out on me. I have joined your events to get them to fire, I contributed money rares to qualifier prize pools, I include Classic in Cutting Edge Tech when I find something new and interesting, and I play your format. I'm unhappy, too. So why the ad hominem attacks? I did nothing to harm our format.
As for what the format is like - I agree that creature decks exist. I can tell plenty of stories of odd lot decks winning, but the plural of anecdote is not data. Yes, there are creature decks (although hate bears is pretty good at preventing opponents from playing their spells) and an occasional legacy deck does money. However, if you play a Classic DE, you are very likely to face a Shops deck with Chalice and Tangle Wire and Sphere and so forth. You are also very likely to face Oath - how many copies are there in the current qualifier? And you will face combo. You might face Elves or goblins or Treefolk (I did.) However, the pillars of the Classic metagame are Shops and Oath and a bunch of multicolor decks running Time Vault / Key and big Jace. Those are the decks that anyone entering a Classic Daily is likely to play against. There will be others - in the current qualifier you see Pox, Elves, etc. Pox is 1/38th of the qualifier meta.
Oath and Mana Denial and Hate Bears and combo are certainly not the entirety of the Classic format. I should know - I have been including Classic decklists in the Cutting Edge Tech section for years. However, they are a very significant percentage of the format, and a new player can hardly avoid them.
As for cost - get real. This is an expensive format. And as for the cards which are only playable in Classic, and played at least occasionally: Bazaar of Baghdad, Channel, Demonic Tutor, Fastbond, Goblin Recruiter, Gush, Library of Alexandria, Mana Crypt, Mana Drain, Mana Vault, Memory Jar, Mental Misstep, Mishra's Workshop, Mystical Tutor, Necropotence, Oath of Druids, Skullclamp, Sol Ring, Strip Mine, Time Vault, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Vampiric Tutor and Yawgmoth's Will. The list could also include Survival of the Fittest and Hermit Druid, but I have not seen them for a while.
As for Wizards dumping on Classic - they have, at times. Paying out in low-value core set packs when everything else was paying out in the new set was just plain bad. But it is not like Wizards just messes up with Classic. Pauper suffered close to a year before Wizards banned Temporal Fissure. Plenty of other formats have had their problems. Some powered through the bad times. Some died. However, I don't think Wizards can or will let Classic / Vintage die. As evidence, I'd point to the Winter Classic events a year or so ago.
As for a Classic MOCS - I think there would be card availability issues. If you had 400 players suddenly needing to get Classic decks, would the cards even be available? Could the market even provide 400 Mishra's Workshops (that's a playset for 100 players)? What would the cost be? Wizards won't schedule an critical event if they know that a bazillion players with complain endlessly over not being able to get the cards / afford the decks.
And as for giving Classic a better payout than other formats - I discussed in that article why that will never happen. Wizards makes all tournament payouts uniform, period. For all the reasons in the article. Wizards can't even scale prize payout to number of players, much less value of decks being played. If they started, where do they stop? If I'm playing Cinnamon Toast Crunch with 4 LEDs and 4 FoW, etc, should I win more than the Shops player with the same record in the same Daily? Can I up the prize payout cramming four FoW in the sideboard of my dredge deck? Nope - the best we can expect is to avoid the core set payout debacle, and maybe get another round of Winter Classic events (although they will probably be Winter Vintage next time around.)
As for a conclusion - I don't have one. I don't know what to think about Classic, at the moment. I'm not playing much Classic now, but I don't have time to play anything much. (I managed to play at best half a dozen online events in all of October.) Classic is in trouble right now, but Wizards did keep the one time slot that had fired reasonably consistently. Wizards could have cut it completely, like Prismatic and K-Scope, but they didn't. It looks like Wizards will let Classic limp along until Vintage arrives. After that - who knows? I certainly don't.
And maybe I don't want to reach a conclusion. I have seen a lot of formats fail over the last 15 years. I know the signs. But Classic is different - it is the one place to play all the above cards. Wizards has never killed the last place to play any cards (other than Ante, dexterity and Shaharazad.)
So no conclusion. We will have to see how this plays out.
Endless, we can still quibble over the effect of Knutson buying all available online duals at a time Wizards was trying to get more people playing Classic and Legacy, but - well, if anyone is interested they can read what I actually wrote. And even if I was completely wrong, how is that relevant? I have been writing on Magic since 1999, and playing with power since 2001, back when we called it Type I. I have made plenty of mistakes in articles over that period. Is any of that relevant to what I said in my article? Or are you just making ad hominem attacks because you don't like what I said about Classic?
I expect that would be an auto-no since the way they spoke vm, they are modeling it on mm which was a limited release. I don't expect vm to be widespread or in the store long. (Yes that is a lame reason but it is how WOTC seems to operate.)
Great article Danger. You make some excellent points on the potential inclusion (or rather, the lack of inclusion) of cards that were printed in the Master's ed. sets. Thought it made great sense with respect to how Wizards might try and maximize future revenue.
One issue that I'm not so sure on is the lack of inclusion of cards from Modern sets (8th ed. onward). Considering this is VINTAGE Masters, it would make more sense to me that they include any card that has been printed throughout Magic history (with a larger concentration of pre-modern cards). In my opinion, this would make the limited format a lot more fun, with powerful creature cards included that could compliment the powerful spells. By including cards that are also played in modern, such as Dark Confidant, they might be able to attract Modern players (which there are MANY) to a limited environment that might only otherwise attract eternal players. They may not need further attracting considering that POWER is involved, but it couldn't hurt. This would also provide the benefit of getting more of these cards into the system and allow for continued accessibility and growth for Modern.
Well written article Mike.
I have to agree with you, that WOTC has to be very careful with how rare they make the P9.
Nostalgia and prestige are important, but not as important as the seeing Vintage excel.
It is a precarious balance to say the least.
Just reading about Vintage on modo makes me very excited!
What you describe is price fixing, not hoarding. Price fixing is rife on mtgo but only because people are happy to pay jacked prices rather than hold out for price drops or to spend time searching for bargains.
Haven't played in Tribal all though I would love to play in it every week If I can and Miha is one of those guys that you enjoy playing with. A gentleman in the game I remember when he concede after learning that he is using a human tribe instead of soldier in a game I was playing him with.(as far as I remember) So who the heck are these guys that suddenly bullied Him..
Mr. Kuma in the beginning I thought Miha died or something that is why i kept reading.. (Scary)
I miss playing in PRE. My internet sucks these days and i have to disconnect to be able to join in gatherling after every game so I can't play with such hassle anymore. Plus my family is with me now and I am busy taking care of my baby daughter everytime I have the time so I just wish I could play.
Wish you all the best Miha whatever your decision about MTGO will be.
To all bullies out there try and bully me anytime I always am ready with my snipping stool to take pics of those hateful things you are gonna say.
In Theros, of course. I didn't think I needed to specify because we're getting at least a pure Human every set now (there was Imposing Sovereign in my previous evaluation article, and Seller of Songbirds before that). In fact, half a dozen? No, they're many, MANY more. There's 35 online, and we miss a lot of stuff from Portal Three Kingdom. A few of them are very well-known cards like Ali from Cairo, Peacekeeper and Merieke Ri Berit.
To be fair on the Promo FoW's, Legacy is firing events a lot more consistently than it was last year before the FoW's were released.
Although Pete is not really knowledgeable on the fine points of the format anymore, he is not completely wrong. Our decks are extremely expensive, just like they have always been. Certainly Legacy and Modern decks are creeping in our direction, but at the end of the day some people are simply priced out of the format. He is 100% correct about prize payouts as well. Classic has by far the lowest EV of any format, and for large amounts of time even our 2-mans have negative EV (putting 2 bucks in to win a pack of magic 20XX is often a losing transaction). If you tell someone they can spend $1,000 (or even $400) on a deck to play for M14 packs or $5 to play for the exact same prizes (via Pauper), only crazy people like us would choose the $1000 option. This needs to be fixed, and it can be fixed without altering pack payouts. Let's be honest, when you have a massive classic collection playing for std-legal packs is not exactly exciting. That's why RL eternal tournaments generally pay out in either power or dual lands...something that eternal players can actually USE. Paying out in packs + rare promos (playable cards limited to 64 or 72) would get me in the queue much more often than giving me more packs that I am just going to sell to a bot anyway. And that would cost WotC basically nothing in lost revenue (as paying out more packs would).
WotC also needs to implement a decent trading/auction house system (like MMOs have had for over a decade) to increase card availability and take market power away from the bots. A good chunk of the cost barrier to classic comes from the cards being in short supply, made even shorter by hoarders. Just look at the Promo FoW, they released a huge number of them and the price is basically where it was before, without really affecting the number of people playing Legacy/Classic. All that extra stock is sitting in the inventories of a hundred different bots, not doing anyone any good.
I think you dismiss the power of Bestow. Wait and see, it will have an effect, even in Tribal Wars Legacy where everyone loves the 1 mana removal spells, feisty mono red decks, and combo critters.
I found out why Darkslick Shores have gone up recently. It seems that U/B Merfolk is putting up strong results in the last week. Be sure to look out for it! (Can we please call the deck "Dimirfolk"?)
Nope, the only human _In Theros_ is what was meant. There are half a dozen human and nothing else humans elsewhere.
Great article as always one minor nitpick.
"Arena Athlete is the only Human that's not also something else. " Lovisa Coldeyes was oracled to Human only in the Gatecrash rules update. Arena Athlete is the second.
It's not what I consider unfun. Wizards has described mana denial and pure counterspell decks as unfun, and things that most Magic players didn't like playing against. Non-interactive combo is also on that list.
What I do know is that Classic events fire far less frequently than anything else with a Daily, and the events that do fire are firing with close to minimum players. I don't really know why. I do know some of your major archetypes are what Wizards considers unfun. I do know your decks are expensive. I know Classic is pretty tricky at times - I suspect a lot of new players are going to be blindsided by Key/Vault or Leyline/Helm, but every format has surprises. I have also played Classic, and I haven't noticed that the players are obnoxious or annoying, so I doubt that's a problem. That's what I know - the opinion is that the problems I identified are a cause of low player turnout. I could be wrong - but something is keeping players from getting into Classic. 50-100 players worldwide is not a lot. Standard Dailies often fire with twice that number of players.
Whatever the problem is, we need to do something to fix it. Relying on Wizards may not be the best idea. The formats that survive tend to help themselves. (Of course, with YSO and several other article series, both here and on Academy, and the Invitational series, I'm not sure what else to do. Maybe some deck tech and introduction to the format videos?)
And yet despite your quite correct statements about the number of Classic-only cards that are pricy, it still strikes many players, who even bother to look into to what wins, as a too expensive format. That Legacy is also expensive and maybe even more expensive depending on deck choices doesn't help the case that Eternal formats are out of the reach of many players.
It isn't nice that this idea gets blown up in the repetition but it isn't fair to say that Classic is cheap and accessible. It just isn't. What other Classic players have pointed out and I agree with is that you buy once and stay if you like the format and that higher price for the cards you never intend to sell again is worth it assuming you have the means. If you don't? *shrugs*, then perhaps the format isn't for you.
I recently sold off many of my duals (They priced upwards of $30 each on some and I am not currently very active so why not?) but as I was doing that I was thinking about buying back into a Shops deck. But looking at what many of the key cards in the archetype (whether you go tanglewire or aggro) cost these days I balked. It isn't that I couldn't have done it but that would have wiped out my reserve of tickets completely.
So Pete's point may be muddled in terms of some of the facts but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The gist is still relevant. If you want to play classic in any kind of competitive fashion you need $$$. (More so than other formats.) I am not saying that isn't a good thing. (And here the argument spins around to "what about the high price of Standard??" with some justification. However Standard is much more viable price-wise if you don't need every top tier card/deck. In fact it has become more so as there are more cards that are competitive in that format, and decks that can balance each other out.)
I think, it becomes less good when there are choke points due to availability piled on top of the very high prices. I am probably the last person to worry about this since I will likely never play a Classic DE, but as someone who has considered the angles I can say even with a decent 20k+ card collection online I don't feel that Classic is a good format fit for me price wise.
How is classic significantly more expensive than legacy?
Of all the Classic only cards, only 3 - Mana Drain, Workshop, and Vampiric Tutor, make it onto your cards over $25 list. Tutor is a singleton, so that doesn't even count. Of the cards you listed in your comment, 13 are restricted.
Almost every Oath deck runs less than 4 Show and Tells, with 2 being about the average, unlike Legacy, where 4 is the norm. I guess I can afford that $50 playset of Oath with the $170 I'm saving from not needing 4 Show and Tell.
LED's are also very rare in classic, and most consider them suboptimal in the deck they fit in best, Dredge.
Having a large Classic collection will normally allow you to play modern. It's not like Bob, Tarmo, Scavenging Ooze, and others aren't useful in Classic. There are certainly some cards that are Classic only, but it's not a large amount of money cards, as you seem to be saying.
I understand that Classic is an expensive format, but it doesn't help when self proclaimed fans of the format use their public platform to spread false, or poorly researched information.
Dredge, the last time I checked, can be made for less than $200, Affinity can be made for less than $750. The big blue control decks are pretty expensive, but they aren't even that strong in this format, and it's not like Standard and Modern don't have expensive decks. Fish decks can be made somewhat cheaply, and hatebears even more so, especially since Tarmogoyf has started to fade from use in Classic.
I believe that would not be the definition they are looking for. It certainly wouldn't be mine.
I like that one as well.
Would one consider Masters Editions MOCS to be classic? They were limited, but with a Classic Card pool.
Pete, I am not trying to dish any "ad hominem" attacks here, but as you even state the classic piece is part of your opinion section - so it is not just you reporting the facts it is your opinion of the format from your facts right?
I agree with most of what you said and thank you for supporting classic in general. From reading your opinion on the state classic, I see your conclusions as classic is disappearing and that is due to a "bad"/not fun ("unfun archetypes") format (I guess due to oath and workshops), lack of deck variety able to win in the format, high cost to get into the format and lack of differentiated prize support for classic. In the past this might be correct, but I think many classic regulars might disagree with the first two points with recent classic events, I do. I think classic is very fun and has more diversity than most if not all other formats (just look at what PlanetWalls has been able to do).
The thing is that they can have different payouts for classic (or any other format) they are just not willing.
Yeah they can't have events with the same minimum players and same entry have different payouts, but they could change the variables.
The thing I am worried about is vintage. Because although vintage will attract new players to mtgo... They won't be that excited about the DE payouts.
Wizards could simply make the entry cost 10 tickets and increase prizes accordingly. I think the people who are willing to get thousand+ dollar decks are willing to put in a little bit more in entry (and I don't expect events to fire every three hours) . They could also offer promo cards and yes give out VM packs instead current standard.
What I really want to see them do is offer a vintage (and maybe legacy) equivalent to the MOCS. A big tourney you need to qualify for. Vintage will need something like that for the players to look forward to. Classic could have too....
I just hope that wizards does some things soon to get people excited/prepared for vintage. That means that they need to start offering some Med events to get the late adopters their duals. (Because I don't think they should waste ten rare slots in VM on them again.
Classic players, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just reporting.
I understand that you are unhappy. Don't take it out on me. I have joined your events to get them to fire, I contributed money rares to qualifier prize pools, I include Classic in Cutting Edge Tech when I find something new and interesting, and I play your format. I'm unhappy, too. So why the ad hominem attacks? I did nothing to harm our format.
As for what the format is like - I agree that creature decks exist. I can tell plenty of stories of odd lot decks winning, but the plural of anecdote is not data. Yes, there are creature decks (although hate bears is pretty good at preventing opponents from playing their spells) and an occasional legacy deck does money. However, if you play a Classic DE, you are very likely to face a Shops deck with Chalice and Tangle Wire and Sphere and so forth. You are also very likely to face Oath - how many copies are there in the current qualifier? And you will face combo. You might face Elves or goblins or Treefolk (I did.) However, the pillars of the Classic metagame are Shops and Oath and a bunch of multicolor decks running Time Vault / Key and big Jace. Those are the decks that anyone entering a Classic Daily is likely to play against. There will be others - in the current qualifier you see Pox, Elves, etc. Pox is 1/38th of the qualifier meta.
Oath and Mana Denial and Hate Bears and combo are certainly not the entirety of the Classic format. I should know - I have been including Classic decklists in the Cutting Edge Tech section for years. However, they are a very significant percentage of the format, and a new player can hardly avoid them.
As for cost - get real. This is an expensive format. And as for the cards which are only playable in Classic, and played at least occasionally: Bazaar of Baghdad, Channel, Demonic Tutor, Fastbond, Goblin Recruiter, Gush, Library of Alexandria, Mana Crypt, Mana Drain, Mana Vault, Memory Jar, Mental Misstep, Mishra's Workshop, Mystical Tutor, Necropotence, Oath of Druids, Skullclamp, Sol Ring, Strip Mine, Time Vault, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Vampiric Tutor and Yawgmoth's Will. The list could also include Survival of the Fittest and Hermit Druid, but I have not seen them for a while.
As for Wizards dumping on Classic - they have, at times. Paying out in low-value core set packs when everything else was paying out in the new set was just plain bad. But it is not like Wizards just messes up with Classic. Pauper suffered close to a year before Wizards banned Temporal Fissure. Plenty of other formats have had their problems. Some powered through the bad times. Some died. However, I don't think Wizards can or will let Classic / Vintage die. As evidence, I'd point to the Winter Classic events a year or so ago.
As for a Classic MOCS - I think there would be card availability issues. If you had 400 players suddenly needing to get Classic decks, would the cards even be available? Could the market even provide 400 Mishra's Workshops (that's a playset for 100 players)? What would the cost be? Wizards won't schedule an critical event if they know that a bazillion players with complain endlessly over not being able to get the cards / afford the decks.
And as for giving Classic a better payout than other formats - I discussed in that article why that will never happen. Wizards makes all tournament payouts uniform, period. For all the reasons in the article. Wizards can't even scale prize payout to number of players, much less value of decks being played. If they started, where do they stop? If I'm playing Cinnamon Toast Crunch with 4 LEDs and 4 FoW, etc, should I win more than the Shops player with the same record in the same Daily? Can I up the prize payout cramming four FoW in the sideboard of my dredge deck? Nope - the best we can expect is to avoid the core set payout debacle, and maybe get another round of Winter Classic events (although they will probably be Winter Vintage next time around.)
As for a conclusion - I don't have one. I don't know what to think about Classic, at the moment. I'm not playing much Classic now, but I don't have time to play anything much. (I managed to play at best half a dozen online events in all of October.) Classic is in trouble right now, but Wizards did keep the one time slot that had fired reasonably consistently. Wizards could have cut it completely, like Prismatic and K-Scope, but they didn't. It looks like Wizards will let Classic limp along until Vintage arrives. After that - who knows? I certainly don't.
And maybe I don't want to reach a conclusion. I have seen a lot of formats fail over the last 15 years. I know the signs. But Classic is different - it is the one place to play all the above cards. Wizards has never killed the last place to play any cards (other than Ante, dexterity and Shaharazad.)
So no conclusion. We will have to see how this plays out.
Endless, we can still quibble over the effect of Knutson buying all available online duals at a time Wizards was trying to get more people playing Classic and Legacy, but - well, if anyone is interested they can read what I actually wrote. And even if I was completely wrong, how is that relevant? I have been writing on Magic since 1999, and playing with power since 2001, back when we called it Type I. I have made plenty of mistakes in articles over that period. Is any of that relevant to what I said in my article? Or are you just making ad hominem attacks because you don't like what I said about Classic?
Modern Masters* :) but yeah.
Modern Masters* :) but yeah.
That sounds great Paul - nothing bad could come of that
*cough* ENTIRE MASQUES BLOCK *COUGH*
-Zach
I expect that would be an auto-no since the way they spoke vm, they are modeling it on mm which was a limited release. I don't expect vm to be widespread or in the store long. (Yes that is a lame reason but it is how WOTC seems to operate.)
there's already varied prize payout for different formats. Why not just pay vintage in VMA packs for eternity?