This Week in Legacy: The Future of Legacy Data
Howdy folks! It's time yet again for another edition of This Week in Legacy! I'm your host, Joe Dyer, and this week we're going to be primarily discussing some changes to how MTGO Decklists are going to be presented to the community going forward and what this means for Legacy. In addition we've got some discussion about an event that is canceled due to some of the issues with the Legacy format at the moment.
Without further ado, let's dive right in!
MTGO Decklists Return... Sort Of
You may have noticed that MTGO decklists have been gone for several weeks now, due to some maintenance occurring on the end of Daybreak Games. Well, the MTGO Decklists page is returning on July 8th, but with a lot of... changes. You can find this full announcement here, but I'll paste the image below as well.
At the end of 2023, Daybreak Games implemented some changes to how the Decklist pages pulled its data, utilizing an API that allowed for us to not only get every 5-0 that came through in a League, but also all of the Challenge decklists and Prelim decklists in an event. To say that this greatly revolutionized how things like the Legacy Data Collection Project were able to operate is a huge understatement.
Prior to this change, the way that we were gathering Challenge event data was through a mixture of self reporting and players in the events watching replays of matches to determine what an opponent was on. This led to having to figure out a player's deck on pure speculation (is the player on Dimir Scam or Rescaminator if you only ever see Scam package + Daze?) and also leads to a lot of errors in reporting (mispelled names of players, possibly incorrect decks). The changes made to allow us to utilize full decklist data was a true godsend because it allowed for more granular functionality of data.
It seems though that this coupled with a few other issues (if you've been around the interwebs, you may have seen some rumblings of full league data, etc) led to this change being reverted back to us only getting Top 32 decks of scheduled events, but even more so we are going away from getting all 5-0s to getting a curated selection of 5-0s instead.
As someone who does a lot with data and especially data for the Legacy format, this is truly an incredibly disappointing change, one that I can't even fault Daybreak Games for. Reading between the lines it isn't hard to see that this was a change driven by Wizards of the Coast, and at a time where public sentiment of Wizards and their management of the Legacy format is already under intense scrutiny and heavily criticized. While Daybreak manages MTGO, it does seem that Wizards is still putting their fear of more open data into play.
I don't think this change, especially the curated 5-0s, helps formats. If anything, it hides issues within a format and makes things very difficult for those who are in the realm of collecting data. This means we have to go back to trying to get decklists via replays and self reporting again, a task that is incredibly tedious and monumental overall for everyone involved. This is a thing that the Data Project was already experiencing issues with prior to the changes made at the end of 2023, and that was only with two Challenge events a weekend. We now have five Challenges a week! This is likely impossible. I've set up some polling to determine if people are still interested in the project and its success on the Discord devoted to it, but if players can't help do replays for an event, we will be in the same place and gathering this data will be untenable.
At the very least we will get the past few missing weeks of Top 32s, but that feels pretty small in comparison to what we're losing. I truly hope that Wizards takes this feedback to heart, and if you have feedback about this to provide, provide it to them (and not Daybreak, because believe me, they know) and let them know what the player bases want, because I personally feel more open data allows players to stand on more equal footings in the long run, by giving players access to equal information that is accessible and open. I really would like to see Wizards find a compromise here. I don't mind for example, not having Prelim data (as concerns about tech/scouting in those events is a very valid concern and Prelims tend to be much smaller events so they don't move the needle as much data-wise), but having all the Challenge data and all League 5-0s would be perfect.
Owl Central Games 5K - Canceled!
Owl Central Games in PA was going to be having a Legacy 5K event scheduled for July 20th. However, due to a number of factors including things like the current state of Legacy, the local sentiment of the player base in the area, and low pre-reg numbers, the store has made the decision to cancel this event and host their normal typical FNM style Legacy monthly event.
You can read the full announcement around this here.
It's understandable that Owl Central Games did not come to this decision lightly at all. It brings to light a lot of the issues presented by the not banning of Grief in the most recent Banned and Restricted Announcement in addition to the other issues surrounding this ban window. The fact that a Legacy expert at Wizards provided expert analysis and was seemingly ignored, I can understand why this store does not want to host an event showcasing Legacy.
Based on the full announcement, there was seemingly some discussion of running the event with Grief banned, but the amount of time up until the event is quite short and would not give players ample time to really react to such a change, and could likely present some feelbads moments if players showed up playing the card not understanding it was indeed banned. As a 5K with a lot of money on the line, you don't want to introduce that amount of ambiguity.
I think the most reasonable outcome here is the event being canceled, but I hate to see it. It is pretty awful that large events like this have to consider this, and it's also awful that Wizards doesn't seem to see these events as large Legacy events, when they indeed are.
I can only hope that we may get some form of emergency banning, but it feels like we are stuck until August.
Around the Web
- StrassDaddy has a video on Zombie Maverick. Check it out here.
- JamesKisau has a Grixis Control league up that's 5-0/10-0! Check it out here.
- Bazaar of Boxes is calling Pest Control. Check it out here.
Wrapping Up
That's all the time we have this week folks! Thanks for continuing to support the column and join us next week as we continue our journey into Legacy!
As always you can reach me at all my associated links via my Link Tree! In addition I'm always around the MTGGoldfish Discord Server and the MTGLegacy Discord Server.
Until next time!
