Depending on who you talk to, their opinion on legacy varies. For some it's the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. For others it's "the degenerate/expensive format that they don't want to touch."

While there are other play groups that play legacy exclusively.

The purpose of this post / discussion it to see where people want to see legacy go.

Would you:

• Want to see a separate banned list for legacy?
• Different deck building restrictions such as only one copy of all or certain cards in the deck?
• Make it all go away so you never have to worry about it again?
• Something else not covered?

Keep in mind that - It is highly unlikely we will ever see FFG support legacy by giving away "The Coolest Prize in Gaming*" for a legacy event.

So in the absence of a character card tournament, what would make people want to play the legacy format. What would make you want to play the legacy format?

Please remember, there are no right or wrong opinions, and whether you're the newest player, who isn't going to have cards that are "legacy only" for another two years, or a vet who's been playing since day 1 - I really want to hear from everyone, even if it's a "Person X said everything I was thinking on the topic."

Also note - I am posting this as "Brian Mitchell - UFS player", and not in any other role or capacity.

* "The coolest prize in Gaming" is a tournament where the tournament grand prize is a tournament legal card that is a likeness of the winner, and the winner has input into the design of the card.

Hmm... I would say instead of the "Coolest Prize in Gaming" getting the "Third Coolest Prize in Gaming" would also be nice, like creating a promo attack, action, or foundation.

A seperate banned list would also be nice. Legacy has a lot of strange interactions that are just crazy. And Yoga Mastery. I won't play legacy because of that card.

that's about it on my opinion...

i personally think that the winner of the leagacy worlds event should recieve a character card. Legacy events should be available alot more too in my mind it would just be so fun

GeneralReaction89 said:

Great feedback, but for the purposes of this conversation, we're going to go with what Steve has said - FFG does not plan on supporting Legacy events with a character card.

I want to see what happens when we force everyone to think outside the box. Q's suggestion on input into designing a different promo, is a really neat option. They don't get a card, but they still get to design one.

(Or what keeps people from playing Legacy, or what would drive them to want to play legacy more)

Antigoth said:

-Yes, a separate banned list is a necessity, and I believe Hata already confirmed he'd look into one
-UFS has Highlander. Although I love the concept, I don't think it should be THE way to play UFS

Besides the fact that I have to FIND my legacy cards, I just don't like it because a lot of the earlier cards were relatively unbalanced, and I like the concept of the game moving forward.

As an incentive to play? Hmm...well, besides coolest prize in gaming, perhaps more prize support than standard events?

There are 2 problems with legacy, and yet there is a solution that helps to address both of them.

Problem 1: New players don't have playsets of card x from earlier set y, they can't access them, and if they could it would probably come at a price. There is also the issue of time, even if a new player has the money and the ability to acquire card x (or a playset as is sometimes needed) he or she must devote an inordinate amount of time to the changed meta and research a large number of cards to stand a chance in a competitive environment.

Problem 2: Degenerate card interactions. We all know certain cards don't go well with others, we also know that there have been power creeps up and down across the life of UFS, as well as those unbelievably good character cards which make selecting a player card a walk in the park.

The solution, and Antigoth mentioned it, would be to play Legacy with a set of restrictions. Whether it be to make it Highlander (1 of said cards), or a restricted character list, etc. this would adress problem 1 (find one copy of a card instead of 4, and guess what dude who's been playing forever has 4 and 3 to lend), and it addresses problem 2 (card a + b = death, well, the chances of a + b are serverely reduced when there is only one of each card in a deck).

The other solution, which would be interesting, is Legacy with other restrictions. i.e. here are 300 cards from various sets/etc. (x for each symbol or something) and they are legal for the legacy tourney y. Have the group of players wanting to play with their Legacy cards made aware of the limtied card pool 1 month before the tourney, and simply see who can determine the most powerful combination of cards within the fictional block.

In either case, I think full-out legacy without restrictions (at the very least a separate ban list) is not nearly as fun as people say it is. Sure, the person using the turn 1 kill combo is having fun, but the person who spent ages researching and figuring out what half of the old cards do only to get smacked on turn 1 repeatedly sure isn't...

- dut

I think, realistically, FFG is going to have to start truly supporting legacy at one point or another. Even now, more than half the UFS cards that have been printed are nigh-worthless - I mean, yeah you can certainly use them for casual play, but most UFS play is at tournaments or in practice for them, and even when people do just get together to play there is a tendency to feel encouraged to stick to the (only) supported tournament format. At some point the stigma of paying money for "rentals" is going to catch up with them.

The problem, so far as I can tell, is that they just don't have the manpower. It seems like they can only barely handle what they have on their plate as it is, and they're going to add another format to try and keep on top of, watch out for in design, plan big events for, etc.? Seems unlikely, unfortunately.

In any event, if they ever do get enough people in the mix, I'd like to see:

- A separate banned list, of course. I think it might be best if it were aimed more towards NPE bans and less against "way too powerful" bans. i.e. Addes Syndicate and Absurd Strength are way too powerful, Yoga Mastery and Higher Calibur are NPE. Would take some effort to work out the gray-area nature of the concept and come up with some guidelines, but I think the ideal legacy format would be one where you see some crazy-powerful stuff without it necessarily becoming the no-fun format. Really difficult, maybe impossible balance to achieve though.

- A restricted list might be good, or maybe a "group restricted" list to help alleviate the issue of having variations on some of the same powerful effects printed each year; for instance "between Start Over, Infiltrating and Begin Anew you may only play X copies total."

- A make-a-promo prize as mentioned earlier. Maybe not something where the winner gets all the copies, but rather a card that ends up in the monthly prize support. Let them design an attack/action/etc. for their favorite character, perhaps - that would be sufficiently cool, most of us have a favorite character right? Or even a new character card version for their favorite character, seeing as though they're not going to be able to keep anywhere near every character in rotation from here on out.

- Something to encourage local legacy tourneys; unfortunately they can't just make reprints of notable legacy cards to hand out at legacy events, (due to the loss of the SC3 license) but maybe a monthly thing along the lines of Path of the Master (not necessarily resource-only tourneys but a monthly event of some sort) with a non-card prize like little posters of card art, or life counters, or something along those lines. Legacy-only promos are an option as well - they don't seem too fond of the idea of making cards that are never played in standard, but there should be some design space to make things specifically useful in a legacy meta that non-legacy players wouldn't really want anyway.

The last paragraph is what you're looking for...the rest is explanation, lol.

Austin has, and always will support Legacy play. While we have embraced and played exclusively with the newer blocks for all the standard events that most other groups do, we don't shy away from Legacy.

There are 3 main reasons why we play Legacy.

1) We've spent a ton of money on supporting this game. We've purchased booster boxes and starters from every single set (excluding Shadow) since Set 2. Needless to say, that's quite a few cards. We're not about to let them collect dust. Especially in regards to sets that came out at the end of a block, those cards saw far less play and we'd like to play them. What's the point of us having [insert character here]-Only cards, if we never got around to playing them when the block rotated? I've literally played my copy of Trade your Passion for Glory twice (the second time was the Legacy highlander event at Arlington this past weekend).

2) We are a casual and (for the most part, lol) friendly playgroup. We shy away from playing "******* decks". Are we aware of the ridiculous combos that can be had mixing the old with the new? Of course. But with that in mind, we mutually pledge to keep the douchebaggery to a limit. We don't locally ban any cards and we don't purposely build decks to counter each other. We make a new deck nearly every week to try and find new and fun ways to play (Exhaust the Opposition + Handsome Fighters Never Win + Chapter of Talgaido).

3) We have so many cards we mostly end up giving away or selling at a spank-your-mama low price extra copies of our Legacy cards to new players to get them up-to-speed.

Should FFG support Legacy? It would be nice. Is it expected? Not at all. As was mentioned before the game should stay progressive (so long as it's in the right direction). A company can't expect to bolster sales by supporting constructed tournaments with older cards, but that doen't mean it can't work both ways. Sealed Legacy events at a discounted price could still bring in money, while runner-up awards could include newer cards to encourage the purchase of said cards. I think the idea of a non-character card (or at least a card that doesn't immortalize the winner...because let's face it being pictured on the asset, Kings Games is right up there) is a good one. There's tons of ways for a person's favorite item to be included and still have universal appeal (a sad panda, or a lava shark, perhaps?). Also, I know it would have to be worked out with the appropriate license but perhaps the winner could help influence a new card to see the light of day, such as a Poison character card or Cassandra's Critical finish. Lastly, the best way to avoid jankiness in terms of Legacy gameplay is fun restrictions, but not to the extent of highlander. Such as making it Legacy-only or decks that must have your character pictured on every card. OK, it's getting late...I'll stop rambling for now.

Highlander Legacy Extended:

Deck construction shall follow the normal standard tournament rules, except for the following differences:
1.) If a card is not normally allowed in the Standard tournament format (read: not banned) they may include one copy of the card in their deck.
2.) In addition the following cards are banned: (insert misc list).

I like the idea of Legacy but something needs to be done to enable players to getting what they need of it for their deck. By limiting the old cards to one copy of a card per deck, and allowing the normal amount from the standard pool, we get an interesting mix... Still not the most balanced format, but much more new player friendly.

Winners of a Legacy big event gets input in designing something from a future set.

Normal Legacy local events will consist of older promos (like present), AND one shiney league kit card from present (or something).

I wasn't aware that FFg lost it's SC3 license.

Really, a reprint set would have to be in order, or else it's simply not fair.

Plus, and I seriously understand it wouldn't be as powerful or free-roaming as in the past-I really don't want to see Yoga Mastery again. Now that I'm back to my Aggro-ways, especially.

HolyDragonCloud said:

We never did get a decent Abyss =/

Antigoth said:

It may surprise you to hear me say this, but I trust that if FFG really wants to support Legacy, they'll come up with "The Second Coolest Prize in Gaming and that's Only Because the First is Kinda Sorta Already Ours." And if they can, they'll just legally jack an idea from this thread in order to do so.

Personally, even with my bad showings at National tournaments, the only reason I play Standard is because of the Coolest Prize in Gaming, if they moved that to Legacy, I'd play that instead, and Standard would be... kind of ignored by me.

There was a topic about reprinting cards recently... how about making that the prize support for Legacy? Not just promos, but possibly all cards. Maybe special edition of cards that have alternate art but the same effect (like, say, a Start Over card with SC4 art as opposed to SC3 - Granted that would be maybe the prize for a large scale Legacy tournament.)

Cetonis said:

They would never do that because if I win I would then design Sodom and we all know what would happen then.

Really what I think would be nice is either to design some type of card whether it be an attack, foundation, whatever. Or the ability to choose one card that is currently legacy within reason and make allow it to be played in the most recent metagame like maybe a league foil or something like that the winner gets kind of like a character card where the winner gets all of them

But what I think would be really cool is if you got to help design a promo version of the character you won with or another one that exists in the game for the current metagame. (I miss Yoshimitsu ) lol...

I mean if all else fails boxes of the newest sets wouldn't be all that bad either...

Also I think them stealing extended format from MTG wouldn't be that bad of an idea either because it makes it so your cards would retain value after worlds is over.

Homme Chapeau said:

If you do, you have to have them make an asset or foundation with an Sodom only enhance.

"I would like to use my Sodom E." .......win.

On a lighter note maybe win a character card thats only legacy legal? Or they let you have an "influence" on making a card in the next set. You can contribute to the flavor of art, favor text, and stats. Of course FFG would have the final say on making it balanced but still its-a nice no?

Something interesting to note...

I'm seeing a number of comments about Legacy being expensive to get into.

Currently, I know quite a number of players who are trying to get rid of legacy cards, and there is no market for it. So while these cards are "really expensive" I'm questioning how "Readily available" + "Really Expensive" are both true, especially when I know various folks and play groups that are just giving away their legacy cards to try and attract new players.

Also, when people are talking about the various hard to get, etc legacy cards - my shop has every set of UFS available, anything that's out of the standard rotation is only $2 per pack. The only set they don't have for sale is DS02.

A concern that I've heard from a number of places where UFS has died:

"Our shop won't bring in new boxes of UFS until the old boxes have sold. So we can't get new product, so the game has died."

These boxes that are sitting on store shelves are legacy product.

Part of me feels that we need legacy to be playable and worth while, so that the old product will still sell even if it's at a reduced rate.

There is seriously a metric-crap-ton of legacy cards floating out there, that no-one wants. And while we're saying "It's not fun."

I'm wondering if an extensive banned list would make legacy fun.

How extensive would the banned list have to be?

What cards do people feel are degenerate?

I don't seriously think that the only way to play legacy is highlander. We have some success with the 6x10 format (which really only works in legacy) Where you have to have 10 1 checks, 10 2 checks, etc, and your character counts as one of your 10 6 checks.

Now that format does put some specific restrictions, and having to run 33% of your deck as 1 or 2 checks certainly adds some randomness to the format.

But cards like Heel Stomp, I don't see that being a degenerate card in legacy, or something like Close to the Edge restricting it to 1 would be the same as banning the card.

I'm hearing stories of degenerate 1 turn kill combos in legacy - according to Scott Gains and his uber Ukyo of Doom - the closest that anyone has come to beating his "legacy challenge deck" was my AYB Loop Dhalsim, which only uses cards from the current rotation.

I question that in the grand scheme of things - yes the amount of cards in the meta is large and daunting to learn - but are the decks that much more overpowered then what's currently available in the meta?

In standard we've returned to a world where 2 turn kills are viable, and killing on the 3rd turn is normal. How is legacy all that different?

Again - please note I'm just tossing this all out on the plate as stuff to discuss, because it's stuff that I've been wondering.

While we're here...

What stuff in Legacy is banned, that should be unbanned? (Military Rank is one of my personal "this card should have never been banned")
What stuff in Legacy isn't banned, but should be?

*Reminder* - Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there is no right or wrong answer. So if you disagree with someone's selections, let it go, and lets not waste a lot of time arguing back and forth over what should and should not be. If your personal list omits a card someone else listed, that says that you don't feel the card should be banned. If everyone posts saying "Yoga Mastery" then that's a pretty good idea that the masses want Yoga Mastery Gone.

*Foot Note* People also have the right to change their opinion. Maybe 6 months from now there's a different banned list for legacy.

A year from now, folks have decided that banned list doesn't work, so things change.

For those that own the cards, it's not like you were suddenly going to get rid of everything right?

Antigoth said:

Not educated enough to even remotely say "This should be banned / This shouldn't be banned." However, anything that makes a particular aspect of the game too easy (Example : Military Rank at getting the right card at the right time ) should either go or be severely looked at.

Legacy will never go anywhere because FFG could care less about the thousands of cards that they didn't print years ago. None the less, I would absolutly LOVE to play Legacy. However I can understand some of my playgroups outright hatred of Legacy. The amount of ludacriousness that runs rampant in it, especially with a lot of today's jank would be godly.

Some things that should go:

Everything currently banned except Revitalized (which in all honesty with the banning of Military Rank should never have left in the first place) should stay just that, banned. No Addes, no Higher Caliber, no Ibuki... Nothing of the sort.

Yoga Mastery. Death and void have other means of enhance negation, and can you imagine a facedown Alex deck that ran Yoga Mastery? Chop for 20 damage anyone?

Start Over/Infiltrating/Begin Anew: I'm not saying all of them have to go, but one of them would have to. The ability for the Deadly Ground Ibuki to have up to 12 cards of board clearingness, two of which she can play on her first turn she's uncommited is ridiculous.

Absurd Strength: Too good then, too good now. Plus in Legacy there are other, more balanced damage pumps.

B-Rad said:

but but but momentum discard

I have to say, a lot of people in my playgroup hate legacy because they don't like "you will not escape" and "yoga mastery", but at our Monday legacy tournoments a lot of people play their standard decks and do very very well. So it's not like super legacy only combos will control a legacy meta.

As for FFG supporting legacy, it doesn't seem likely. James Hata told the playtesters that he doesn't worry about legacy when he designs cards, and when we bring legacy problems to his attention, he says: "If you have time to test for legacy, you should be spending more time on block 3."

As for support for legacy, I really hope FFG can spring for more than some trophies and someone's old SNES at legacy worlds this year, if they even bother with it.

So all that said, it would be nice to play more legacy and have better support, and a seperate ban list, it looks like something we'll have to see at the local levels for now.

"Yoga Mastery. Death and void have other means of enhance negation, and can you imagine a facedown Alex deck that ran Yoga Mastery? Chop for 20 damage anyone?"

Or you could just not play Enhances against said facedown Alex deck, not letting him shove facedown cards into his card pool. Such a difficult concept, playing AROUND stuff rather than whining and wanting it banned.

If anything gets banned from Legacy, it'd better NOT be Yoga Mastery. Seriously, every single bloody resource in the game has at least one solid and usable solution to it now in Legacy, and many resources have several.

Tagrineth said:

Couldn't he have meant that the Alex deck would be playing the Yoga Mastery on its own attacks using any of the many reusable enhances available in order to build up to a huge attack(s)? Do you really need to assume the worst about everyone and then insult them? Isn't it about time this community stops beating the crap out of anyone who doesn't agree with them?

Back to OP:

Legacy in general is fine and all, but I can't imagine anyone devoting the time to really policing the meta and making bans to correct it.

You Will Not Escape probably should have been banned from day 1 but it's a card a lot of people insisted they could play around regardless of the fact that tournament after tournament showed that it was insane and nearly a Time Walk (so to speak). At Worlds '06 I locked Jeremy Ray out of a staging area all together with a YWNE every turn for the first 4 turns combined with a Ring Veteran and an Unorthodox Style to recur Roundhouse Kicks. Similar crap happened all the time and was as brutal as it sounds. In a format like Legacy where 1 turn kills are something to contend with, losing your first (and perhaps only) turn to a YWNE might mean losing the only chance you have to play foundations before getting pumelled.

All the other cards that are banned should probably stay banned, if for no other reason than why take the risk of unbanning them just to have to do it again? It's a waste of time and there are enough cards out there for people to play that worrying about getting to play a couple more seems petty.

Highlander Legacy does seem interesting, but only sort of. I don't mind losing Close to the Edge (even though I love that card), but I do think that highlander decks feel less like decks and more like piles than other formats.

The other problem with Legacy is that tons and tons and tons of cards don't work as printed and so players would have to know endless pages of errata and clarifications. I doubt Hata would be excited about trying to figure out some of that crap. Even Dave backed off some cards before he left, and he designed them! He should at least have been able to explain how they worked.

My opinion is that Legacy is at least a headache with a lot of problems to work through and sort out. I get nostalgic for some of the cards sometimes and sort of think I'd enjoy playing in a Legacy event, but then I think about some of the decks and cringe and that feeling goes away.

I just want to say that I love legacy format, we have the legacy nationals coming up in the UK next month and I'm actually looking forward to those more than I am PotM tomorrow.

It would be great if we got more support from FFG for legacy events (a "legacy only" character card with no watermark would be amazing, but I know that's not going to happen) but even if we don't I'll play this format whenever it's available. Not highlander though, or any other restrictions. Frankly I don't think we need a separate banned list for legacy, not right now anyway. Even jank like Yoga Mastery isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, personally I just like to overload it (play so many Es that they run the risk of decking out if they stop all of them) but there are so many other solutions to it these days that I think the complaints are just from people who remember how bad it used to be.