Players express frustration over the cancellation of a major MTG event

A few weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast released a ban announcement that sparked a lot of discussion and controversy. Ultimately, the decision was made not to ban anything in any major format that was upsetting many players.

While it made sense not to preemptively ban anything in Modern given the upcoming Pro Tour, there were certainly arguments to do something elsewhere. The card that players most wanted to ban was Grief in Legacy. Not only has Grief been a dominant force in Reanimator strategies for some time, but the play patterns it encourages are pretty unfun for a lot of people.

The frustration of the player base was palpable after the announcement, with some players even declaring that they would withdraw from the format for the time being. As if this player boycott wasn’t bad enough, now even the tournament organizers seem to have had enough of grief.

Now that an upcoming Legacy tournament has been canceled, it’s hard to deny the fact that Legacy is struggling without the necessary bans.

The previous offer of $5,000 is cancelled

Earlier this week, Owl Central Games, a large store in Pennsylvania that hosts a number of special events, decided it was best to cancel the Legacy $5k scheduled for July 20. In the update they provided, they mentioned a few factors that led them to conclude that canceling the event was in their best interest.

First of all, they mentioned the current state of the format as a whole. After speaking with many Legacy fans, they felt that the event would most likely not live up to expectations. This applies to both the quality and attendance of the event. This is especially true when compared to previous events that were conducted in a similar manner and were clearly successful.

This sentiment stems from the fact that many Legacy players don’t seem to want to play Legacy at all right now. Hopefully that will change after the next ban announcement in August, but that will be a while. Given this wait, there has been some discussion about delaying this Legacy $5K or banning Grief from the entire store for the duration of the event. As tempting as these solutions seemed, none of them seemed to make sense given the existing tournaments in August and the potential confusion of a store ban.

The other area of ​​concern for the business was the number of alternative legacy events taking place in the region. With overall attendance likely to be lower, the business felt it would be difficult to compete and still attract a large crowd. Ultimately, it is sad to see such a large event cancelled, but it makes sense why this decision was made.

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Frustration among the players

Unsurprisingly, players outside of the Owl Central Games community have also voiced their displeasure at the fact that Grief is still legal. The consensus seems to be that not banning Grief was a bad idea. Since the announcement, more players have come forward to say they will not participate in any legacy events until things are hopefully resolved in August.

As upset as players are that Grief isn’t banned, they may be even more angry about the logic behind keeping Grief legal. Shortly after the ban was announced, members of the Play Design Team at Wizards explained why no bans were issued. As for Legacy, it was explained that the fact that there were no major tournaments coming up played a big role in their decision. The hope was that players would continue to experiment with MH3 and the metagame would adapt.

Instead, Dimir Reanimator is still widely used. The pressure from Psychic Frog has only improved the deck. Now players will probably have to wait until August for something to change. Players already felt disrespectful when they said there were “no big tournaments”. After all, there were still fairly big tournaments planned for July.

Now many players are using the cancellation of the Owl Central Games tournament to show how tasteless the above statement is. There are also many other important legacy events coming up. The players make it clear that these measures have consequences and have unfortunately contributed to a tournament being canceled.

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What do we do now?

While it’s too late to go back and make changes, there may still be time to improve things. The problem right now is that waiting until the end of August to ban Grief is far from ideal. That may have been the original plan, but after hearing player complaints, could there be room for an earlier ban announcement?

This may not be a foregone conclusion. There’s a strong argument that Nadu, Winged Wisdom should receive an emergency ban in Modern. Its dominance at Pro Tour MH3 was pretty absurd and the deck doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

With this in mind, some players are calling for an early ban on Nadu and Grief. Tournaments are being negatively impacted by this and will continue to be so until action is taken. Considering that both bans seem inevitable, this argument is quite understandable.

For now, we just have to wait and see what measures are taken between now and August. Hopefully this situation will serve as a lesson for the future.

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