Why create Pre-WAR Legacy?

Magic: the Gathering has undertaken a sharp change in direction since early 2019. These include changes to the game rules themselves (mulligan rules), emphasizing online play over paper play, reduction of event coverage, and a reduction in Legacy support. Most importantly, Wizards has changed their design philosophy to be more permissive of extremely overpowering cards, particularly low-cost permanents that invalidate entire strategies and effectively end the game. The result for Legacy has been a rate of upheaval reminiscent more of Standard than what had for years been the game’s most balanced yet stable format, and a shift from play defined by developing incremental advantage towards resolving singly-powerful permanents.

Many players long for better times, where the classic cards of yore were good enough to be played. This has resulted in the creation of many “closed” formats, shielded from the capriciousness of current set design: Old School, Pre-Modern, and recently Pre-Innistrad Legacy. This is the latest such format. If Pre-Innistrad Legacy is the format’s Golden Age, Pre-War of the Spark Legacy is the format’s Silver Age: incredibly powerful, with 25 years worth of cards, dozens of competitive deck choices, and a metagame that was able to evolve and check itself better than any other format.

This is an effort to reclaim the fun and glory of those times. This format is not likely to be sanctioned or supported by any official WOTC product to come. This will be a format of our love and passion for a better time, and hopefully one that will endure whatever fate befalls the rest of our once-beloved game.

Why use the Pre-WAR card pool and the current rules?

An unsanctioned format can only work if there is broad agreement on constraints, and every change risks fracturing the player-base. Changes to the actual game rules (and not just the banned list) also have the potential to break the ability to use virtual clients like Magic The Gathering Online to play, and also make it more difficult for new players to join the format.

For these reasons, the Pre-WAR card pool and current rules set is used. This is despite the fact that some pre-WAR cards might be too good, some post-WAR cards might have been a positive influence, and some post-WAR rules changes might have worsened the game.

While we can reconsider at a later date, it’s important to have a good, practical starting point.

Will you consider making changes to the format?

There are no current plans to do so. Part of the charm of closed formats is their ability to capture a moment in time when people generally agreed the game to be fun. To alter that would only further divide players.

Specifically, Pre-WAR Legacy was a very dynamic and healthy field. It was close to the end of the period when Legacy events were frequent, drew a great deal of attention, and data was abundant. Despite that, the format unsolved. Without a great deal of play and organized data collection, it is unlikely to ever actually be solved. If that should come to pass however, we may reconsider.