There are many recurring questions in Magic in general. Most of these tend to deal with silly things such as "why does blue get all the cool cards?" Others, however, are a little more serious in nature, such as the endless question of "is legacy dying?"
I'll clarify. I've been playing legacy seriously since shortly before the close of the Mystical Tutor era. I came in during one of these "death cycles," as I shall name it. Reanimator was nearing its zenith, and storm combo decks, utilizing the power of Mystical Tutor, were also rising near to the top. Then, amidst cries to ban the offender (or to reban Entomb, one of the cards guilty of pointing out Mystical's power to the field, so to speak), talk of how legacy was a dying format began to surface. It was in this atmosphere that I entered the format. Talk ranged from the rising prices of legacy staples such as dual lands, which if I recall correctly topped out at like 70ish for Underground Seas, to the enduring question of the reserved list, to the lack of originality in the development of the format's decks -- something which would emerge a few years later through the "hive mind" brought in part or in full by the frequent Open Series, sponsered and masterminded by StarcityGames.
Suddenly and without much warning, Wizards acted, and Mystical Tutor was swiftly removed from the format.
All at once, talk of legacy's impending doom ceased, and aside from the few outcries that Mystical was wrongly banned and that Wizards should have waited longer, the forums were silent. Brewers returned to brewing, and the format as a whole breathed peacefully. The following era was open and balanced...until Caleb Durward broke Vengevine in half, causing the era of Survival of the Fittest. All at once, the unrest returned. Suddently the format was dying again. Prices were outrageous. The Reserved List is clearly to be blamed for all of this. Wizards acted too quickly (again). Etc.
Survival gets banned.
Okay, the format reverts to a blank slate again. The usual decks reemerge, people start to play blue again, and so on. The forums are quiet, except for, again, the dissenters that disagree with Survival's banning. Fast forward a few months, and Mental Misstep happens. The same dance follows, although for once, it isn't as much calls against one villainous deck, but rather against a specific card. The homogenization of Misstep caused an event greater outcry than before, with numerous posts stating that legacy is dead, or near to. Wizards acts, and bans Misstep. Oddly enough, there are fewer disappointed replies to this ban, although some still surface. And the format reverts to an open slate, -again-, although this time, the decks that were prevalent throughout the Misstep era mostly reshape themselves and have maintained through to the current era -- Stoneblade in particular, although precursors of Maverick can also be found. I won't mention Canadian Thresh there, because Thresh hasn't really changed in the last five years. Its popularity has waxed and waned, but it has yet to truly evolve.
Regardless, the period from the banning of Misstep until the present has largely been one of the best times to play legacy that I have yet experienced. The format felt open, like you could brew whatever you wanted and actually have a chance with it. Stoneblade was always a present danger, but it wasn't exactly unbeatable, and it seemed more like people were playing Stoneblade to continue their infatuation with JaceTMS + Stoneforge Mystic than anything truly pernicious to the format. A few months ago, rumblings were heard of a European deck that was becoming something of a boogeyman to the format, known as Maverick. A G/W deck, an oddity since the downfall of Survival, Maverick took the European scene by force, but largely remained overseas. Amercians were slow to shake their addiction to Brainstorm, and while there were brief murmurs of a ban on Brainstorm, the format remained intact throughout one of the higher periods of blue's popularity.
Some short time ago, Maverick finally began to become recognized in the States as a real deck; one which happens to have disturbingly good matchups against blue control/tempo decks, although its combo matchup leaves something to be desired -- lists often sport upwards of 12 cards in their board for combo of various types. GP Indy sees Maverick take a large share of the format, and the Starcity Open at Baltimore in March had an astonishing 6 of the top 8 spots taken by some form of Maverick-style deck, although the Invitational which accompanied it was much more tame by comparison. Many of the lists therein were heavily metagamed for Maverick, as though the pilots respected the G/W menace, but were unwilling to stop playing blue.
Now, it's fire and brimstone again for the format as a whole. The meta has now crystalized once again into several "decks to beat," to borrow the Source's terminology, and all invention is dead. The best one can do now, it seems, is to tune the existing, standing on the shoulders of the giants who came up with the ideas in the first place. There are clearly no more decks to be built, no more interactions to be found. The format has been solved, all possibilities exhausted. Calls for the banning of Green Sun's Zenith have begun, because after all, Maverick has been beating blue decks! My god!
The whole cycle is dumb to watch, and even dumber to participate in. I learned this lesson well when Jund was in standard. Despite being the menace of the format, with one of the higher rates of popularity and thus dominance in standard's history, there was an insane amount of brewing space in the format -- especially during the Shards/Zendikar era before Worldwake came out. The simple fact is this: people are lazy, and unwilling to explore new options. It is easier to take a tier one deck, tune it to your liking (making it worse in the process), and grind it until you are sick of the format as a whole. Innovation is not dead during these periods -- and those who view the format as "dead" are not seeing the big picture. At the risk of turning into a rant about the idiocy of the hive mind concept, I would suggest that the solution to the constant "death cycles" of legacy is to become better at evaluating a format and building decks to attack the weaknesses of those format, while equally constantly exploring possible interactions that could define the next format and catch the established decks off guard. I'll point out my personal legacy deck as an example of this.
The powerful interaction between Veteran Explorer and Cabal Therapy has been present for literally years of legacy development, yet it has never begun to be exploited until now. The question, then, is why not? I believe it to be a combination of the factors discussed above: deckbuilding laziness and a lack of awareness of the existence of the interaction. Maybe somebody noticed it at some point, but they didn't test it long enough and gave up on it. Being dogged in testing is important when evaluating new concepts and attempting to find new engines to build decks around. Regardless, the interaction has now been found, is good, and has been put to use in a solid deck. While it is performing well in Europe, Americans have as usual been slow to adopt Europe's technology. At the same time, I find an interesting phenonmenon with the Veteran/Therapy engine: players know it. Two of my Explorers are Korean -- I've been looking for them since July, and I have only found two thusfar. When I lead with a Korean Explorer, I always announce its English name and ask my opponent if they know what it does. Most of the time, my opponent does know the card, and is aware of what I'm going to do with it. If they know what it is, then odds are they know why it is. Why, then, are players so attached to "the deck," as opposed to exploring other options that are known to be competitve. Is it just sheer laziness? It is often easier to whine about a problem than it is to attempt to do something to fix it.
I believe there are a number of answers to this issue, and I believe that the general legacy player base cannot be held accountable for it. Laziness may indeed influence some brewers who could be experimenting more than they are in periods such as this, where the format has once again crystalized into something resembling a rock-paper-scissors metagame. However, most legacy players in my experience tend to be older. They've played the game for a while, and while they take great pleasure in "their" format, they don't necessarily have the time to innovate because they have other life responsibilities. This is natural, and I believe that there isn't mcuh that can be done about it other than for the more professional players, such as those who routinely top eight SCG events and GPs, to devote less time to tuning "the decks" and more time to brewing contenders for that elusive title. Regardless, I am not one of those players, and I cannot know what they do behind the scenes. I believe that they can be doing more to promote the health of the format, rather than running certain good cards until they invariably get banned and thus shutting off potential future synergies. As for the more practical concerns, I am in the camp that believes that the Reserved List must eventually be abolished if the game is to survive. The price of legacy staples, which Wizards is unwilling to reprint for power-level concerns if nothing else, will continue to rise. Duals will continue to fall apart to age and wear, and collections will continue to sit on shelves and accumulate the dust of those who no longer play or care about them -- although people tend to know better now that their collections are worth money, and will sell when they get out of the game, returning some of those staples to the playing populace. However, the question of whether Wizards will eventually void or find a way around the Reserved List problem remains to be seen, and is not in the players' hands at all, at least so far as can be discerned at this time (cupcakes, anyone?).
My advice for the death of legacy is thus: ignore it. -All- formats undergo periods of "the deck(s)." They pass, one way or another. The next time you're looking at Delver, or Maverick, or Stoneblade, or whatever the It Girl happens to be, try to think instead of how you exploit that deck. Or you can choose to have fun with the format for a while instead, and just play whatever you want and bury your head in the sand. Or, you can also play that deck yourself, and make other people whine about how the format is dying. Any of these options are valid, as are others I haven't listed here. The fact remains that Legacy will not die unless it is through the ending of the format by Wizards, the ending of the format through the unending decay of its staples and costs, or through the ending of the format through the equally undying laziness of its populace, who refuse to find the answers sitting in front of them.
