Based on some feedback that I have gotten from some friends and viewing the sentiment from other channels, it appears that Old School is pulling some players away from paper Vintage.

I know personally I played in 2 major events where I travelled, one was Vintage at SCG Con and the other was the Old School Players Ball. I had fun at both events, and I noticed that the people who have the cards in paper and continue to invest in power and dual lands and other staples of both Legacy and Vintage are mostly Old School players.

There were a little more that 120 players at SCG Con and a little over 80 players at the Old School players Ball. The Old School events have exploded, this event was sold out in less than 8 hrs and I was on a wait list to even attend.

Given a choice in events I would choose to play Old School most of the time over Vintage right now even though I have been brewing in Vintage and building new decks.

Is there something happening here? The people I know that own the cards in paper are being more and more pulled into Old School and complaining about Vintage.

The Vintage tournaments are mostly all proxy and the attendance in events is going down. Legacy does not even do proxy and their attendance has been going up since the last 2 bans in the format. Modern is just exploding.

Vintage is very expensive to get into to play tier 1. Even Dredge which was the "budget" deck is not over $4000. That is nuts! Getting 4 Bazaar of Baghdad has gotten very hard and I get it. I bought mine like 13yrs ago and I do not even play Dredge, I usually loan them to my brother. I bought them to Dragon and I will occasionally play lands with them.

Is this hurting Vintage? How do you feel about the Vintage community? I like the guys in local area, the guys from Battle Creek, and Cleveland and Metro Detroit are awesome guys. But, a lot these guys play Old School and there is a sentiment that Old School is more fun. Does this hurt Vintage? What does this mean for paper events in the future?

I was look at pimping out a 93/94 deck, but i really like my decks to be all foreign and signed/altered. I found that the community (where I am at least) wasn't all for that. I'm happy with vintage.

It's not Old School. It's Old School + MTGO I guess.

MTGO has a healthier metagame than paper, with a lot of tournaments/leagues every week. You can see the number of paper tournaments reducing all over.

With Old School you get to keep your old stuff, your beloved collectibles, without having to entre the frenzy of getting new cards every once in a while. It's a way more "for fun" format. MTGO is cheaper to maintain in a format that changes a lot (compared to Old School, of course).

So I think most people are shifting to playing Vintage on MTGO and Old School on paper.

@fsecco said in Is Old School killing paper Vintage?:

It's not Old School. It's Old School + MTGO I guess.

MTGO has a healthier metagame than paper, with a lot of tournaments/leagues every week. You can see the number of paper tournaments reducing all over.

With Old School you get to keep your old stuff, your beloved collectibles, without having to entre the frenzy of getting new cards every once in a while. It's a way more "for fun" format. MTGO is cheaper to maintain in a format that changes a lot (compared to Old School, of course).

So I think most people are shifting to playing Vintage on MTGO and Old School on paper.

Vintage on MTGO so much more convenient. Because of the price of cards I’m now compelled to keep them in the bank deposit box. So I much prefer playing online.

@smmenen Yep, you and everyone else. We play Old School in paper because of nostalgia and because those events are way more relaxed. I'd say the average player is much more compelled to keep an Old School deck than to keep a Vintage deck (in paper).

@fsecco I do not like buying cards in paper and on MTGO. I feel like I am wasting money.

MTGO and an aging player base is killing paper Vintage. If you couldn't play it online, a segment of players would be forced to get their fix the old fashion way, by sitting at a table and playing Magic. The second is a player base that is aging into responsibility and not being replaced by 20 somethings because of cost. I get far more "man I wish I could go to Eternal Weekend but my (spouse, kid, work) ...". Moderns player base are largely 18-24 year olds without jobs or responsibilities. Thus the "grinder" lifestyle. There is no such thing as a Vintage "grinder" because there are no real incentives other than glory.

Cost of cards is absolutely a factor, but I'm surrounded by a dozen people with power (or double power) who won't make Eternal Weekend because they used their vacation up on weddings.

If you own 3+ underground seas in paper you can sell one and get a complete vintage deck. Not really a waste of money, an unused underground sea is on the other hand a waste of money (imo). For me buying into mtgo is the best magic related thing i done in a long time. Only wished more people in europe would do it so i could play the vintage league's at 'strange' times. Currently only playing legacy because of that. Local paperscene is almost dead, old-school thrives but vintage was even more dead before that started.

Legacy "killed" vintage far more than Old School ever will or can. Legacy was far more responsible for the rise in Vintage staples like Dual lands over the last ten years.

@moorebrother1 I basically agree with your idea, though it's kinda funny to me that Vintage players would flock to/prefer Old School. They're both homes for some of the broken old cards, but the play experience of the formats is so different that if you enjoy one, you might not enjoy the other.

@nedleeds said in Is Old School killing paper Vintage?:

Cost of cards is absolutely a factor, but I'm surrounded by a dozen people with power (or double power) who won't make Eternal Weekend because they used their vacation up on weddings.

Agreed, though as someone who runs in a slightly younger crowd than you, I'd put more emphasis on cost of cards. I know very, very, very few people who expect to ever own Power at this point, and the fact that Duals are creeping up to the $500 range makes it even worse. This doesn't necessarily hurt the existing playerbase (other than incentivizing people to sell out), but it does a pretty good job at making sure the format will never grow.

. . . then again, I just had a baby 3 weeks ago. Pretty soon I'll probably be saying that adult responsibilities are going to kill Vintage.

At least in Europe, regarding Old School (or like Rich once said, Civil War reenactment with Klingons), it's not the format per se, but more TOs/vendors (the ones that enjoy it the most) that push it at the expense of Vintage.

@JosefK Nebraska's War Tournament, 13-16th Dec in Lucca, Italy will have a Vintage Main Event on Saturday and a Premium Vintage at 100 euros fee on Friday.

I think it's pretty hard to reconcile the idea that vintage is dying with the huge tournament attendance at eternal weekend each year. Surely local metagames die off, mine did a few years back, but are we losing players overall? Saying that SCGCon had 120 players doesn't really mean much ... the last SCGCon ... didn't exist. There's nothing to compare it to. Last year there was no large sanctioned vintage SCG event, and this year they had one with 120 players, that sounds like growth to me? The overall size of the online vintage community feels massive to me now compared to even a few years ago, but I really don't know how to objectively measure this sort of thing.

It really looks to me like objectively, vintage is growing, while at the same time I'll admit that I'm personally very impacted by the aging playerbase, like nedleeds referenced.

For what it's worth, if Old School nabs some vintage players, I'm totally cool with that. I don't want more people to play vintage ... I want more people to have a good time playing magic in a community that enriches their life. If Old School does that better for some people, that benefits everyone involved. I've tried both and I'm still a Vintage player at heart.

@brass-man I don't think Vintage is dying at this point. I am seeing a lot of my friends and my playgroup more interested in Old School than Vintage. None of my friends play online and they all have power. The aging is real, I'm well over 40 and I think of my collection as my kids inheritance.

My larger point was that I had to choose which events to go to this year and I went to one Vintage event and one Old School event. A lot of players with power are making this decision and it is not cause for concern - yet. But if these players with the paper cards do not attend Vintage events then the paper format will die.

Not to reference the B&R list too much and turn this into another discussion about it, but the constant fear of things being restricted away has turned me off paper Vintage almost entirely. I like to work on a deck over a longer period of time, but at the moment I'm simply of the mind "why bother, stuff is going to be restricted eventually due to community outcry anyway".

Now I realize we haven't actually had any major changes in the last few cycles, but the constantly changing nature of restrictions last year and so on really killed my interest, and turned me more into Old School, which fulfills everything I wanted from paper Vintage anyway. I've worked on an Old School deck for the past 6 months, making changes slowly and picking up cards whenever possible, with no fear that it's going to change due to B&R policy.

MODO has accelerated Vintage for sure, but this is incompatible with how I like to slowly build a deck on paper, working on it over an extended period of time. I'd be much happier if the rate of restricting decks away were to slow down. Just my 2 cents, not sure if anybody shares my experiences here.

@moorebrother1 Usually the big events have both, so it's cool that way. EW is a good example - I can't attend this year (Dia de Los Muertos, guys, come on) but I'd totally go to play both Old School and Vintage.

@fsecco is it foreshadowing then that Dredge will win EW because of this holiday? It would be fitting.

Old school takes the competiveness out of going to a tourney in my opinion. So that helps A LOT of people and may draw more people into playing Old School. Vintage paper tourneys are great. But to me there still competition that makes me want to win. When I play Old School, the want to win is diminished. The EV of Old School is qualitative. The EV for Vintage is... incredibly low and should not be your end goal.

I like both Old School and Vintage equally. At EW, I plan on playing both as much as I can.

@fsecco I was able to do that in 2016 but because of Dad duties I can usually only make to a single day maybe an overnight trip. In about 3 or 4 years I'll be able to do a 3 day trip again.

I have no interest in playing old school, and have had no interest to date. There are plenty of people that enjoy it, and I am happy for them and their enjoyment.

My solution this year for EW is to bring my family with me and turn it into a family holiday. My son's interest in MTG is growing, so it is possible that in a couple of years there will be a child playing (and trolling) at EW. He's starting to learn to read now, so there is still plenty of time...

I love Vintage but I currently have more fun playing Old School. I'd prefer to play both over the span of a trip.

Vintage is almost impossible to play in paper if you don't live in one of a handful of places that actually have enough players to support the game. I don't live in one of those areas so I play MTGO. For me it's good enough but I would much rather play IRL. There are some Old School events in the Midwest so I can actually attend paper events.

I'm pretty bored with the competitive viable vintage decks right now. I think vintage is balanced, I'm just not as interested as I have been in other metagames.

I'm skipping Eternal Weekend this year. I would love to go but life made it complicated and having it over Halloween again was the nail in the coffin for me.

I think there is plenty of room for both. Old School offers another way for me to play with my favorite cards.

There's quite a bit of overlap in card pool between Old School and Vintage, when it comes to the more expensive cards. Price is one of the main prohibiting factors for entering either format, so if a player already has these select expensive cards that are largely responsible for making entry to either format so costly, they can usually play both Vintage and Old School without really having to choose one over the other. Other cards that are exclusive to either format would be easily affordable compared to the price of the moxen, for example. A match is on average 20-30 minutes (from personal experience), and people usually have enough time to play multiple Vintage and Old School matches in their free time.

There are players that have a clear cut budget, and need to choose between having a good Old School deck and a good Vintage deck, but I doubt that this is an issue with most players.

Of course, there must be players that dislike having to play against newer cards, like planeswalkers, uncounterable/hexproof shenanigans, etc. that play old school exclusively, but I think most of these players would have left Vintage anyway, with or without Old School.