This past year the Vintage and Legacy Championships were, for the first time in quite a while, not held at Gen Con. Instead these two tournaments were given their own weekend, and most importantly, the Vintage Championships was given its best coverage ever. With Vintage aficionados Randy Buehler and Chris Pakula doing commentary and each round getting a camera feature match, this was the kind of coverage that Vintage had long been waiting for.

Plenty of Vintage tournaments have been covered before--but they're a far cry from the record-setting, no-proxy tournament that took place last year. Vintage Champs clocked in at 233 players with a whopping nine rounds of swiss, plus Top 8! The decision to give these two tournaments their own weekend and provide amazing coverage did wonders for the format even before Vintage Masters was released on Magic Online.

This had a profound effect on my local Magic community and the popularity of Vintage.  Before Vintage Champs you could maybe play Vintage once every 2-3 months in the Twin Cities and the metagame was abysmal. We would maybe get 12 people to come out and play and there would be five shop decks, five dredge decks and two people who got destroyed playing blue. This was not a particularly fun environment, but for me and the few Vintage enthusiasts in the community, at least it was something.

Then Vintage Champs happened and all of sudden there were nine rounds of quality coverage for people to watch, some of the best Vintage players in the world appearing in the feature matches, and almost every archetype showcased at some point--it seemed like everyone wanted to play Vintage overnight. There was finally a reason to try and build a Vintage community in the Twin cities now and so the journey began.

The Beginning Stages

The first thing we had to do was get a local game store behind the idea. Even if it was just holding one tournament and seeing how it goes, we just needed someone to give it a chance.

We got a bunch of people to commit to the idea of having a big Vintage tournament on a Saturday afternoon and once Hi-Score games in North Saint Paul saw the demand, they gave the people what they wanted.  We had our first Vintage tournament with everybody on the high of Eternal Weekend and the turnout was awesome with over 20 people attending. This meant good things to come, but once many of these people finished playing in their first Vintage tournament, Vintage once a month was not going to cut it.

We continued to have our monthly tournaments, even one with a Mox Jet as first prize, which only got people even more excited, as there are not many Standard or Modern tournaments with power going to first place. When it came to getting the word out, Facebook and themanadrain.com were our best friends.

Then the talk of prizes for these events took more shape after our Mox Jet tournament. People who play Vintage talk about how much power they have won, not how many byes they will get at the GP or how many packs they won. It’s about power, hard-to-find Vintage staples like Mana Drain, Bazaar of Baghdad and Mishra's Workshop and cash when it comes to prizes.

Soon the community wanted to make a jump to having weekly Vintage tournaments. So we had a few people who looked into where we could have this and we found a taker. So we began experimenting with weekly Monday night Vintage at the local game store. It started a little slow, but for the last month we have consistently had 15+ people every week.

What Works

There have been many keys to our success. The first is that we have taken the community part of this very seriously. We have people who are willing to loan out multiple decks every week and provide proxies for people to use from week to week and that is invaluable. Because Magic players, of course, don’t want to build decks with a bunch of basic lands and sharpies, even if it means they don’t have to spend any money on their deck, as it is very time consuming.

The fact that we also encourage people to put their own decks together most of the time and not just have a bunch of the same decks available from week to week helps to create a healthy metagame. If we just had the same decks from week to week it would become quite stale and boring. So having multiple copies of decks either already built or a pool of cards that people can draw from has been invaluable; thanks Mike.

I think we have also taken the time to help people learn the format, and find what they like. Personally, I don’t think you have to sell Vintage much after people try it. The format speaks for itself when you dive in--there is depth, brokenness, history and tons of fun for all kinds of players.

This is also one of the healthiest Vintage environments in the format’s history. The restricted list is in a good place. Many of people’s favorite cards or draw engines are unrestricted and even creatures are claiming their place. And when people find what they like in the format, they really like it. I love playing Dredge in Vintage and will probably never be able to play it in Legacy ever again. Why have hamburger when you can have filet mingon?

The Vintage community in the Twin Cities has even given some people the opportunity to play Magic again because of the existence of proxies. People have jobs, families and responsibilities that come before Magic, as they should. The reality is that playing Standard from rotation to rotation is expensive and playing Legacy obviously takes a substantial buy-in, but people can play unlimited proxy Vintage for just the entry fee.

Building Demand

So in a format with unlimited proxies available what is there to gain from creating a community like this when it comes to finance? Well the first thing to realize is that even though unlimited proxies are available most of the time that does not mean that people will always choose that route. We have many people in our Vintage community that do not use proxies and have the option to play almost any deck they choose. Also some people only proxy 10-15 cards and the rest of their deck is made up of real Magic cards. These players are usually looking to acquire the cards they are proxying.

Creating a Vintage community also helps when it comes to foils. Vintage and Eternal players have been known to love their foils. That is why cards like Spell Pierce are worth ten times more in foil than in their non-foil version. And many Vintage staples are like this. Goblin Welder is worth five times more in foil than non-foil, Merchant Scroll is worth 12 times more, and there are many others.

All of a sudden these sweet foils that you couldn’t move if you wanted to because they are not in Standard, not really played in Modern and see some play in Legacy, have value to people in your community and may be easier to move locally. Foils like these are easy to move on the Internet, as they are not easy to find outside of the World Wide Web.

Maybe your local Vintage tournament organizer gives you a better price on those Vintage staples you have been looking to move because they want to have it for prize support at your next local tournament. When you have the supply, creating demand is the best thing you can do.

Ultimately the best thing about building a Vintage community is that it will have something for everybody. If you love to play with your old cards and haven’t played in a while, dust off those bad boys and take them for a spin. If you don’t want to have to spend a ton of money on building a deck, there are proxies. If you don’t like rotating formats, there are maybe 1-3 cards per block that affect Vintage in any way, so once you learn the format a good amount of that knowledge will be relevant over a long period of time.

If you don’t want to play for packs, maybe you can get to a place where you have tournaments for high-dollar Vintage staples. Do you have a bunch of Vintage staples that nobody in your community desires? Get a Vintage scene going and change that. Do you love having to figure out decision trees and lines of play? Well Vintage gives you that all compacted into fewer turns than any other format.

Obviously Vintage has a ceiling. It will never be supported by Wizards of the Coast as a PTQ, Grand Prix or Pro Tour format due to card availability and cost. Which means it is even more important to build these local communities. These communities are what make Vintage the format that it is. The Vintage community has a reputation for being one of the best and hopefully you can keep the community’s reputation when you decide to start your own.