Another Format? You Idiots!

With the recent announcement of the Pacific ruleset, there have been many questions raised about why Old School Magic needs yet another format to fragment an already small community. We get that, and it’s a very good point. We too worry about the health of Old School and especially about the anger and other negative emotions the release of another ruleset is causing in some members of the community, so we wanted to give people some more background and context on what’s happening.

It’s Not About the B&R. It’s About Stewardship of the Format

The fundamental motivation for forming the Pacific Old School Conference (PAC) is to create a democratic, transparent, self-governing process for managing the Old School Magic format being played by its members. As of today, we have released the By-Laws for PAC, which we hope make clear how we intend to pursue these goals.

Other formats (Swedish, Eternal Central, Atlantic, and others) are largely managed by a small group of dedicated, passionate people, who are all awesome and have all done wonderful things for Old School. We love them for the work they have put in to make Old School such a large and engaging community. However, at least for the groups who are excited about PAC, these formats feel a little distant. The EC banned and restricted (B&R) list, for example, has not changed in several years. In part, that’s because EC is already an exciting, fun, dynamic format, and one can argue it doesn’t need to change. It’s a good format.

The members of PAC feel that having a format which is truly community-driven at the rules level would be beneficial. Rather than waiting for an external entity to tell us when we can change the game we are choosing to play (similar to “regular” Magic where WOTC calls the shots), we’d rather just set up a way for our playgroups and others of similar minds to manage ourselves. Nothing against the people running the other formats, but we’re choosing self-government.

The point of the Pacific ruleset is not to get someone’s pet cards restricted/unrestricted, nor to create a format where someone’s favorite/least favorite deck is better/worse. It’s also not to try and force anyone to conform to our whims, nor to create a little kingdom to rule and satisfy some hole in our lives. The people in PAC are in PAC by choice, and no one has to join us.

In fact, the Pacific ruleset is a side effect of the real goal of PAC: to create a self-governing Old School Magic community. The original members of the PAC community had different opinions on the B&R, and that may have spurred us to action, but the self-governing process we are setting up is what we think will be most valuable. We hope everyone understands we are simply doing something that we think will be really helpful for Old School in good faith.

We will leave it at that for now and hope, like most things, any shock or anger people are feeling in reaction to PAC will temper with time. We also welcome questions or feedback about what we’re doing, either on this post, on related Facebook posts, or via email to pacoldschoolmtg@gmail.com. Thank you for reading!

FAQ

This still seems dumb. Why aren’t we encouraging unification under EC/ATL/SWE/the rules I like?

We understand that there are a lot of Old School formats, and it can be confusing. It can also be expensive to try and field fun/competitive decks in multiple formats, and we are very sensitive to that. It is important that people of any budget can play an Old School deck they enjoy. However, we in PAC also reserve the right to play Old School the way we’d like to. The members of PAC are here by choice, and this is how we have chosen to play the game. Practically speaking, different rule sets only matter much at a handful of large tournaments a year, and many players also appreciate the ability to have different metagames thanks to small differences in a game with a static card pool.

Additionally, if unification is a goal the Old School community at large seeks, we believe unifying under a transparent democratic process, in which every group who joins gains a say in what happens, is a better end state than unifying under a format controlled by a small handful of individuals. It’s certainly fair to disagree with us on this point though, and reasonable, well-meaning people can disagree honestly.

I don’t see much transparency. You talk a good game about it, but where is it?

We released the Pacific ruleset on Aug 8, 2019, before we had finalized the By-Laws, and without publishing the notes from our first Council meeting. That may have been a mistake, and ideally all of this information would have hit at the same time. However, because the first-ever major event under Pacific rules, Border Brawl 2 at Puget Sound Battleground 2, was three months after this date, we felt it was important to get the rules out first so people could start thinking about their decks. In fact, as soon as Border Brawl 2 was posted, people began asking where the rules were.

We’ve now published the By-Laws as well as the notes from our first Council meeting. Moving forward, the notes from each Council meeting will be published on the same day as any rules changes, along with a blog post explaining the changes. We don’t expect this format to be changing too often once settled down from this initial release; perhaps an update or two per year would be expected. It’s also worth mentioning that since we’re driven by the members of the PAC community, any changes that do happen are happening because the PAC community is choosing to do them to itself.

We hope it’s understood we’re people with families, jobs, and lives, and we’re doing the best we can to support this hobby. If and when we screw up, we will try to fix it, and we appreciate those who point our mistakes out respectfully.

I’m in a group that’s part of PAC and I don’t feel heard.

We are very sorry if people who are in the Trolls, Horde, Deep Spawners, or Beasts feel left out or blindsided by this process. That was not our intent. We love you guys and love playing Magic together. Come talk to us and we will try to make it right, and we promise to do better next time. Also, we introduced automatic passage of motions to defer voting for Resolutions that would ban or restrict a card specifically in response to sentiments around how the Shahrazad restriction went down. We’re learning too.

I still don’t like it.

That is totally OK. We’re not asking anyone who’s not in PAC and doesn’t like the Pacific ruleset to do anything. Similarly, don’t tell members in PAC to do things we don’t want to do either. Old School is about the community and camaraderie, so let’s all chill, understand this is a hobby we all love, and play some cards.