An introduction to Classic Heirloom

What is Classic Heirloom?

Classic Heirloom is a community supported format that is not officially supported by Wizards of the Coasts.  Even though it is likely that Wizards will eventually support some Community driven formats, such as Standard Pauper, they will never come near Classic Heirloom. Why? Because Classic Heirloom is a financial format. Intrigued? Read on.

In Classic Heirloom you can only play cards that cost less than a certain threshold dollar value on mtgotraders.com.

Commons must cost no more than 10 cents.
Uncommons must cost no more than 20 cents.
Rares must cost no more than 40 cents.
Mythics must cost no more than 1 dollar.

Think about the implications of this for a second. There are plenty of interesting such implications.

At the end of this article there are links to more web resources for Classic Heirloom.


 Why should you play Classic Heirloom?

Unlike the formats that have sanctioned tournaments, Classic Heirloom is always far from solved. There is plenty of room for brewing and a suprisingly large number of decks are possible. I am fairly new to the format myself, but it seems that it is the best format for brewing ever. The card pool is enormous and the format will rotate naturally as soon as a card becomes too popular and goes up in price. Your deck will not rotate out but the format will reinvent itself constantly. This creates a format that is the best of rotating and eternal formats at the same time.

The format is very cheap. Even the top decks can be bought for somewhere between two and five dollars. The format naturally limits the cost of decks in a brilliant way.

Also, there are free Player Run Events (PREs) in the format, awarding you bot credits for winning without any risk.

 

Where can you play Classic Heirloom?

For the formats that has no support from the interface in Magic Online, you pretty much have to join a clan or find your sparring partners on twitter och on forums. The games are set up as classic on Magic Online so there is plenty of room for randoms to misunderstand or cheat. You will have to Contact your would-be opponents before playing them. This is a good olace to do so: http://mtgoheirloom.webs.com/

If you want to play tournaments, you will find a player-run event (PRE) on Gatherling.com. These events are free but still pay out prices to the winners, which means they are a great way of getting started on Magic Online. Read more here: http://community.wizards.com/forum/magic-online-player-run-events/threads/3946426

Where can you learn more about Classic Heirloom?

The official site has already been mentioned: http://mtgoheirloom.webs.com/

Tournaments can be found here: http://gatherling.com/gatherling.php

Heirloom legality list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap0KPa_KcyJLdFV4Z0NCNEFpWnZyZUk2WjRWNm56Qmc#gid=1

Check if your deck is legal here: http://jpdefault.comuv.com/heirloom/