The other night I had the pleasure of recording with the wonderful women of ‘The Girlfriend Bracket’ (in an episode premiering today if you want to check it out). I’ve been a big fan of theirs for awhile so I was really excited to join in and chat Magic with other women, an opportunity rarely afforded to me. As regular listeners know, the women of The Girlfriend Bracket (Erin, Katie, Kriz and Hallie) do not play a ton of a Legacy, mostly sticking to the more common formats of draft, modern, and standard.
While on the show a couple of them mentioned improvements they’ve noticed for women in Magic recently, something I couldn’t relate to and didn’t understand. They mentioned the environment being better and how they were seeing more and more women. This has not been my experience. I still have to deal with assholes more than I should. I only know one other woman who plays Legacy regularly and she is my friend’s much younger daughter, who is both a kickass Magic player and an awesome girl but hard to relate to due to an age difference of more than ten years.
It was during this ‘cast I realized that the reason that I couldn’t relate to them was because I am a Legacy player. When I started playing Magic (and was still playing Standard and Modern quite often) Legacy always felt like the most female friendly format. The people who played were older and more mature (often, definitely not always) so I had less problems. Now that the other formats have been progressing I’m starting to realize that Legacy is being sadly left behind. Legacy is harder for everyone to get into, nevermind if you have additional barriers to pass, that’s a fact. Cards are more expensive and harder to find, events in most areas are less common, and learning the format takes a high level of dedication. However, due to these reasons, Legacy players tend to be older, which is why I’m so surprised to see Legacy lagging behind in terms of being welcoming to women.
I wish I could say I’ve seen the improvements that my peers have, but sadly I have not. I have not seen more women playing and I have not felt any more welcome today than I did when I started. That’s not to say it’s all bad, because it’s not, but I’m not going to pretend there isn’t room for improvement. All of this time I thought I was being more negative about the outlook for female players than my peers and I’ve just recently realized it’s because of the format I play.
So I hope this sinks in for Legacy players. If it doesn’t, maybe check out my last piece on being a female player to see what the view from here is like. As Legacy players we want to encourage as many people as possible to play. We need everyone we can get, so don’t be afraid to go out of your way to make someone feel extra welcome. Because we all want the same thing: to draw lots of cards and cast Emrakul by turn three.
