Community News
Community News
My 2024 Experience with Legacy of the North
Adam Robinson, February 9th 2025
This article is for those of you who are interested in reading my personal account of my experience over the last year with our growing and changing community “Legacy of the North”.
From the personal side I began playing magic in the mid to late 90s during the release of 4th edition, yes, I’m old. My father my brother and I used to travel to Sudbury to our local card shop Great Canadian card for our weekly Type 1 and type 2 tournaments. This competitive scene fueled our family’s passion for the game and the growth of our collection. It also fueled friendships that would last a lifetime from this competitive scene.
Fast forward to my late teens and early 20’s; the enjoyment of the game was still there but as life happens and changes my time was limited to playing a collecting. We turned our collection over to my younger brother Andrew when he moved to Victoria BC. My brother unfortunately passed away from cancer in the fall of 2020. This tragic event refueled my passion for the game. With his passing the collecting was to be turned back over to my father and I. This process has taken a number of years but during this time my love for the game has returned.
The growth and expansion of Legacy of the North in Sudbury and Northern Ontario.
I feel like in writing this article that there are a number of people that need to be mentioned, as they have done a ton of work to grow the community in North Bay which is only a short hour drive from my house. Kieran Macduff as well a number of others have spear headed the growth and development of the North Bay Community on average. Our Sunday Legacy days brings between 8-12 players out, this community keep growing day by day and I can’t wait to see where it will go.
The growth and Expansion to Sudbury.
I mentioned earlier in the article that the early days of magic fueled competition and a lifelong friendship with Mike Morelli who was my personal nemesis (much like Conrad is today). Mike is now proud owner of our beloved local LGS Great Canadian Games and Hobbies and the Top Shelf Gaming lounge. I approached Mike after our Modern league with this crazy idea; how about a Legacy Night at the store on Mondays? Mike as he always does said “buddy you put it together and I am all in!”
We Launched our first Legacy Night nervous and not knowing what to expect. Amazingly it was beyond expectations and we had 12 players on our first night! This may not seem like a huge number, but at our local LGS Standard and even Modern are struggling to fire. We decided to then start setting up feature matches with Top Shelf Gaming Lounge’s Twitch channel. Following this we asked the North Bay players to come and join us for our events which continued the growth of the community and the momentum we have had. Now not only does our Legacy Night fire every week but now we have a steady 8-16 players consistently. Legacy may now be the only thriving format here, but is now the most attended format at our LGS. A huge thank you goes out to our player community and Mike of Top Shelf Gaming for supporting Legacy of the North.
What does a growing community in the far north mean? Well it means players have the ability now to play Legacy two nights a week and earn point for the Legacy of the North League thus qualifying them for the season ending invitational. This was nearly impossible with only one legacy night a week. This is where my personal story begins. I was fortunate enough to play well enough and have a lot of luck when i made the occasional trip down south to see my parents and get the occasional match with my Dad. These trips allowed my to earn enough points to tie Connery Knox for the season’s overall points title. This meant the invitational would be the tie-breaker; whomever finished higher between myself and Connery at the invitational would play the winner of the invitational to be crowned King of the North.
During the season a number of events happened making things challenging to continue to play at a high level. My father suffered a stroke during a legacy event while playing in the second round against myself. He is recovering now but this was a scary moment. Nadu might be to blame for this happening! Personally, if you’re going to play D&T like my Dad does you have it coming. Also, during the final two weeks of the season I was unable to play any events as my daughter was airlifted to CHEO medical center and was hospitalized for two weeks. She has now also recovered and is doing well! Thank you for all of those who reached out during this time, it meant a lot to me and I thank you.
At the invitational I had a great run! Through playing well and some good opening draws I was able to make it into the Top 8. Connery finishing outside the top 8 cemented my place in the King of the North best of 5 match! If I was however fortunate enough to win the invitational outright, I would be crowned king of the north right then and there. I’ll save everyone the boring match by match details but it was not to be. I lost in the finals to my friend and current nemesis Conrad whom I would like to congratulate! This meant Conrad and I would again square off in a best of 5 for the title of King of the North.
The King of the North Match was scheduled for February 1st. An early 6 am start, many coffee breaks, a 20-minute power nap n the parking lot, and driving through bad weather is what it took to get myself down to Newmarket for the event.
Congratulations Conrad on a well-deserved and hard-fought win in 5 games! In the end it all came down to the final draw of the game to decide the match. Thank you to Trevor for driving and judging our match. I promise both Conrad and I both know how to resolve Brainstorm now. Congratulations to Conrad again on an amazing victory and being crowned King of the North.
In summary this was my personal journey and in small part the journey of our small but growing legacy community in the north. The community qualified 5 players for the invitational this season and had another 3-4 players on the bubble. I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope to see some of the folks from the south travel to the north for our upcoming 1k and 3k we are planning to hold this spring.
Thank you to Jim Monolith, Boston Schatteman, Trevor Cordingley, David Marino and everyone in the Legacy of the North community for being so welcoming. And congratulations again to Conrad Dungan, King of the North.
