It's an odd question, but one that I've had on my mind ever since coming back a few years ago. When I was younger it was commonplace to go to tournaments at LGS that didn't bother with DCI numbers and tracking. Does anyones LGS still hold these kinds of casual tournaments or has it all gone to this DCI stats number tracking stuff?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
When I quit in Mirrodin, no legitimate tournaments outside the big city used DCI stuff. Since I came back in Innistrad, everyone uses DCI stuff, but there's only one real place to play outside the big city. I don't see the improvement, so I don't know how it happened.
Yeah it feels like more of a way to punish players than help players given the limited benefits of having one. Most people don't even care about going to a GP or Pro Tour and outside of MTGO, there's basically no reason to use it. When I come into tournaments at my LGS they keep asking for my DCI and I don't even know what it is. I think I got five temporary cards now because they keep pushing them on me and I just don't care about the system.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The improvement in computers and the internet, and the software and systems involved in organisation means that is just super easy to do now. When in the past it was a bit of a pain in the arse to do.
Yeah, it's a little irksome since everyone wants to play DCI only events so there's this very strong lockstep situation with official formats. Not a lot of format brewing going on.
I'm not a hundred percent certain, but one of the LGS's invited me to play one of their experimental tournaments when I dropped by this past week. Not sure if it's DCI but it didn't sound like it. Standard died at that LGS. It's all Modern or EDH. So the owner is experimenting with firing up new formats. Legacy is the obvious choice. But he mentioned something about "Classic", whatever that is. 94/95 maybe? And some sort of cube-like format that sounds like a way to get rid of the bulk.
His biggest problem is trying to work out prize support that would actually make people want to play. One of the reasons why he has a hard time firing Legacy tournaments. No one wants to bring in their $2k+ deck for $25 worth of prizes. Then he went into this rant as to the reason that Final Fantasy died. I think that's why the DCI is preferred. You get something extra for your efforts... or you used to I guess.
Right now it feels more like an official way to stick a collar on someone since the benefits are basically non-existent. It looks like there are benefits, but no one realistically is going to get any kind of return out of them unless they are doing pro play.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Yeah, it's a little irksome since everyone wants to play DCI only events so there's this very strong lockstep situation with official formats. Not a lot of format brewing going on.
I'm not a hundred percent certain, but one of the LGS's invited me to play one of their experimental tournaments when I dropped by this past week. Not sure if it's DCI but it didn't sound like it. Standard died at that LGS. It's all Modern or EDH. So the owner is experimenting with firing up new formats. Legacy is the obvious choice. But he mentioned something about "Classic", whatever that is. 94/95 maybe? And some sort of cube-like format that sounds like a way to get rid of the bulk.
His biggest problem is trying to work out prize support that would actually make people want to play. One of the reasons why he has a hard time firing Legacy tournaments. No one wants to bring in their $2k+ deck for $25 worth of prizes. Then he went into this rant as to the reason that Final Fantasy died. I think that's why the DCI is preferred. You get something extra for your efforts... or you used to I guess.
thats kind of interesting, what killed legacy in our log ist he oppsite problem LOADS of people willing to play a $5 tournament for prices but no one in wants to spend 20 or 50 for a legacy tournment. However for soem reason the owner didn't want to believe that their were people who would play legacy at $5 and insisted that its "not worth it" to do it for less then $20. despite the fact that we had enough legacy players IN THE ROOM to make such a $5 tournament pop right then and their.....
Yeah, it's a little irksome since everyone wants to play DCI only events so there's this very strong lockstep situation with official formats. Not a lot of format brewing going on.
I'm not a hundred percent certain, but one of the LGS's invited me to play one of their experimental tournaments when I dropped by this past week. Not sure if it's DCI but it didn't sound like it. Standard died at that LGS. It's all Modern or EDH. So the owner is experimenting with firing up new formats. Legacy is the obvious choice. But he mentioned something about "Classic", whatever that is. 94/95 maybe? And some sort of cube-like format that sounds like a way to get rid of the bulk.
His biggest problem is trying to work out prize support that would actually make people want to play. One of the reasons why he has a hard time firing Legacy tournaments. No one wants to bring in their $2k+ deck for $25 worth of prizes. Then he went into this rant as to the reason that Final Fantasy died. I think that's why the DCI is preferred. You get something extra for your efforts... or you used to I guess.
thats kind of interesting, what killed legacy in our log ist he oppsite problem LOADS of people willing to play a $5 tournament for prices but no one in wants to spend 20 or 50 for a legacy tournment. However for soem reason the owner didn't want to believe that their were people who would play legacy at $5 and insisted that its "not worth it" to do it for less then $20. despite the fact that we had enough legacy players IN THE ROOM to make such a $5 tournament pop right then and their.....
The problem I'm having with how things work now is that people are playing for prizes and not for the game itself. It's not like anyone needs a prize to play something they find fun, it just helps make it feel more worthwhile than just spending a lazy afternoon with a bunch of friends. Heck, I used to play with just three others for maybe an hour and a half. Sometimes we'd just have a leftover promo card sitting around to play for or a couple of random packs we'd pick out of the available ones at the store. One time it was a competition over who would go pay for pizza from the next door place.
Now it's like you walk in and the first thing they do is set up a pc and ask for some number for a system that doesn't do anything, and if wizards didn't like something someone did they can't play magic at all? I've heard enough stories about bans happening from wizards because people are competing like prize fighters at GPs, or they blog something they don't like, or they do some other thing that is stupid and gets them banned, etc. Okay, what exactly are people getting as a benefit of this system to make this artificial policing policy worth the trouble? Is it even fair to assume that someone driven to cheating on a major event would do the same thing on casual friday?
What wizards has been telling me through their actions is that if someone comes home and had a bad day at work, or made a joke that gets out there, or some other crazy mishap, they can get banned from playing the game even at the local game store level. They got a great system to enforce it since the store has to register their players when they play at any of these events and since stores are incentivized to fill as much time as possible with official tournaments, it crowds out the ability to run anything that isn't an official tournament.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Right now it feels more like an official way to stick a collar on someone since the benefits are basically non-existent. It looks like there are benefits, but no one realistically is going to get any kind of return out of them unless they are doing pro play.
For a while there was the Player Rewards program, where playing in sanctioned events would get you promos in the mail based on the number of events you participated in, but they stopped that, sending out the last mailer a month or so before Mirrodin Besieged. (Which included either an oversized Hero of Bladehold or oversized Glissa, the Traitor along with the normal promos.)
There's also benefit to the store the event is held at; running sanctioned events lets Wizards see the turnout numbers at the location, and higher attendance means Wizards gives the store more free stuff and higher allocation for limited print run product.
The DCI is all about giving WotC reliable data that they can mine to inform future business decisions.
That's the rub though. If Wizards wants my data, they should be giving me something in exchange for it. I seriously doubt the cost of printing a sheet of real playable cards (not tokens) and mailing them out at bulk rates is going to break their bank.
Lately, I intentionally avoid tournament nights at the LGS. The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late. One LGS typically start their tournaments too early. I'm NOT going to get off work early enough to make it. Another LGS start their tournaments later but it runs all the way to midnight or 1AM. I have to go to work the next day. That leaves Saturday which, IIRC, a mishmash of Standard, Modern, YuGiOh and Pokémon tournaments. Ummm.... thanks?
I'm not freaking 20 anymore. So those days of pulling all night gaming sessions are loooong gone. I'm lucky I don't pass out from exhaustion on the toilet when I come home.
The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late.
I hear you on both of those points. That's exactly why I stopped going to pre-releases. Too much time investment, and not enough in return.
They really need to invent some kind of event that's structured differently, and as such addresses both of those - the first is partly on who's playing, but the time problem is an absolute killer. Do any of you remember the Open Dueling thing they used to do at pre-releases with intro packs?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching.
The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late.
I hear you on both of those points. That's exactly why I stopped going to pre-releases. Too much time investment, and not enough in return.
They really need to invent some kind of event that's structured differently, and as such addresses both of those - the first is partly on who's playing, but the time problem is an absolute killer. Do any of you remember the Open Dueling thing they used to do at pre-releases with intro packs?
My locl Pre-releases are 5 rounds. So it s 6 hour event. It can be a killer.
Maybe I am old but I prefer shorter events. In and out. Quick and easy. If I wanted to play for 6 hours, I would prefer to do that with friends.
The DCI is all about giving WotC reliable data that they can mine to inform future business decisions.
That's the rub though. If Wizards wants my data, they should be giving me something in exchange for it. I seriously doubt the cost of printing a sheet of real playable cards (not tokens) and mailing them out at bulk rates is going to break their bank.
Lately, I intentionally avoid tournament nights at the LGS. The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late. One LGS typically start their tournaments too early. I'm NOT going to get off work early enough to make it. Another LGS start their tournaments later but it runs all the way to midnight or 1AM. I have to go to work the next day. That leaves Saturday which, IIRC, a mishmash of Standard, Modern, YuGiOh and Pokémon tournaments. Ummm.... thanks?
I'm not freaking 20 anymore. So those days of pulling all night gaming sessions are loooong gone. I'm lucky I don't pass out from exhaustion on the toilet when I come home.
The yearly handout is a cool idea but probably fraught with problems. Especially if there is a threshold for the number of events you needed to attend to earn the cards and they were shipping it to your house. With the former, I am sure people would bitterly complain if they missed the threshold because a tourney or two they attended did not get reported correctly. What if you move and WotC ships the cards to the wrong address? Both of these are PR disasters waiting to happen. The easier method would be to just say, "The first X people who attend week Y's [Event] will all receive card Z."
Competitive atmospheres are anathema to a lot of people. I know it nearly or outright killed the local Malifaux, X-Wing and Heroclix communities. Some people only think of their own fun (winning) and do not see the long term repercussions of constantly beating the tar out of the same people week in and week out with the same overpowered list/deck. It really saps the motivation a lot of people have to attend events on a regular basis.
I'm in the same boat as others here, then. I just don't have the time to dedicate going to tournament nights due to work and just being plain exhausted these days. Running a lazy sunday event or something sounds more inviting at this point than trying to do something DCI related. That and the competitive nature of the events is definitely a deal breaker now.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late.
I hear you on both of those points. That's exactly why I stopped going to pre-releases. Too much time investment, and not enough in return.
They really need to invent some kind of event that's structured differently, and as such addresses both of those - the first is partly on who's playing, but the time problem is an absolute killer. Do any of you remember the Open Dueling thing they used to do at pre-releases with intro packs?
My locl Pre-releases are 5 rounds. So it s 6 hour event. It can be a killer.
Maybe I am old but I prefer shorter events. In and out. Quick and easy. If I wanted to play for 6 hours, I would prefer to do that with friends.
The DCI is all about giving WotC reliable data that they can mine to inform future business decisions.
That's the rub though. If Wizards wants my data, they should be giving me something in exchange for it. I seriously doubt the cost of printing a sheet of real playable cards (not tokens) and mailing them out at bulk rates is going to break their bank.
Lately, I intentionally avoid tournament nights at the LGS. The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late. One LGS typically start their tournaments too early. I'm NOT going to get off work early enough to make it. Another LGS start their tournaments later but it runs all the way to midnight or 1AM. I have to go to work the next day. That leaves Saturday which, IIRC, a mishmash of Standard, Modern, YuGiOh and Pokémon tournaments. Ummm.... thanks?
I'm not freaking 20 anymore. So those days of pulling all night gaming sessions are loooong gone. I'm lucky I don't pass out from exhaustion on the toilet when I come home.
The yearly handout is a cool idea but probably fraught with problems. Especially if there is a threshold for the number of events you needed to attend to earn the cards and they were shipping it to your house. With the former, I am sure people would bitterly complain if they missed the threshold because a tourney or two they attended did not get reported correctly. What if you move and WotC ships the cards to the wrong address? Both of these are PR disasters waiting to happen. The easier method would be to just say, "The first X people who attend week Y's [Event] will all receive card Z."
??? You do know we used to have this right the Player rewards... every 5 registered events you got a free tolken and every 20 you got a GOOD foil playable Reventent card. (typically valued at around $20) They mailed out I think 4 times a year and if you didn't have enough credit it carried over to the next mailing. Update your address on the wizards site and your cards are sent to the correct address this is only a problem if you happened to move on the day they sent out the cards. I know alot of players LOVED that program, I remember people be so happy about their tolken/cards in their trade binders. THe reason it stopped was aparently the shipping cost was too expensive.
If it is shipping costs then they could mail them to the LGS where the person plays and have them available to pick up... It causes some other issues but definitely saves a lot on shipping.
PreReleases for our place tend to be gathering grounds for lots of people that i only see at these PreRelease Events.
Theres always good players, but the LGS can easily flatten the price payout instead of making it extremly top heavy.
For example:
Here the first gets just 1 booster per won match and the difference between 1st and 2nd is just 1 booster , so theres also no reason to ID the finals as theres absolutely nothing to win as all the players with the same Points will get the same amount of booster packs and a Draw wont give you anything (its even a terrible idea to ID as it just removes a Booster as nobody won a match).
That alone makes the event much more about new people, teaching new players some tricks and making it enjoyable and fun.
Theres almost no reason to "win" the tournament.
The entire point is to spend time with new people or see old friends and we continue to roam the streets in the city afterwards, so its an entire day spend.
----
Other stores are very small or just have awkward people that dont talk or some wanna-be Grinder that just grabs the top-heavy payout.
If thats the case the blame is mainly on the LGS for making the event the terrible experience it is (and the people that join it to not blame the store to force a change).
----
A store has benefits for running tournaments, as they are required to maintain a higher WPN Level and if your store wants to be able to host a PTQ or even bigger events, they need a big enough community and experience in running tournaments.
If it is shipping costs then they could mail them to the LGS where the person plays and have them available to pick up... It causes some other issues but definitely saves a lot on shipping.
Given the high amounts of automation developed by companies like Amazon, I have my doubts that shipping and handling costs are anywhere near what they were just 10 years ago. Besides the initial investment on an envelope stuffer of course.
I think the real reason is they looked at the bottom line and decided to slice that little goodie out of their process to make Hasbro investors happy. No matter what anyone wants to think, WotC's top-line growth is finite and... what's the correct phrase? Can only grow so fast?
Theres always good players, but the LGS can easily flatten the price payout instead of making it extremly top heavy.
This would make me less likely to go. My closest LGS is an hour away; I just don't make it up there that often after a full days work for a small FNM. I make an effort to go once a month. Prereleases are the one time I really enjoy being there. Not to toot my own horn but I nearly always go 4-0 or 3-0-1, with the occasional 3-1 and end up with 7-12 extra packs (depending on turn out). It's honestly how I get most of my cards to play standard. If they took that avenue away from me I'd still probably play the prereleases because limited is my favorite format, but I wouldn't invest to make a standard deck to go the other once a month.
The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late.
I hear you on both of those points. That's exactly why I stopped going to pre-releases. Too much time investment, and not enough in return.
They really need to invent some kind of event that's structured differently, and as such addresses both of those - the first is partly on who's playing, but the time problem is an absolute killer. Do any of you remember the Open Dueling thing they used to do at pre-releases with intro packs?
My locl Pre-releases are 5 rounds. So it s 6 hour event. It can be a killer.
Maybe I am old but I prefer shorter events. In and out. Quick and easy. If I wanted to play for 6 hours, I would prefer to do that with friends.
The DCI is all about giving WotC reliable data that they can mine to inform future business decisions.
That's the rub though. If Wizards wants my data, they should be giving me something in exchange for it. I seriously doubt the cost of printing a sheet of real playable cards (not tokens) and mailing them out at bulk rates is going to break their bank.
Lately, I intentionally avoid tournament nights at the LGS. The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late. One LGS typically start their tournaments too early. I'm NOT going to get off work early enough to make it. Another LGS start their tournaments later but it runs all the way to midnight or 1AM. I have to go to work the next day. That leaves Saturday which, IIRC, a mishmash of Standard, Modern, YuGiOh and Pokémon tournaments. Ummm.... thanks?
I'm not freaking 20 anymore. So those days of pulling all night gaming sessions are loooong gone. I'm lucky I don't pass out from exhaustion on the toilet when I come home.
The yearly handout is a cool idea but probably fraught with problems. Especially if there is a threshold for the number of events you needed to attend to earn the cards and they were shipping it to your house. With the former, I am sure people would bitterly complain if they missed the threshold because a tourney or two they attended did not get reported correctly. What if you move and WotC ships the cards to the wrong address? Both of these are PR disasters waiting to happen. The easier method would be to just say, "The first X people who attend week Y's [Event] will all receive card Z."
??? You do know we used to have this right the Player rewards... every 5 registered events you got a free tolken and every 20 you got a GOOD foil playable Reventent card. (typically valued at around $20) They mailed out I think 4 times a year and if you didn't have enough credit it carried over to the next mailing. Update your address on the wizards site and your cards are sent to the correct address this is only a problem if you happened to move on the day they sent out the cards. I know alot of players LOVED that program, I remember people be so happy about their tolken/cards in their trade binders. THe reason it stopped was aparently the shipping cost was too expensive.
I actually did forget about that program. Oh man... Nostalgia! I miss that. Still the program was ended because it was not financially viable.
I actually did forget about that program. Oh man... Nostalgia! I miss that. Still the program was ended because it was not financially viable.
Well, in reality they could have easily made it viable, they just choose to scrap it, like they remove almost any "rewards" as they simply dont see a need for them anymore.
----
I mean face it, they dont need to send the cards directly to the players, they could have just as easily shipped the rewards with the PreRelease Packages to the LGS , which than gives it to the players (which would have made LGS happy, players happy, everyone).
In worst case they could at the very least give out DIGITAL rewards, even for magic online, even more so as they build up a somewhat fancy DCI-Number page for each player with planeswalker-points and all that kind of stuff.
It would have been FREE and they could still do that at any moment.
But they choose not to, as they dont give a damn about making players happy and argue around why its not "financially viable" (which is a joke if you think about it, if someone spends hundreds of bucks buying magic cards its laughable to send them some promo product, even shipping it directly to that person via mail).
----
Just one more sad story of magics "evolution" and even worse, they somehow manage to become worse and worse and remove more and more of the player rewards, instead of going the exact opposite and INCREASE the rewards to make it somewhat more interesting to buy into product.
Well the problem isn't just with the company, but the attitude of the players playing the game. There aren't as many people going out of their way to run non-dci sanctioned events, of which Wizards of the coast is partially to blame by pushing their "we're more than a game, we're an E-Sport" angle the last few years. I'm actually at the point where I'm considering running tournaments once a month at my LGS and just beat out the prize pool that the FNM / Saturday event gives. It's not exactly hard considering the only thing that they usually give now are foil tokens or some random low value thing. I figure do standard pauper or limited and just do prize pool with cards from across magics history.
That alone would be probably better than winning packs of the latest set.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Yeah it feels like more of a way to punish players than help players given the limited benefits of having one. Most people don't even care about going to a GP or Pro Tour and outside of MTGO, there's basically no reason to use it. When I come into tournaments at my LGS they keep asking for my DCI and I don't even know what it is. I think I got five temporary cards now because they keep pushing them on me and I just don't care about the system.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I'm not a hundred percent certain, but one of the LGS's invited me to play one of their experimental tournaments when I dropped by this past week. Not sure if it's DCI but it didn't sound like it. Standard died at that LGS. It's all Modern or EDH. So the owner is experimenting with firing up new formats. Legacy is the obvious choice. But he mentioned something about "Classic", whatever that is. 94/95 maybe? And some sort of cube-like format that sounds like a way to get rid of the bulk.
His biggest problem is trying to work out prize support that would actually make people want to play. One of the reasons why he has a hard time firing Legacy tournaments. No one wants to bring in their $2k+ deck for $25 worth of prizes. Then he went into this rant as to the reason that Final Fantasy died. I think that's why the DCI is preferred. You get something extra for your efforts... or you used to I guess.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
thats kind of interesting, what killed legacy in our log ist he oppsite problem LOADS of people willing to play a $5 tournament for prices but no one in wants to spend 20 or 50 for a legacy tournment. However for soem reason the owner didn't want to believe that their were people who would play legacy at $5 and insisted that its "not worth it" to do it for less then $20. despite the fact that we had enough legacy players IN THE ROOM to make such a $5 tournament pop right then and their.....
The problem I'm having with how things work now is that people are playing for prizes and not for the game itself. It's not like anyone needs a prize to play something they find fun, it just helps make it feel more worthwhile than just spending a lazy afternoon with a bunch of friends. Heck, I used to play with just three others for maybe an hour and a half. Sometimes we'd just have a leftover promo card sitting around to play for or a couple of random packs we'd pick out of the available ones at the store. One time it was a competition over who would go pay for pizza from the next door place.
Now it's like you walk in and the first thing they do is set up a pc and ask for some number for a system that doesn't do anything, and if wizards didn't like something someone did they can't play magic at all? I've heard enough stories about bans happening from wizards because people are competing like prize fighters at GPs, or they blog something they don't like, or they do some other thing that is stupid and gets them banned, etc. Okay, what exactly are people getting as a benefit of this system to make this artificial policing policy worth the trouble? Is it even fair to assume that someone driven to cheating on a major event would do the same thing on casual friday?
What wizards has been telling me through their actions is that if someone comes home and had a bad day at work, or made a joke that gets out there, or some other crazy mishap, they can get banned from playing the game even at the local game store level. They got a great system to enforce it since the store has to register their players when they play at any of these events and since stores are incentivized to fill as much time as possible with official tournaments, it crowds out the ability to run anything that isn't an official tournament.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
There's also benefit to the store the event is held at; running sanctioned events lets Wizards see the turnout numbers at the location, and higher attendance means Wizards gives the store more free stuff and higher allocation for limited print run product.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
That's the rub though. If Wizards wants my data, they should be giving me something in exchange for it. I seriously doubt the cost of printing a sheet of real playable cards (not tokens) and mailing them out at bulk rates is going to break their bank.
Lately, I intentionally avoid tournament nights at the LGS. The competitive edge is too high and it tends to run too late. One LGS typically start their tournaments too early. I'm NOT going to get off work early enough to make it. Another LGS start their tournaments later but it runs all the way to midnight or 1AM. I have to go to work the next day. That leaves Saturday which, IIRC, a mishmash of Standard, Modern, YuGiOh and Pokémon tournaments. Ummm.... thanks?
I'm not freaking 20 anymore. So those days of pulling all night gaming sessions are loooong gone. I'm lucky I don't pass out from exhaustion on the toilet when I come home.
I hear you on both of those points. That's exactly why I stopped going to pre-releases. Too much time investment, and not enough in return.
They really need to invent some kind of event that's structured differently, and as such addresses both of those - the first is partly on who's playing, but the time problem is an absolute killer. Do any of you remember the Open Dueling thing they used to do at pre-releases with intro packs?
My locl Pre-releases are 5 rounds. So it s 6 hour event. It can be a killer.
Maybe I am old but I prefer shorter events. In and out. Quick and easy. If I wanted to play for 6 hours, I would prefer to do that with friends.
The yearly handout is a cool idea but probably fraught with problems. Especially if there is a threshold for the number of events you needed to attend to earn the cards and they were shipping it to your house. With the former, I am sure people would bitterly complain if they missed the threshold because a tourney or two they attended did not get reported correctly. What if you move and WotC ships the cards to the wrong address? Both of these are PR disasters waiting to happen. The easier method would be to just say, "The first X people who attend week Y's [Event] will all receive card Z."
Competitive atmospheres are anathema to a lot of people. I know it nearly or outright killed the local Malifaux, X-Wing and Heroclix communities. Some people only think of their own fun (winning) and do not see the long term repercussions of constantly beating the tar out of the same people week in and week out with the same overpowered list/deck. It really saps the motivation a lot of people have to attend events on a regular basis.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
??? You do know we used to have this right the Player rewards... every 5 registered events you got a free tolken and every 20 you got a GOOD foil playable Reventent card. (typically valued at around $20) They mailed out I think 4 times a year and if you didn't have enough credit it carried over to the next mailing. Update your address on the wizards site and your cards are sent to the correct address this is only a problem if you happened to move on the day they sent out the cards. I know alot of players LOVED that program, I remember people be so happy about their tolken/cards in their trade binders. THe reason it stopped was aparently the shipping cost was too expensive.
Theres always good players, but the LGS can easily flatten the price payout instead of making it extremly top heavy.
For example:
Here the first gets just 1 booster per won match and the difference between 1st and 2nd is just 1 booster , so theres also no reason to ID the finals as theres absolutely nothing to win as all the players with the same Points will get the same amount of booster packs and a Draw wont give you anything (its even a terrible idea to ID as it just removes a Booster as nobody won a match).
That alone makes the event much more about new people, teaching new players some tricks and making it enjoyable and fun.
Theres almost no reason to "win" the tournament.
The entire point is to spend time with new people or see old friends and we continue to roam the streets in the city afterwards, so its an entire day spend.
----
Other stores are very small or just have awkward people that dont talk or some wanna-be Grinder that just grabs the top-heavy payout.
If thats the case the blame is mainly on the LGS for making the event the terrible experience it is (and the people that join it to not blame the store to force a change).
----
A store has benefits for running tournaments, as they are required to maintain a higher WPN Level and if your store wants to be able to host a PTQ or even bigger events, they need a big enough community and experience in running tournaments.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Given the high amounts of automation developed by companies like Amazon, I have my doubts that shipping and handling costs are anywhere near what they were just 10 years ago. Besides the initial investment on an envelope stuffer of course.
I think the real reason is they looked at the bottom line and decided to slice that little goodie out of their process to make Hasbro investors happy. No matter what anyone wants to think, WotC's top-line growth is finite and... what's the correct phrase? Can only grow so fast?
This would make me less likely to go. My closest LGS is an hour away; I just don't make it up there that often after a full days work for a small FNM. I make an effort to go once a month. Prereleases are the one time I really enjoy being there. Not to toot my own horn but I nearly always go 4-0 or 3-0-1, with the occasional 3-1 and end up with 7-12 extra packs (depending on turn out). It's honestly how I get most of my cards to play standard. If they took that avenue away from me I'd still probably play the prereleases because limited is my favorite format, but I wouldn't invest to make a standard deck to go the other once a month.
I actually did forget about that program. Oh man... Nostalgia! I miss that. Still the program was ended because it was not financially viable.
Well, in reality they could have easily made it viable, they just choose to scrap it, like they remove almost any "rewards" as they simply dont see a need for them anymore.
----
I mean face it, they dont need to send the cards directly to the players, they could have just as easily shipped the rewards with the PreRelease Packages to the LGS , which than gives it to the players (which would have made LGS happy, players happy, everyone).
In worst case they could at the very least give out DIGITAL rewards, even for magic online, even more so as they build up a somewhat fancy DCI-Number page for each player with planeswalker-points and all that kind of stuff.
It would have been FREE and they could still do that at any moment.
But they choose not to, as they dont give a damn about making players happy and argue around why its not "financially viable" (which is a joke if you think about it, if someone spends hundreds of bucks buying magic cards its laughable to send them some promo product, even shipping it directly to that person via mail).
----
Just one more sad story of magics "evolution" and even worse, they somehow manage to become worse and worse and remove more and more of the player rewards, instead of going the exact opposite and INCREASE the rewards to make it somewhat more interesting to buy into product.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
1st prize = Serra's Sanctum
2nd prize = Ancient Tomb
3rd prize = Scorched Ruins
4th prize = Swarmyard
Consolation prize = Full art land from the latest Unset.
That alone would be probably better than winning packs of the latest set.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!