Collapse of Nationals?

A month and a half ago I posted about the differences between pre-releases of yore and the pre-release I'd just attended. In the Facebook comments thread for that post was a little discussion with one side taking the stance that things are terrible now and Wizards is killing Magic and the other saying that Magic has never been stronger. I don't know that I agree with either stance completely but what I do know for sure is that Magic has _changed_. And so have I.

At any rate, Nationals was this past weekend. I started 0-2 so the fact that I managed to turn things around to 8-4 and 25th place isn't terrible by any stretch. (Tied for 12th but my tiebreakers were abysmal.) I plan on going into details about the matches and the drafts at a later date. For now I want to talk about what I think Nationals was, and what it seems to be now.

My first Nationals was in 1999, where I tried to grind in with a terrible enchantress deck I borrowed from my brother. I lost in the first round. Not much of a story there. But the site itself was magnificent. I went to the old Sideboard coverage and found these pictures:

Epic! For contrast, here's what the open play area looked like, where I tried to grind in and failed so spectacularly:

The actual play area for Nationals was impressive. 4 players to a table. Pathways in between. The whole area was partitioned off. Spectators could stand behind the red draped barriers and watch the nearby matches but you couldn't go walking around amongst the competitors. Drafts took place at their own special round tables. (Looks like it was Rochester draft this year.)

As a punk kid from the Maritimes (via one year at the University of Waterloo) it was truly impressive. Team Comf had taken me to a huge pre-release, regionals, and to a PTQ or two but they were nothing compared to Nationals. You had to qualify to be allowed to play and it felt like you actually earned something just by being able to play. Separating the players out from the crowd and making sure the players had a lot of room to get around doesn't really impact who wins a game of Magic but it certainly gave the whole thing an important feel.

Here's a picture of me in 2002. This is round 11, where I can't make top 8 anymore but I get paired up against Gab Tsang who is in with two wins. I crush him! Notice how Gab has a nice nametag with his province on it? I won a grinder to get in so they didn't have one for me, but my name is printed on that slip of paper, honest.

The feature match tables were also cordoned off, with the big obvious placards that would let people anywhere nearby know the game state. Pretty cool!

1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009. All were the same feeling. (Well, I seem to recall 2009 didn't have any Wizards coverage people at all so it felt a little less special. I can't find anything online about it so that memory probably isn't too far off.)


What made this year different? Well, what do you think this is a picture of?

To me, that looks like the open play area from 1999. Rows of tightly packed matches on long, skinny tables. Unfortunately, no. This was the main Nationals area. Elbow room? A thing of the past, my friend. I didn't even have space to put my pen and paper for recording life totals unobstructed in some rounds as the large men sitting to my right would inevitably rest their meaty arms on the table on top of my paper.

I'm not sure if Nationals players this year gave up bathing for Lent or if it was just the really close quarters but it really reeked at the tables on the first day. (They did eventually spread us out a little more on day 2 once it became clear the side events wouldn't need half the Nationals tables. I didn't notice it on day 2, so either the smelly people all dropped or the extra room helped out.)

The tables weren't real tables, either. They were two similar tables placed back to back with a cloth over them. I say similar, and not identical, because often they weren't the same height and you'd have a big drop in the middle of the table.

Even worse, there were no round tables for drafting. We drafted at the exact same tables, cramped in tight. Some of the people, like me in the second draft, had to pass a pack to the person across from us. Laying out 13 cards across the table with a cliff in the way without revealing any of the cards to anyone is non-trivial and not a burden that should be forced on anyone. That we were drafting and building at the same tables was weird too. The judges did a good job having a system to make that work fairly well considering the constraints (you need to keep people from going both directions down those tiny aisles or you'd get a huge traffic jam) but it was still awkward and annoying.

Perhaps the worst thing from a competitive standpoint was the initial player meeting where they collect your paper work, including decklists. Normally at Nationals they seat everyone alphabetically for the meeting and then they post pairings for round one. This year they posted pairings for round 1 straight away and just collected the paperwork at the tables. (I knew something weird was going on when it wasn't alphabetical but I wasn't sure what.) As a result if you were careless or if your opponent was especially sneaky he could know what you were playing before you even started. Since your decklist was sitting on the table right in front of him.

The feature match area wasn't cordoned off, they didn't list anyone's province, and the scores were flat on the table instead of up on a board. In some senses none of that matters. But those little things were what made Nationals feel special. Nationals this year didn't feel like a big special event. It felt like a PTQ. A 2-day PTQ, to be fair, but just a PTQ nonetheless. (Nationals also used to be a 3-day event with the top 8 taking place on its own day.)


I don't know. Maybe I'm just too old for this sort of thing. Honestly, if I'd known what it was going to be like I wouldn't have shown up. And that's not because of how I finished, either. Nationals has been the only real Magic I've played in a few years now and I didn't regret going in 2009 despite also having a terrible constructed record. I probably wished I'd tested more so I could have done better. This year part of me wishes I'd tested more so I could have done better but mostly I just wish I'd played Final Fantasy and League of Legends for the last few weeks and played D&D yesterday. Nationals is supposed to be special, and this just wasn't.

I realize I haven't really done anything special enough to demand elbow room, space from spectators, and a nice table on which to draft. But if those little things don't exist, has Nationals done anything special enough to warrant me caring anymore?