FNMs in Toronto

My previous post about my feelings about FNM made their way to Mike Turian, the man in charge of the new system at Wizards. (Thanks Matt!) He didn't reveal any information about anyone in particular but he did make it clear that playing in 2 FNMs each week is both plausible and viable. He had a thread on his Facebook wall with some comments from very people. One where I was called out for failing to address being able to play in multiple FNMs (I thought I covered that it could happen but I didn't analyze what would happen if I played in multiple FNMs myself) and one from someone else encouraging people to recruit heavily for their FNM in order to raise free participation points.

Ok, so multiple FNMs seems to be the way to go if the goal is to make the championship. (The standings have updated and now two people are on top with 108 points!) I'm still not sure that's even something I really want to work at, but I thought it would be worth looking into to see what it would take if I did want to. I started by clicking on the 'find events' tab on the points site and filtering for stores around my postal code which hold FNMs. Then I went to each of the stores (some of which are actually in other cities and impossible to get to after work) listed there and went to their webpages to find what the details of their events were, listed below: (note, some stores didn't have a web page and I'm not one for calling people unless I have to...)

Friendly Troll - Standard - Friday, 7-11pm
Friendly Troll - Standard - Saturday, 3-9pm (!?!)
Hairy T North - Standard - Friday, 6:30pm
401 Games - Draft - Friday, 6pm
Dueling Grounds - Standard - Friday, 6:30pm
Dollys - Draft - Friday, 6pm
Legend's Warehouse - Unspecified - Friday, 6pm
Heavy Support - Draft - Friday, 6:30pm
Heroes World - Draft - Friday, 5:30pm

The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that one of the FNMs is actually on Saturday! This doesn't sound like Friday, or like night, but I could definitely see how I could have a shot at 100 points in a week if I was able to play 6 rounds of standard on Saturday to go along with a draft on Friday. I've never really played much FNM (that whole sitting on rating thing coupled with not enjoying being around people in general) but holding it on a Saturday didn't really seem ok to me. I searched for the FNM rules and the very last one is that it has to be held on a Friday. Huh. I figured I'd ask Mr Turian about it to see if maybe that was how playing in two events was happening and he said it wasn't allowed. So much for that.

So as things stand, I don't have a way to get this done. Of course, I could take the advice of the other person and work on building up a community of people looking to start a second FNM later in the day. Find a store willing to run an FNM at 5:30 and then another at 11pm, say. Then find enough people to show up to each one to bump up the participation points. It wouldn't happen right away but it's certainly plausible to get it set up for next year. Maybe even for Nationals qualifying season.

Alternatively, set one up to start at like 1pm, then one at 7pm. Or maybe the best of all worlds and set one up at 1pm, one at 6pm, and one at 11pm. 15 rounds of Magic every Friday and an awful lot of points on a weekly basis...

Of course there are all kinds of problems with those plans. I work a full time job, for one, so starting at 1pm just couldn't work for me. I could split my vacation up and take a half day off each week, maybe, but that only gets me to 20 weeks (and that's assuming I skip WBC which is _not_ happening). I might have been able to organize such a thing 13 years ago in New Brunswick where I actually knew the people who owned the card stores and knew the players in the area but as it stands now I don't know anyone who works in a store or really any of the current players. That doesn't make it impossible, it just makes it harder... And why put in a bunch of work trying to organize strangers when I could just go home and play Final Fantasy?

I'm also not sure I have it in me to keep at it for 52 straight weeks. I'd certainly be up to draft twice every Friday every week, that's not a problem at all... It's going out in public and being around people week after week. Do I really trust myself to get on the bus after work every Friday and not just audible into playing League of Legends? Heck, I could just go draft on Magic Online with awesome music on and probably be happier.


So, could someone in Toronto make it to the FNM championship? Unless I'm missing something pretty substantial, no. Not as things stand. Could the community here develop into one which could qualify someone in the future? I think so, if people were really willing to work at it. Am I willing to work at it? No. When they announce where Nationals is next year and how exactly to qualify I'll revisit the topic but for now I think I'm going to tag out. I may well go back to FNM every now and then (especially when Innistrad comes out!) but not with the goal of earning enough planeswalker points to qualify for anything since it really is out of reach for now. (And I guess when you're taking 48 people total from across the US and Canada it's bound to be a little out of reach no matter how things are set up!)