Planeswalker Points: Examples

I got two comments to yesterday's post which both said pretty much the same thing. My brother commented on Facebook that the new system pretty much destroys any chance he has of qualifying for anything on 'rating' anymore. He'd qualified for a few Nationals and a Pro Tour or two, I think, on rating a few years ago. Now that isn't an option at all. He works shift-work so he has to miss at least half of the Friday Night Magic events and they're just worth too many points. Sthenno commented that he thought the FNM multiplier was going to be a problem since it's likely to bring all the wanna-be and up-and-coming pros out of the woodwork and decasualify the experience for new players.

My gut feeling is that they're both right. FNM in particular is likely to get swarmed by people who are trying to grind out points. They're going to be there for the points, not the fun, and that will likely hurt the experience for newer players. I for one rearranged my schedule at work so I can head down to 401 for their FNM event. I'm not convinced this is something I'm willing to commit to every week for a year but it's a possibility and I definitely need to get started right away if it's going to happen. The FNM at 401 is draft so I don't even need to scramble cards for a deck or anything.


I changed my DCI password yesterday and was able to head in and check on exactly where I earned all of my lifetime points. The way you earn points was applied retroactively the same way it will be applied now so the historical information should be relevant to the current situation. I figured it could be useful to take a look at how I'd actually earned points in the past to shed some light on where points are actually going to come from.


Friday Night Magic - FNM actually only makes up 1.8% of my total points but I've actually rarely attended FNM. In fact I've played in 6 of them ever. 2 were in Moncton, 1 was in Toronto, 3 were in Waterloo. I actually earned the most participation points out in Moncton which was a bit of a surprise. Both of the ones there got enough people to be worth 2 points just for showing up. 2 of the 3 from Waterloo and the 1 in Toronto were only worth 1 participation point. I imagine this is because there was one place to go for FNM in Moncton and there are several in Waterloo and Toronto so the players end up more spread out in the bigger cities. Pretty much all of these were 10 years ago though... I went 4-1 in one of them for a whopping 42 PWPs but mostly I was sub-500 and only getting around 20. I think if I actually cared I could likely expect to pull off a 3-2 record every week on average, and assuming 2 participation points that would get me 1716 FNM points across a year and 572 in a 4-month block.

Random Events - I'm lumping all x1 events in this chunk. For the most part these were sealeds or drafts held at prereleases. One was a grinder for Nats. These end up being worth not very much at all since they tend to small numbers of entries and rounds. 8-man drafts seemed like a great source of potential points (you could probably play 6 of them per day at Nationals if you weren't in the main event) but the most you can earn is 10 and a full half of the players will only get a single point. The most I ever earned from a random event was 17 when I went 4-0-1 in a 91 player prerelease sealed.

Regionals - One of the times I qualified for Nationals came when I made the semis at a Regionals event. I went 5-0-2 in the swiss and then 1-1 in the playoffs for a total of 6-1-2 and 120 points. This actually wasn't my most points earned at a Regionals since the year before I managed to turn my 0-2:pool start into a 7-2 finish. There were 233 people at the Regionals in Ontario compared to the 73 in New Brunswick (I flew out to 'visit family' and qualify for Nationals in a much smaller event) which was worth an extra 1 participation point. But with the 5x multiplier that was 5 more points and I also got 5 extra points from 1 win vs 2 ties for a total of 130 points. Even in my Turkish Prison Regionals I went 2-5 for 50 points.

Provincial Champs - I only played in these once, when they were 2-headed giant sealed. I teamed up with Jer and we managed a 4-3 finish with terrible cards. That was worth a mere 32 points. (2x multiplier)

Grand Prix Trial - These also seem to have a 3x multiplier like FNM. I've somehow only played in two GPTs in my life. I won one of them (3-2 followed by 3-0) for 60 points. I went 4-2 in the other, failed to make top 8 on breakers, but still got 45 points for my time. Even more than playing in FNM every week it seems like finding GPTs will be key. They have the same multiplier but attract more players and have more rounds.

Grand Prix - These are HUGE! I've played in 7 GPs in my life with very mixed results. I managed to go 0-1 drop at a GP in Montreal in 2001. That was worth 48 points. Just showing up and failing to win anything at all was better than my best FNM. The biggest GP I played in was in Toronto last year. It had 1361 players and was worth a full 64 points just for showing up. Looking at the breakdown for this event also reveals something interesting... I had a bye (from rating) and that bye counts as a win for points. 24 more points just for having a bye. So I could have signed up and dropped after round 1 and pulled in 88 points for my bus fare. I actually did a good deal better than that and ended the day at 6-3. I needed one more win to make day 2, but it was still worth 208 points. Yes, playing in one GP and not even making day 2 would be better than going 3-2 in a month and a half of FNMs. My total GP point earnings were {48, 120, 128, 160, 208, 248, 256}. The 256 is from when Jer, Adam, and I went 8-2-1 and came 8th in Pittsburgh. The 248 was a mediocre finish in a block constructed GP where I made day 2. (Boosted by the 3 byes I earned at the GPT I won!) I finished 8-6 for 248 points.

Pro Tour Qualifier - These make up the biggest chunk of my points and come in at almost 30% of my lifetime total. I've played in 29 of these, again with varying degrees of success. My lowest total comes from a PTQ in Moncton where I went 0-1 drop for a total of 15 points. It was sealed, my deck was bad, and I was sitting on my rating. Excluding those events where I dropped after 3 or fewer rounds to protect my rating I ended up with an average of 77 points. Winning even just 3 rounds was worth 60 or 65 points. On 5 occasions I got over 100 points out of a PTQ. In each case I'd made top 8. {5-1-2 for 105 points, 6-2-0 for 105 points, 6-1-1 for 110 points, 7-1-1 for 125 points, 7-1-1 for 125 points} If you're trying to grind up points for something it stands to reason that hitting all the PTQs you can is important.

Pro Tour - The most important things in terms of getting points. It took 29 PTQs to make up 30% of my points. 5 PTs make up 17% and I've never done well enough to make money. My lowest total from a PT is 144 points when I Blame Bung managed a dismal 2-4 record. Twice I managed a mediocre 3-3 record for 180 points. (In Kobe I even managed to start 0-3 and then got a 36 point bye.) My better totals were 324 from a 7-4 record with I Blame Bung and 336 points with a 7-6-1 record on my own. Making day 2 of a PT and doing merely ok is worth pretty much the same amount as 3 months of FNMing.

Nationals Grinder - For some reason the first grinder I played was treated as a random 1x event. The second grinder I played a few years later was a 5x event. And when you're talking about byes being worth weird points these things are single elimination brackets so they held one round with a few people to cut to a power of 2. This event in particular had 66 entrants so they actually gave out 62 byes in the first round. I forget the reason why (maybe someone dropped) but I actually ended up with a round 2 bye as well. 3 real rounds later and I was qualified for Nationals. I'd also 'earned' 95 points. 20 just for showing up, 15 for each bye and 15 for each real win!

Nationals - Talk about your cash cow! You're guaranteed at least 12 rounds just for showing up and with an 8x multiplier you're in for some real loving. In earlier years they hadn't figured out mixed events yet so they actually registered Nationals as 3 different tournaments. One tournament for the first 3 rounds of standard, one tournament for the next 6 rounds of draft, and one tournament for the last 3 rounds of standard. This meant three times the participation bonus! 88 points one year just for showing up. This year showing up was only worth 40 points. My lowest value from Nationals was 176 from a 5-5-1 record. My highest was 264 from a 7-4-1 record though that was also the year with the 88 participation points. Cutting those away my real highest was 248 from a 9-4 record.


What does that all mean? Well, hitting all the FNMs is a good start (and needed if you want to make it to the FNM Championship) but it's not going to be nearly enough. In many of the above events I'd dropped before the end result which cost me points but there's now no reason to do so. I don't have a rating to protect and in fact I have a lot to gain by just winning rounds. One of my best point results came from a Regionals where I started 0-2 and had no chance to make top 8. I ended up 16th after rattling off 7 straight wins but in terms of points earned those 7 wins were just as valuable as any other 7 wins. More even, since it was a 5x event!

Yesterday I was thinking hitting random events around town every day was going to be important. I'm now not as sure. Traveling to a GP seems like a much bigger deal. One GP is probably going to be worth 3 weeks worth of random events. Of course if you're already hitting all the GPs then adding on random events is only going to help your cause. (I now wonder what multiplier the big SCG events are going to have...)

Needing a high number of points to get free byes at GPs and then having those free byes turn into free points in the next season seems a little crazy. It really feels like someone who is just grinding out the GPs is going to get a decent boost out of that. Of course I can understand why they'd want to give a boost to the people traveling all over the place to their GP events so it doesn't seem terrible.

I worry that a lot of the free invites they're going to be giving out are going to go to people who won PTQs in the previous season. Doing well at a PTQ is worth a lot of points. Just going to that PT is worth a lot of points. A lot of points that someone who didn't qualify for the event simply can't get... But on the other hand that's pretty much how my brother got his rating high enough to qualify for things. Some low rated scrub who manages to go 7-6-1 at a PT (like I did in 2000) actually got an insane boost in rating and that boost carried over for more than just 4 months. If I didn't go to LA that year and do as well as I did then I probably don't qualify for 5 of the Nationals I've played in! My rating going into the PTQ I won was 1648. It was 1889 after the PT. Maybe it would have caught up anyway but LA was a definitely boost.

(Looking at it now I actually went up a lot at Nationals this year. I started at 1939 and ended at 2009. It's a shame rating won't mean anything anymore since I'm up to 23rd in Canada.)

Living in an area without access to high multiplier events like PTQs and GPTs is going to be a real detriment. I don't think they get PTQs out in the maritimes anymore so I doubt we'll see anyone from out there qualify for Nationals going forward except for via Regionals...

I have also heard that some stores can run more than one FNM each week. Some stores do a full top 8 and others just award prizes after X rounds. I think 401 only runs one FNM and doesn't do a top 8 which may actually mean I can't qualify for the FNM Championship playing at their store. I figure it will be worth seeing the results after they get posted up to see where I'd stand if I'd gone undefeated today and...

I am also curious to see if FNM attendance sees a huge spike this week. And if that growth is going to be sustainable or not.