MTG Arena: Efficient Card Acquisition

'Free to play' games have evolved over time to have more and more obscure monetization schemes. Humans are bad at making many decisions on a row and the developers have figured this out, so they tend to make things take more effort to figure out. The less clear it is what you're doing, the more likely you are to make a purchase that you wouldn't actually make with a clear head and perfect information.

You'll never find an actual price tag on a thing you want to buy. In League of Legends, for example, the new champion costs 7800 blue essence or 975 riot points. What does that even mean? Blue essence you get over time for playing the game, riot points you can buy with cash. 490 points for $5, with 'bonuses' if you buy in bulk. So Senna is priced at $9.95, but you can't spend exactly that amount. In this case the next highest amount you can actually spend is $10, so really close, but often that is not the case. They make you buy extra points and then you're committed to the platform by having more currency to spend later. But not too much more! You'll need to top up if you want to buy something else. The idea is you spend more now, so if you don't come back they get more than they would have with an actual price. And if you do come back you're hooked and more likely to spend more. And by having to look at all this math your brain gets a little overwhelmed, and if you have money to spare it's easy to just spend rather than work it out. They've also worked anchoring in there by giving you a base price for points but then giving you even more if you buy in bulk. Lots of marketing trickery going on.

MTG Arena has lots of this happening. Not necessarily maliciously evil, but it's certainly using things that worked in the past for other people and those things work by taking advantage of people. MTG Arena also seems to have extra systems making it more convoluted but I suspect this was more no one had an actual vision for how to do things so more people tacked things on that they thought was needed. It certainly has kept me from really figuring out what I should be doing to build a collection properly. But I've qualified for some sort of tournament so I need to play a wider variety of decks. So I need more cards. So I need to work this all out.

MTG Arena doesn't use a disenchanting system like Hearthstone does, so you never need to make a decision about keeping cards you've opened. You always keep them, you can't destroy them, and if you get more than the max amount you get a very minor boost elsewhere in your collection. I think this is an actively good decision. I've hated that I've had to blow up Hearthstone cards to build decks in the past because it actively hurts my collection to make short term progress and that's a bad feeling no matter which side you're on.

There are a bunch of different currencies going on. You've got gold, which you earn by doing daily quests and as tournament prizes. You've got gems, which you buy with money and earn as tournament prizes. You've got XP, which you earn by doing daily quests. You've got wildcards, which you earn by opening packs. You've got packs, which you can buy with gold, or gems, or cash, or earn as prizes, or earn from XP. And you have the individual cards that you can get by drafting, or playing sealed, or opening packs, or doing dailies, or as prizes, or from earning XP. They all switch back and forth in different ratios depending on different tournament formats!

But for now, all I really care about is getting more cards. How do I make best use of the different currencies in order to get more cards? Gold and gems are the two hard ones to look at, so I'll do the rest first and hope that makes it easier to look at those.

XP - There's a cap on how much XP you can earn and not really anything to spend it on. You can get at most 750 XP per day (first 10 wins and the daily quest) and every 1000 XP gets you a level on their mastery system. You do also get 3750 XP per week (first 15 wins) for a max of 9000 XP per week. There are 110 levels with rewards and 112 days in the season for a max of 144k xp. So you do have some extra to spare, but you really need to go hard to get all the rewards. (For every 1000 XP above the cap you get an extra uncommon for whatever that is worth.) You need to spend gems to get access to all the rewards, with the following being available.

everyone - 42 packs
old players - 6 packs, 10 uncommons
3400 gems - 20 packs, 2000 gems, 10k gold, 10 mythics, 3 rares

wildcards - These are how you actually make specific cards that you want. There are wildcards for each of the different types of cards (common, uncommon, rare, mythic) and nothing to do with them except trade them for cards. You earn more wildcards in one of three ways. You can open them in packs as a replacement for an actual card (1:3 packs for commons, 1:5 for uncommon, 1:24 for rare/mythic). For every 6 packs you open you get an uncommon wildcard and a rare wildcard. (Every 5 rare wildcards in this way are mythic instead.) And you can get wildcards out of 'the vault' which turns extra commons and uncommons into 3 uncommon, 2 rare, and 1 mythic wildcard. It takes 1000 extra commons to get this reward, with extra uncommons counting as 3 commons. You get these extras by opening packs and doing drafts/sealed events.

packs - Opening a pack gets you 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and a rare. (1 in 8 rares will be mythics instead) Getting your 5th copy of a common or uncommon gets you vault progress. A 5th copy of a rare gets converted into a different rare from the same set. If you own every rare you get 20 gems. Same with mythics except you get 40 gems when full. You also get 1/6th of an uncommon wildcard and 4/30ths of a rare wildcard and 1/30th of a mythic wildcard each time you open a pack.

individual card rewards - Daily reward uncommons have a 9/80 chance to become a rare and a 1/80 chance to become a mythic. If you already have 4 of the assigned card you get vault progress, 20 gems, or 40 gems.

gold - 1000 gold gets you a pack

gems - 200 gems gets you a pack

Ranked draft events cost 750 gems or 5000 gold. You draft 3 packs and keep the cards, with 5+ copies replaced by vault progress or 20/40 gems. You do not get wildcards from the packs. You do not get wildcard progress for opening packs. You do get 14 cards per pack instead of 8. You also earn prizes based on how well you do in the event, which are packs and gems. If you have a 30% win rate then you rate to get 1.23 packs and 153 gems. A 50% win rate is worth 1.33 packs and 347 gems. A 70% win rate is worth 1.62 packs and 672 gems.

Traditional draft costs 1500 gems with the same cards drafted. It's best of 3 instead of best of 1, and the prizes are spikier. A 30% match win rate is worth 1.85 packs and 244 gems. 50% gets you 4.4 packs and 1350 gems. 70% match win rate is 6.9 packs and 2361 gems.

Sealed aren't up right now, but the info for the last sealed shows it was 2000 gems to join and you got the cards from 6 packs. You don't get to rare draft them. You always won 3 packs and then scaling gems based on your wins. 30%-524, 50%-1002, 70%-1672

Standard events cost 95 gems or 500 gold. The rewards are gold and three uncommon cards. The cards have upgrade chances based on how many wins you get. The gold return is 230 for 30%, 410 for 50%, and 715 for 70%. As for card upgrades, you have a 7% chance of an upgrade with 4 or fewer wins,. A guaranteed upgrade (and 6% more) at 5 wins. And another guaranteed upgrade (and 5% more) at 6 or 7 wins.

Traditional standard is 190 gems or 1000 gold, with a best of 3 format. Prizes again are 3 uncommons and some gold. Gold returns are again spikier, with only 415 for 30%, 1470 for 50%, and 2396 for 70%. The card upgrades are better here, but not twice as good so you definitely lose out here compared to the best of 1 event.

Ok, so, let's assume I'll hit the 70% win rates for everything except ranked draft, where 50% is more reasonable. (The problem with ranked draft is it pairs by rating, not by record in the draft, so I expect to only play good players the whole time. The other events aren't on the ranking system so I expect to get a decent mix of everyone interested in playing events. Constructed I'd need an actual good deck to hit that, unfortunately, but let's pretend we get one.) For building a collection the main thing that matters is rares. Rare wildcards, in fact, since there are a lot of junk rares out there, but any rare is decent. For now I'm going to assert I get enough mythics, uncommons, and commons. I'm going to count a random rare as half as good as a rare wild card. Well, mythic wildcards I'll count as rare wildcards even though they're worse because if they're worth nothing I won't have enough and it makes things a little easier for my spreadsheet.

An opened pack is worth .7385 rares. Constructed uncommon rewards are actually worth .64 rares if you win 70% of the time. The best of 3 constructed uncommons are worth 1.16 rares. A limited pack is worth .557 rares, but you do get some selection in a draft and can choose to rare draft the shock lands and not the garbage rares. And if you do end up with most of the rares you can get small gem rebates.

So a ranked draft is 5000 gold or 750 gems for 2.65 rares and 347 gems. This is a better use of gems than buying packs (you spend the gems that would buy 2 packs to get 2.65 rares). It's actually a bad use of gold compared to buying packs.

A traditional draft is 1500 gems for 6.77 rares and 2361 gems. If you could actually win 70% of your matches this would be an absurd rate of return. I feel like this can't actually be a fair potential win rate. Looking at a 50% win rate is 4.94 rares and 1350 gems which is still really, really good.

Sealed is 5.56 rares and 1672 of your 2000 gems back. Or 1002 of your 2000 gems back at 50% win rate. So just worse than the traditional draft, but also probably an easier place to get a high win rate.

Standard events are both essentially infinite ways to grind up small amounts of value. They don't actually make wildcards is the big problem, so while you can still use the random rares they both seem good. They do also let you build up gold to spend on something else. That something else could be packs, but probably it should be drafts so that you can launder the gold into gems in order to do more drafts.

It's really not much clearer now than it was before, but I think what I've learned going forward is that sealed events are actually a pretty good deal. They only show up right after a set is released so saving up some gems to do some for the next set makes sense. Beyond that if you have a good constructed deck you should grind cards in constructed tournaments. Drafting should be used to convert gold into gems, and then the gems should be spent drafting or sealeding.

New cards likely get banned tomorrow, so it seems like I need to see what happens there, then build a new deck and play tournaments for uncommon upgrades. I should also spend most of my uncommon wild cards to make it more likely I get vault progress out of drafting.

Vintage Super League

For the last month and a half Randy Buehler has been streaming weekly vintage Magic matches from an event called Vintage Super League. It's basically 10 famous Magic players (some from the Hall of Fame, some current active pros, some famous from the vintage tournament scene itself) playing in a round robin tournament. They can switch vintage decks every 3 weeks and all of the matches are played on Magic Online and streamed through Twitch. The production values of the stream have evolved over time and they've now got it set up so you can see the cards in hand of both players live. They also bring in 2 people for each game to comment on the games as they're happening, or to comment on previous games in the event, or the metagame around the event, or just to tell stories of days gone by. I'm finding it to be very entertaining to watch, and more people should check it out. Tuesday nights, or there are VODs available on Randy's YouTube page.

Randy is at 2-4 after 6 weeks and made a comment on stream this week about how he's now more worried about making sure he doesn't come last as opposed to trying to make the playoffs. (Top 4 advance, with ties broken by playing more Magic because who doesn't want to see more games of vintage?) With almost half the field advancing my gut feeling is a winning record should be good enough a reasonable chunk of the time. 2-7 is probably tied for last but I'd think 5-4 is probably tied for 4th. I wanted to verify that gut feeling, and what better way to do so than by turning to good old Sports Club Stats? (That's a website that simulates the results of a league by 'playing it out' hundreds of thousands of times. I've used it with Blood Bowl leagues and liked looking at the numbers it generates.) So I took the liberty of building a league on there...

I set the tiebreakers up to be 'playoffs' but I'm not experienced enough with the system to know what that means. If 3 people get to 6+ wins and 2 people get to 5-4 how is it going to treat the chances of making the playoffs for those people? 100%? 50%? Adding up all of their numbers gets me to exactly 400% of everyone making the playoffs, which is exactly 4 people in every scenario. So my guess would be if the simulation results in a tie it assigns that as a proportional berth in the top 4. Meaning the numbers it gives are not the odds of making it to a play-in game, but the odds of making it out of a play-in game. So the odds of making it to a play-in game are understated. I'm also not sure if the weighted odds make more sense in a league like this or the 50-50 odds. Especially given the players can change decks every 3 weeks I don't know that your chances of beating currently 1-5 Bob Maher are significantly better than your chances of beating currently 5-1 Steve Menendian. (The weighted system assumes that because someone is 5-1 they're a harder match and has them win more of their games going forward. It's often a reasonable assumption to make, but maybe not here.) It's interesting to look at both numbers, anyway, though for now I'm just going to go with 50-50.

According to the site Randy's 2-4 position will get him down to 10th place 9% of the time. Most of those are 0-3 finishes, but he can actually get to 4-5 and still finish 10th. On the other side he makes it up to 4th place (or higher) 5% of the time. Almost always from 3-0 finishes, but there are chances to get there even with a 2-1 result. What surprises me most is that the 3-0 finish is only good enough for a top 4 spot 38.5% of the time. I'm guessing the weirdness with the play-in game really takes shape here. It's hard to imagine 5-4 being a clean break to the top 4, especially with 2 people already at 5-1 and 2 more at 4-2. But I can't think of a way to make the site handle this gracefully, so we're stuck with what we have. Just know that the odds have to be better than 5% since 5% is the number after simulating the play-in games from any ties for 4th. And if you consider 3 or 4 way ties for 4th you could end up with a significantly bigger number than just 5%. (A 2 way tie for 4th cuts out half of your advances, but a 4 way tie cuts out 75% of your advances!)

The bottom line? The last 3 games are still super relevant even for someone at 2-4. Getting to 5-4 isn't guaranteed to make the play-ins (looking at Steve Menendian I can find an entry where he gets to a 6-3 record and comes 5th) but it's definitely still live. People roll a 20 on a d20 ALL THE TIME!

Magic PTQ Changes

A year or so ago Matt told me about a local PTQ that broke some records and came in at apparently 367 players. I'm cherry picking a little, but one of the GPs I attended back in University (Pittsburgh) only had 234 people! That was a team tournament with I think 24 people qualifying for the Pro Tour. To have 50% more players with 4% of the slots on the line is a pretty big difference! When I heard how big that PTQ was I decided I was almost certainly done with trying to play Magic at a high level. The switch to Planeswalker Points over the old ELO system had really made it so that running a PTQ was my only hope and the idea of playing a locally run event with several hundred players is super unappealing.

Earlier today Wizards announced changes to the PTQ system that help fix that problem. They realize they have too many people trying to qualify in some areas (a good problem to have I'm sure) and decided to add an extra step into the qualification process. Now you need to win a tournament in order to qualify for a PTQ in order to qualify for the PT. They're letting every single official store run one preliminary tournament each season and then they're going to run a small number of PTQs that are only open to people who won a preliminary tournament. It doesn't matter where you won a preliminary tournament; it lets you play in any PTQ on the planet. But you can only play in one PTQ per PT.

The PTQs themselves are going to be put on by primary event coordinators and will grant 4 or 8 slots based on attendance with the breakpoint being at 128 people. This feels like a good size to me. They probably won't be so big they'll be overwhelming and if they are they'll have a good enough return on investment to justify showing up.

Potential worries are how many people are going to end up showing up to these local store events and just where they're going to locate the PTQs. There are only going to be 16 for all of the US and Canada which makes me wonder where exactly someone out in, say, New Brunswick is going to need to go in order to play in a PTQ. I wonder how many of the ~3100 stores are out in that area... And if Toronto is getting several hundred people for a PTQ how many are they going to get for a local qualifier for a PTQ? The same several hundred? Or did a bunch of those people travel from several hours away for the PTQ and won't bother to come for a PTQQ?

I'm tentatively encouraged by the announcement. While I didn't have any desire to learn a Magic format enough to run a 400 person PTQ for 1 invite I could totally see going out to a local sealed deck event for 40 people. Then if I win that I don't see any reason why I wouldn't want to run a 80 person PTQ for 4 invites. 80 people is very manageable. 4 slots is a good reward. Only getting to play 1 PTQ in a season is fine for someone who wasn't going to play in a huge PTQ in the current system anyway!

It's probably a lot worse for someone who travels a lot to hit all the PTQs in a region, but I don't feel so bad for those people. Especially since Wizards is adding more GPs onto the schedule! I feel like a GP is a better format for someone who wants to travel and play a lot of extra Magic to qualify for the Pro Tour and PTQs are better left for giving more local players a chance. (I do say this as someone who won a PTQ in a different province so it is a little hypocritical of me...)

Maybe I'll get back into Magic...

Magic 2014

I saw that Magic 2014 was on sale during the Steam holiday event and that it had Steam cards. I'd heard good things about the game series though I didn't know anything about it except it was based on Magic the Gathering in some way. It hit pretty much all of my game splurge buying criteria so I picked it up. It made it to the top of the heap of things to try, actually, and I played it some last week.

You basically start off by playing a theme deck. They don't seem to be the actual M14 theme decks, but the idea is pretty similar. Win a game against the computer to add a new card to your deck. The cards that get added seem to be predetermined and aren't more basic lands so you need to go in and edit your deck every couple of wins or you end up with a land light deck. But it does give the feeling of having a game plan in mind and then getting to refine it as you play the deck more and more.

You can also play sealed deck where it opens you some random packs and you build a deck. Win a game or two and you get to open another pack to add it to your sealed deck. I don't know if the cards are fixed across computers or not but the cards I opened were pretty sweet. I had 2 time warps, a tutor, 2 guys who let you regrow a spell, and 2 gravediggers. I didn't have any big creatures but I kept winning by getting a couple 2/2s into play and then just taking 3 or 4 turns in a row and slowly whittling my opponent down. Fun times! And it gives people a taste of what it can feel like to crack open a booster pack...

On top of that there are some challenges where you need to figure out how to win from a given board position like the old puzzles from Skrye magazine. All but the last one were what I'd call trivial but I have a bit of experience with Magic board positions. I liked that it existed in the game.

Every now and then the game would basically spam me to give Wizards more money. But they didn't do it the way most games do by offering in game items or by blocking my ability to play... Instead they were advertising Friday Night Magic events. Links to webpages to search for nearby stores, that sort of thing.

All in all Magic 2014 seemed like a pretty good way to try to get people to start playing Magic. I had fun with it for a couple days but it was really very easy for an experienced Magic player. I'm glad I bought it and I think it's a good game for Wizards to have existing because I'm sure it will get at least some video game players to start playing paper Magic.

Grand Prix: Toronto 2013

At the end of November there's going to be a big Magic: the Gathering Grand Prix out by the airport in Toronto. I assume it's going to be big because apparently there was a PTQ in the same location that got in the neighbourhood of 350 people. That's an insane number of people for a PTQ! The last event I played in was a PTQ in Toronto back in 2011 and it only had 84 players. The last limited GP Toronto that I went to, in 2010, had 1361 people in it. If it goes up at the same rate you'd be looking at more than 5000 people! I can't imagine that actually happening, but I'm expecting a really large number of people to show up.

I haven't played Magic in person in more than 2 years and I haven't played much online either, but I still feel like I should head on out to a local GP. Last time around I had two byes thanks to my limited rating but unfortunately that system went out the window since then. Now byes are awarded based on recent Planeswalker points of which I have none. I could get 2 byes if I find and win a GP trial, or I could show up with no byes and need to go 7-2 or better to make day 2.

Finding a GPT is unfortunately easier said than done. There's a link on the GP overview site but it doesn't seem to do what it says it does. Searching Google is no better. Eventually my brain suggested I look on mtgontario and lo and behold they had an event list. No idea if it's comprehensive or not, but it at least has SOME info, which is more than I could get out of the Wizards site. There are GPTs on the 27th of October and on November 3rd and 17th. There's also a PTQ on Nov 9th. I have plans to stay awake for 25 hours until 8am Nov 3rd so that trial is probably out. This weekend is probably too soon, and there's an online PTQ too. But maybe I can fit the one on the 17th in... Of course the listing on the mtgontario site doesn't say where it is... *sigh*

I also need to, you know, learn the new set. I get a brief overview of things by reading Matt's Facebook posts but playing enough to understand the tricks that exist seems important. I did a swiss draft online last night and went 2-1 with what felt like a terrible deck, but this format might just be really screwy. I sided in land destruction in all three of my matches because people seem intent on paying 8 mana for things. Of course my deck mostly cost 4 and 5 so I can't really talk. I drafted several rares that ended up being underwhelming, like the new Fact or Fiction. I had the red mythic god and won the game I played him on turn 4 but every other time I drew him he had no impact on the game. Devotion is weird, and I think I needed to ignore a second colour entirely and just play a lot of cheap red creatures to power him up. Try to win before people can pay their 8 mana! I liked the red common monstrous creature who cost 4 for a 3/3 trample and then 6 more to power up to 6/6. He's probably even better in a deck with cheap stuff so you have something to do when you hit 6 instead of my super slow deck that had other 6 drops competing for time.

There's an online PTQ this weekend. I'll need to wake up early to play in it (it starts at 10am) but it's probably worth doing just for the experience with sealed deck.

Drafting Again?

Recently lots of people I know have started talking about Magic. James started a new blog where he's mentioned Magic a few times. Matt keeps posting pictures of game stats from online drafts. Randy and Josh through comments on some Starcity threads about coverage. And there's been some Hall of Fame discussion  as well. I was up early this morning and decided to see if I could try out a draft of this crazy new set and blog about it despite knowing next to nothing about the set at all.

For the most part, it worked out fine. I was a little surprised at how expensive the draft was (25 tickets for an 8 man draft seems high to my memory) but I figured it was worth a shot anyway. I knew the set had lots of cool decks you could build if you drafted the right cards. Thallids, or 5 colour green, or rebels, or giants. But I didn't know what cards actually existed let alone which were good for any given archetype. So I pretty much drafted at random. I raredrafted a Blinkmoth Nexus to start, and then took Etched Oracle second and tried to build a green centric sunbursty deck. I was really looking forward to posting the draft itself to get feedback on what other people thought I should have been taking.

That all got shot to hell, however, when I tried to find the log of the draft to send through the parser I used to generate my previous draft posts. It turns out that Magic Online doesn't log your drafts by default. You have to drill down 4 levels deep through menus and buttons to turn that option on, and I hadn't done that yet on this computer. So in terms of being able to generate a draft blog the morning and the $25 was wasted.

It boggles my mind why this is an option. Who is the person that actively wants this feature disabled? Who's hard drive is so small that they can't stand to have a second small file generated each time they draft? I'm not suggesting everyone needs to have it turned on, but that no one needs to have it turned off. Most people probably don't care one way or the other and a few people want it on. That it occupies screen real estate on an option menu seems bad. Options should be for things that some people want on, and some people want off, and that doesn't feel like the case here to me.

I spent some time in the tub this afternoon thinking about how that option got in there and couldn't come up with an answer I really liked. My best guess is that someone coded this feature in on a lark at the request of a friend and to play it safe they added it as an option that was turned off. So if something went terribly wrong with the feature (maybe it wiped out hard drives or something because of a weird bug) the general public wouldn't be hurt by it. And then once it got enough actual use to test it no one bothered to go back and default it to on or remove the option entirely and just force it on. Or maybe there's some good reason for it to exist, and my inexperience with actual software development is keeping me from seeing it. I don't know. But it frustrated me today that it exists like this, and that makes me sad.

At any rate, I ended up not even playing green at all despite drafting 9 green cards including tromp, moldervine cloak, and 2 search for tomorrows. My 2 etched oracles and 2 skyreach mantas also got cut. I ended up playing a UR artifacts deck with some card draw and a lot of 4/4s for 6 or 7. It felt like my deck was full of mediocre cards and didn't have a strong archetype. I guess 2 frogmites and 3 myr enforcers with 11 artifacts is a mediocre try at an affinity archetype? I don't know. (Turns out I had 2 coloured artifacts and a blinky too, so maybe 14 artifacts?)

My deck!

1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Perilous Research
1 Shrapnel Blast
1 Æthersnipe
1 Arcbound Worker
1 Rift Bolt
1 Jhoira of the Ghitu
1 Æther Vial
1 Tribal Flames
1 Epochrasite
1 Faerie Mechanist
1 Frogmite
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Logic Knot
1 Arcbound Stinger
1 Errant Ephemeron
1 Etherium Sculptor
4 Mountain
3 Myr Enforcer
2 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Frogmite
11 Island
1 Glimmervoid
1 Careful Consideration

Sideboard
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Brute Force
2 Skyreach Manta
1 Tromp the Domains
2 Search for Tomorrow
1 Trygon Predator
1 Raven's Crime
2 Etched Oracle
1 Moldervine Cloak
1 Grapeshot
1 Sylvan Bounty
1 Fiery Fall
1 Gleam of Resistance
1 Echoing Courage
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
1 Thundering Giant
1 Life from the Loam

I joined the first queue that filled up, which was a 4-3-2-2 draft. That was fine by me, because I wanted to have 3 rounds of games to blog about. It wasn't until the end of the first round when I saw that all the losers were eliminated that I remembered that the thing linking the 4-3-2-2 draft and the swiss draft isn't that they both allow 3 rounds guaranteed, it's that they both have substandard prize distributions for people who win a lot. Oh well.

Round 1 - Game 1

My opening hand is I, I, M, Epochrasite, Jhoira of the Ghitu, Frogmite, Perilous Research. I kept, and he played first. My first draw is Ethereum Sculptor. His turn 2 is to suspend Giant Duskwasp. I draw mountain and play sculptor. He plays Drag Down on my sculptor on his turn. I draw another mountain and play Jhoira.  He plays Penumbra Spider. I draw Myr Enforcer. Am I supposed to use Jhoira here? I don't know. He plays Dreamspoiler Witches on his turn and I Jhoira out epochrasite and enforcer. Just you wait 4 turns! I draw Shrapnel Blast (which I got 14th pick I think) and play my 5th land and froggie. His duskwasp comes into play and he cracks me for 7 down to 11 and plays a Stinkweed Imp. I draw an island, play it, and say go. He swings with the team, I research away a mountain into an island and a Thirst for Knowledge, then I chump spider with froggie and sac it to shrapnel his duskwasp. I draw another island, thirst into Errant Ephemeron, Myr Enforcer, and island. I pitch two islands, play a third, and say go. He swings with everything again, I chump with Jhoira and fall to 5. He plays another duskwasp. My team finally comes into play, I draw my 3rd Myr Enforcer, and concede since I can't cast Ephemeron and he has enough flyers to kill me.

Round 1 - Game 2 (sideboard out Jhoira, in Fiery Fall)

I choose to play first. My hand is I, M, Rift Bolt, Thirst for Knowledge, Errant Ephemeron, Arcbound Stinger, and Logic Knot. Any land in the first couple turns and I'm gold so I keep. My first draw is Epochrasite and I suspend ephemeron. He landcycles main phase on his turn 2, getting an island. He didn't play any islands or blue cards in game 1. I draw Myr Enforcer on my turn 3 and play stinger. He has no play on turn 3. I draw mountain and play it. He plays Imperiosaur on turn 4, and I thirst into Relic of Progenitus, Faerie Machinist, and Aethersnipe. I pitch the relic. That's why I'm playing it! I draw mountain and play the machinist which gets me Etherium Sculptor. He swings for 5, plays a 5th land, and says go. Ephemeron comes into play and I draw a mountain which I play. For the record I'm playing 11 islands and 4 mountains and now have in play 1 island and 4 mountains. And have a UU counter in my hand. *sigh* At any rate he might have a kill spell or something so I cast my stuff pre combat since I need affinity to cast it all. Out comes sculptor, epochrasite, and enforcer. I swing with my first 3 creatures and he Death Rattles the ephemeron. He takes 3 making it 15 all. He swings, I chump with epochrasite. He plays Eternal Witness getting back the rattle. I draw island and swing with my team and he chumps enforcer with witness. He plays Drag Down to finish off the enforcer. I bust out Aethersnipe to bounce his 5/5. He replays it on his turn. I draw island and swing for 3 in the air. He plays Giant Dustwasp and says go. I draw another island, Rift Bolt his wasp, and swing with my team. He tries to kill the snipe with the death rattle from before, but I Logic Knot it and he scoops.

Round 1 - Game 3

He choose to go first. My hand is I, I, I, Thirst for Knowledge, Thirst for Knowledge, Careful Consideration, Faerie Machinist. Well, either he kills me early or I will win through sheer number of cards drawn. I keep. I draw Aethersnipe on my first turn and play an island. He has no play but land on turn 2. I draw Shrapnel Blast and also have no turn 2 play. He has Stinkweed Imp and all 3 colours of mana on turn 3. I draw Blinkmoth Nexus and play it. He swings for 1 and has no play. I thirst into Relic of Pregenitus and two islands, pitching the relic. I draw Tribal Flames, play an island, and the machinist which digs up Frogmite. I discard an island at end of turn due to having 8 cards in hand. His turn 5 is a comes into play tapped land. I draw Glimmervoid, play it, and froggie. He has Masked Admirers on turn 6 which is a little scary if the game goes super long. He might be able to match my card draw! I draw island, play it, and carefully consider to draw Myr Enforcer, Fiery Fall, Arcbound Worker, and Errant Ephemeron. I discard island and worker, suspend ephemeron, and say go. He swings for 3 and I'm afraid of the recursion so I don't trade. He busts out Imperiosaur. I draw foil Frogmite. I decide my play is to bounce his 5/5 with my 4/4 and then kill it next turn with one of my 5 damage spells. I also swing with my team to try to clear stinky out of the way for the 4/4. He obliges by trading with my faerie. He then spends his turn Death Rattling my frogmite and Eternal Witnessing it back. In order to have the mana to do this he had to remove stinky from his graveyard. This does kill off glimmervoid though, which is my only source of red mana...

Until I draw mountain, that is, which is my very next turn. I play it and froggie. His turn is Penumbra Spider and Riftsweeper which makes me very sad. My Ephemron only has 2 suspend counters on it. Thankfully he either doesn't know what riftsweeper does or thinks stinky is more important as he shuffles stinky back in. I draw another mountain and play enforcer for 6. He finally replays Imperiosaur. My 4/4 flyer enters play, I draw Logic Knot, and I swing with the flyer. He chumps with the spider. I say go. He swings back with the 5/5 and I decide to hold my removal by double blocking it with aethersnipe and froggie. Snipe dies. He has a second Imperiosaur. I thirst at end of turn into mountain, Epochrasite, and Perilous Research. I pitch Epochrasite. I then draw Myr Enforcer on my turn. I swing with ephemeron, he death rattles, I logic knot. I am a little worried about Tromp the Domains (I passed a second one) so I use tribal flames on his 2/2 leaving shrapnel mana up. He swings with his 5/5 and I again block with a 4/4 and a 2/2. He has Moldervine Cloak for his spider token, which I kill with shrapnel blast and froggie. He plays his last card, Reach of Branches. I research into Rift Bolt and Aethervial, saccing a mountain, and draw island on my turn.

The board state is now me with 7 lands, 16 life, 5 cards in hand, and a 4/4 flyer. He has 9 lands, 14 life, no cards, and a 3/2, a 2/1, and a 2/5 in play. I swing with ephemeron and play vial and enforcer. Then I realize I have 1 mana left over and should have swung with my nexus too. At least I'm noticing these mistakes as I'm playing! He dredges the cloak back making his witness 5/4 and swings with the 3/2 and the 5/4. I kill the 3/2 and fall to 11. He is dead once I use my 2 burn spells in hand (1 on the 2/5 and 1 on his face).

Round 2 - Game 1

I'm on the play and my opening hand is I, I, I, M, Blinkmoth Nexus, Glimmervoid, Aethersnipe. What a terrible hand. I keep. He plays plains and Bonesplitter on his turn. I draw Shrapnel Blast, slap myself in the head for not playing blinky first, and play it on turn 2 instead. He has nothing but land on turn 2. I draw Logic Knot and decide not to swing with blinky in order to keep counter mana up. He land cycles at end of turn but has no play on turn 3 either. I draw Arcbound Worker and play it leaving blast and knot mana up. He plays Cenn's Enlistment on his turn which I decide to counter since that seems good with his equipment. I draw Frogmite, activate nexus, swing for 2, and play froggie. He ditches a land to replay the enlistment from the graveyard. This is the first time I've ever seen retrace in action and it seems awesome. I draw Faerie Machinist, play it to get Myr Enforcer, play Glimmervoid, and activate blinky to swing for 4 after he declines blocking. His turn is equip a token, swing for 3, and play Saltfiend Recluse. I draw Thirst for Knowledge. It looks like this is a game I might be able to win on tempo alone (despite the 6 land and a 6 drop opener) so I bust out snipe on his recluse and swing with the team. This time he trades a token for the worker, and I buff my faerie. He entwines a blinding beam on my 4/4 and cracks for 3. I draw island, swing for 1 with blinky, and play my enforcer. He has Bound in Silence for the enforcer and swings for 3 more. He is now at 9 and I have 9 power in creatures... I know there's an Angel's Grace in the pod as I opened one and he has a white up... Before I can make a plan to play around it he concedes.

Round 2 - Game 2 (again siding out Jhoira)

He plays first. I have I, M, Aether Vial, Rift Bolt, Etherium Sculptor, Myr Enforcer, and Careful Consideration which I keep. He suspends Ivory Giant. I draw island and play vial. He plays Rathi Trapper. I draw Shrapnel Blast and play sculptor. He plays Saltfield Recluse. His board is hard to attack through. I draw Frogmite which I play while suspending rift bolt. He says go without a 4th land. I bolt the trapper and he Test of Faith's it. I could blast in response but it'll only have 5 toughness so I can do that later. First I want to get my affinity on. I draw a second Frogmite so I play it and enforcer off of my 3 lands, with a mana to spare. He finds a 4th land and taps out for Cenn's Enlistment. I draw island, shrapnel blast away vial and trapper, and swing with enforcer which gets shrunk by recluse so he takes 2. Giant arrives, tapping my team. He swings for 5 and Bound in Silences my enforcer. I draw Tribal Flames and rather than use it to kill his annoying recluse I decide to consider into island, Epochrasite, Myr Enforcer, and Perilous Research. I have a prime target for that in the bound enforcer but I pitch it and the island. I swing with my team and the recluse means I only do 2 damage. He does 5 back and enlists 2 more dudes. I draw mountain and finally flames the recluse. He shrinks a frog in response. I play out epochrasite and enforcer. Then I swing with my 2/2 and my 0/2. Oops! He decides 2 life is more important than his 2 guys and trades with the 2/2 instead of just killing the 0/2. Note he is at 16, and I am at 10. Then his turn is Blinding Beam. Gee, I wish that 0/2 was untapped and a 2/2... He then Path to Exiles epochrasite and swings for 5. I draw Aethersnipe and thanks to the bonus land from the path I can play it. I decide I need to win fast since every land he draws is 2 more tokens and I'm at 5. So I bounce Ivory Giant knowing full well if he plays it again I lose that turn. But he's 2 mana away from casting it for real and if he does that he isn't enlisting tokens.

My opponent comments that that was the best possible card I could have. I don't know anything about the set and tell him that, but I take his word for it since it seemed pretty hot. He does nothing. I draw Glimmervoid and swing with my team except my 1/2. He takes 10 down to 6. He plays Amrou Scout on his turn. I draw island, swing with the same guys, and he takes 2 down to 4 while chumping with both tokens. He has Bound in Silence for snipe. I draw another island and swing with everyone. He chumps enforcer, uses Otherworldly Journey to save his guy, and falls to 1. I did attack with my 1/2 this time so I might well die if the scout can find 2 more power somewhere. Like, say, a Bonesplitter. He doesn't have it, and concedes.

Round 3 - Game 1

I choose to play first and have an opener of I, M, M, Perilous Research, Thirst for Knowledge, Faerie Machinist, and Myr Enforcer. My opponent mulligans to 6 and only has island on turn 1. I draw island and say go. He plays a mountain and a Mogg War Marshal. I draw another island and say go. He pays echo and swings for 2. I thirst into Rift Bolt, Myr Enforcer, and island and decide to pitch research and island. I draw Aethersnipe on my turn and play Machinist who finds Aether Vial. He has War-Spike Changeling. I draw Epochrasite and play it while rift bolting his 3/3. I swing for 2 in the air. His turn is Reach Through Mists splicing on Dampen Thought and Glacial Ray killing my machinist. Uh-oh. I draw mountain and play vial and enforcer. I think I probably should have held onto vial in case I draw a second thirst. He has no play on his turn. I draw another Myr Enforcer and swing for 5. He double chumps the enforcer, but then using a second Reach Through Mists splicing Dampen Thought and Glacial Ray to finish it off. I'm down to 15 cards in my deck. His turn is an island and go. I play snipe on his remaining goblin token and swing for the fences but my opponent casts Glacial Ray splicing Dampen Thought and Dampen Thought and I'm down to 6 cards in my deck with him having 2 dampens in hand. I make him cast them before conceding in case he shows me more info and he does, by splicing Horobi's Whisper on as well despite not having a swamp.

Round 3 - Game 2

I choose to play first again and have an opener of I, I, I, M, M, Arcbound Stinger, Shrapnel Blast. Probably too slow, but I keep. He has no play on turn 1. I draw Relic of Pregenitus and play stinger. He has no play on turn 2. I draw Thirst for Knowledge and swing for 1. He has no play on turn 3. I thirst into swamp, Errant Ephemeron, and Fiery Fall and pitch the relic. Note I sided in the swamp, fall, and Raven's Crime in the hopes of stopping the dampen engine. I then draw mountain on my turn, suspect ephemeron, and swing for 1. He has a Latchkey Faerie. I draw Thirst for Knowledge and cast it mainphase finding Tribal Flames, Etherium Sculptor, and Frogmite. I decide to pitch froggie instead of 2 lands and play the sculptor. He has no play on turn 5 but land. I draw Logic Knot and swing with just the sculptor. He declines the trade. I then say go. His turn 6 is land and nothing else. I draw Raven's Crime, swing for 2, and go to work on his hand. He ditches island. End of turn he flashes out Pestermite and then swings in for 5. I was trying to not get milled and he's going to kill me with flyers! He prowls out a second Latchkey Faerie and I decide to counter it to deny him the card and to keep the flyers under control. Ephemeron comes into play but he counters it himself with Cryptic Command for a card draw. I draw Blinkmoth Nexus, pitch a mountain to crime him again (pitching Dampen Thought), and swing for just 1. I play blinky and say go. He 7 mana's out an Errant Ephemeron which I hit with Fiery Fall. I draw Glimmervoid and cash that in for a crime (Reach Through Mists). I finally cast flames on his 3/1 flyer (probably should have done that 5 turns ago) and swing for 2. His turn is Stingscourger on my stinger. I draw mountain, cash that in for a crime on his last card in hand. He casts it in response. It was Dampen Thought. So I've saved myself from being milled for 16 by siding in that crime. I have 15 cards in my deck. I replay stinger and swing with my 1/2 into his 2/1 and 2/2. He falls for my trap by blocking with his 2/2. I shrapnel blast his 2/1 saccing my stinger which puts the +1/+1 counter on my 1/2 right away.

His board is empty except land, he has no cards in hand, and he's at 12. I have a 2/3 and a blinky, no cards in hand, and 15 life. He does nothing on his turn. I draw Aethersnipe but have nothing of note to bounce so I just swing for 3. Maybe I should have swung for 2 and played my 4/4? He does nothing on his turn. I draw island and crime him, getting a mountain. I swing for 3. He does nothing again. I draw Jhoira. Huh, guess I forgot to side her out. Oh well, she's a body at least. Swing for 3 and play her. He plays Reach Through Mists and says go. I draw island and cash it in for a crime hitting mountain. He's at 3 and I swing for 5. He dies.

Round 3 - Game 3 (sided out Jhoira again for something)

He's on the play. My hand is I, I, M, Tribal Flames, Grapeshot, Shrapnel Blast, and Raven's Crime. I think I brought in the grapeshot to deal with all his 1 toughness dudes. I keep since I have my crime. Now I just need some black manas! He does nothing and I draw mountain. His turn 2 is suspend Errant Ephemeron. I am jealous, so I draw mine on my turn and suspend it back. He has Countryside Crusher on his turn which is very scary. I wish I had an artifact to sac to blast him! He had spent a lot of time sideboarding so I'm now worried he's sided out of dampen thought and the stupid crime in my hand won't do anything useful. I draw island on my turn and have no play. His turn reveals Hammerheim Deadeye and then he plays Fury Charm on his ephemeron which brings it out right now. He swings for 7, I'm at 13 and very scared of dying. I draw Arcbound Stinger and play it leaving 2 mana up. My plan is to chump block and sac it to kill something. My opponent then decides he doesn't like winning and plays his deadeye before attacking. No chumping for me! Unfortunately for him the trigger on that guy is not optional. So I sac my flyer to shrapnel blast his giant. He kills his own flyer with his second giant. And he doesn't have mana to pay the echo, so he loses that guy too. I draw mountain and say go. He has stalled on 4 land but suspends another ephemeron. I draw Etherium Sculptor and play it. My ephemeron also arrives this turn and I punch him down to 16. He bounces my ephemeron with Stingscourger. I am sad. I held back a land last turn in case I needed to discard it to crime or thirst or consideration, but now I can't hard cast ephemeron right away if I draw a 7th land. On my turn I draw an island. So I play a land and say go. He echoes his guy and swings for 2. I draw Frogmite, play my 4/4 flyer again, and swing for 1. He has a 5th land and plays Cold-Eyed Selkie. I know he has a 3/1 flying rogue in his hand from his 2nd crusher reveal so I really don't want to let that guy hit me. On my turn I draw Thirst for Knowledge. I play it and draw Faerie Machinist, Arcbound Worker, and Rift Bolt. I pitch froggie, play the worker, suspend the rift bolt, and grapeshot away his board. I swing for 5 putting him at 10 and say go. His ephemeron comes into play swinging which knocks me to 7 and he has no play. I bolt his flyer and follow up with tribal flames to kill it off. I draw another thirst. I play machinist which finds Myr Enforcer. He has Pestermite to tap my 4/4. I swing for 2. He attacks back, I still don't want him prowling, so I trade faeries. He has War-Spike Changeling to gum up the ground. I draw Fiery Fall. I cast thirst into island, Epochrasite, and Perilous Research. I pitch crime and island and play epochrasite and enforcer. Then I swing for 4 in the air, knocking him to 4. His turn is Reach Through Mists and Latchkey Faerie. But now he is tapped out so I use fall to kill the faerie and kill him with ephemeron.


Victory! I had no idea what I was doing, and I got screwed by the client to lose the draft, but I did manage to win the tournament which salvages pretty much the entire entry fee. Woo!

Diablo III Open Beta Weekend

This weekend Blizzard is running a fully open beta for Diablo III. Multiple of my Facebook friends were really excited for the announcement and one of my LoL teammates had bad lag last night as his roommates were busy downloading the client. The game itself launches in 24 days and I'd have to think the beta will be pretty polished by this point. This is likely either just a server stress test, a PR move, or an attempt to get a lot of people to download the client now to lessen the strain on the servers come launch.

I for one am really uninterested in playing in the beta. Characters are capped at level 13. I believe you're still capped at the first act. Nothing you do this weekend will carry over to your live account. The way I look at it, I have lots of games I want to play. I have no need to play an unfinished game with no save state. Games also tend to have a number of hours before they get boring and I don't want to waste any of my D3 hours now. Maybe if I had nothing else to do, if I felt I'd gain really useful information, or if I wasn't able to afford the game when it launched I might feel differently but as it currently stands not so much.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes beta tests are really good. I was involved in the Magic Online alpha/beta and it was great. No features were turned off and I actually couldn't afford to play Magic in real life as much as I did in the test. No cards carried over but I did learn a lot about the cards. (Probably my best standard season ever was after that test. Go Tog!) Perhaps most importantly I was actually able to impact changes to the game. I also spent a lot of time in the StarCraft II beta. No really chance of making changes there but at least the game was fully functional. They were doing the test as a balance test so they needed to get people playing against each other with all the units as they tweaked numbers. Each game is self contained as well so you wouldn't lose any progress (except towards achievements I guess).

At any rate, if you're interested in playing a little D3 this weekend you can go play in the beta. I won't see you there!

Swiss Tournament Byes

Some of my old Magic friends from way back when I lived out in New Brunswick are putting together a tournament series out in the Maritimes which sounds interesting. They have a recently set up forum set up here which is getting updated with more information over time about the series and just about Magic in the Maritimes in general.

One of the things they have planned is to award byes to the winners of the first 5 tournaments which get used in a big end of season event. My brother noticed this and was concerned that adding in byes would change how many rounds should be run in the tournament compared to the default 'number of rounds given number of entrants' chart. (Yes, pedantry runs in the family.) He suggested that it could make an interesting 'crunching the numbers' post and I'm all for getting topics to crunch without having to think them up myself. So, here we go...

Innistrad Draft 2

Typically when I'm going to do a draft write-up I decide before the draft that I'm going to do one. I don't draft any differently than I normally would but the idea is to not cherry pick drafts that make me look good or which seem interesting. Sometimes drafts are just normal things where I lose in the first round and I want to show them too.

This draft is not one of those. Matt commented on yesterday's draft that he thought the deck was fun and full of powerful cards. At the time he made that comment I was in the middle of another draft that had a deck that was even more fun and had way more powerful cards. It had some really crazy plays so I figured I'd write it up for today. At one point my opponent complained that my first 3 spells were rares and told me to stop playing rares. I told him I still had more to come. (I had 2 more in hand at the time and topdecked another the next turn.)

Buckle up and enjoy the wild ride!

Innistrad Draft 1

Magic Online is running three PTQs for Honolulu this weekend. One Friday, one Saturday, one Sunday. I managed to sleep through the start of the Friday one but I'm going to give the Saturday one a shot. I figured I should play a bit with the interface and such, so I did a draft today. Here's what happened! (This was a 4-3-2-2 draft, for reference.)

Innistrad PTQ

There was a PTQ for Honolulu in town today using the new set. It isn't out on Magic Online yet and I avoided playing in the pre-release a couple weeks ago due to my extreme dislike of huge crowds. (401 continues to claim it will cut off entrants at 64 people but actually took money from 129 people... It's generous to say they have room for 64.)

I spent some of yesterday and I bit this morning actually reading the card list for the set and hoped that would be good enough. How good are werewolves? Who knows! How do they even work? I don't know! Realistically I shouldn't have expected to do very well but I think I'm pretty good so I expected to go in and win. Smash!

At any rate, I went to bed very early yesterday since I was tired (7:30ish) and ended up waking up at 3:40 this morning. Plenty of time! I finished reading the set list and headed out to Matt's house to snag a ride.

They ended up getting 84 people which meant 7 rounds of swiss with a likely record of 5-1-1 needed to make top 8. The deck I registered had two foil rares in it which meant the card pool actually had 8 rares compared to the usual 6. A couple were dual lands but it also had a couple bombs. Sadly I didn't get it back. Instead I got what seemed to me to be a pretty weak card pool. I had one card which seemed like it could be a bomb (skirsdag high priest) and not a lot else going on. The rest of my black seemed pretty weak but it looked like I had a lot of cheap white and green humans. I had a black/green dual and a land searcher so I decided to spash the priest and an unburial rites into an aggressive white/green deck with three pieces of equipment.

Round 1 I have 1 land in the opener and mulligan into a 1 lander and mulligan into 2 lands. I end up getting flooded after that and only cast 3 creatures which all met creature removal. Games 2 and 3 my opponent stalled on mana and I beat him up with a bunch of cheap dudes. (He was playing double coloured spells in 3 colours I think so I'm not too surprised he got colour screwed a bit.)

Rounds 2 and 3 are very similar. I curve out in both games and quickly kill my opponents. My deck doesn't feel very powerful but an aggressive deck will sometimes just beat the opponent up when they don't have a good way to deal with the pressure.

Round 4 I have 1 land in the opener. I have a 1-drop (though it is equipment) and 3 2-drops including my bomb which I have yet to play. It's pretty unlikely I'll draw a black source to play him (I have no green so the land searcher won't help) but I decide to go for it. I tell my opponent I feel like losing and keep. I don't draw a land for 6 turns and unsurprisingly die. Game 2 I draw land and spells and demolish him with a fast start. (Turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 2/3 flyer, turn 3 5/5.) Game 3 my draw isn't quite as fast but I do play out my high priest. I'd sided in some removal which kills spirits and was able to use those to proc the priest. (Tap the priest and two other creatures to put a 5/5 flying demon token into play. You can only play this ability if a creature died this turn.) I used the Death Star and the Ace of Spades as demon tokens and blew him up with demons.

So I've started 4-0 and likely just need one more win in order to draw into the top 8.

Round 5 my opponent plays an early mayor. This is a flip werewolf that makes a 3/3 wolf every turn. It's a real problem if it ever flips. So what do I do? Decide to not play a spell on my next turn so I can keep tapper mana up. His mayor flips and destroys me. In retrospect I might win if I just play out a spell on that turn but it isn't clear. Doh. Game 2 he plays a cagebreaker (3/4 dude with a trigger that goes off when he attacks which puts a 2/2 wolf into play attacking for each creature in your graveyard) and that alone is enough to kill me. I don't have cards nearly as good as the mayor or the cagebreaker and have little in terms of removal so I got blown up. He was also playing a green/white beatdown deck but he had bombs, in colour, and they were less situational than mine. Also he drew his and I didn't draw mine.

Round 6 is essentially another mirror. He is playing white/black/green. None of the colours seems to be a splash as he has double coloured spells all over the place. He has 2 tappers, 3 rootwallas, 3 black kill spells... Basically his deck is like mine but a lot better if he draws the perfect land mix. He does so in both games and we frequently end up trading a bunch with him playing double-regrowth to generate enough card advantage to win both games.

Round 7 probably shouldn't matter but it turns out there are nine people at 13 points or more. Two of them have 13 points and one got paired down. If he looses then a 5-2 makes it. My breakers aren't spectacular but they aren't terrible either so there is an outside chance. Especially since my opponent is one of the people with better breakers than I have. Like the last two rounds this is essentially another mirror. But while the last two opponents had better cards than I did this guy seemed more on par with what I had. Game 1 I stall on lands and he gets me down to 5 life. He has 2 creatures in play and a +3/+0 equipment so any creature he draws is a threat. I have a tapper. Each turn I play a dude, tap his bigger guy, and trade with his equipped dude. Then we both cast another dude. This happens over and over and over. He has an empty hand so if he ever draws a land I'm free and clear. If I ever draw a land I can start doing multiple things each turn and get free and clear. Neither of those things happens for about 8 turns. Eventually though he runs out of gas and I kill him with my juggernaut.

Game 2 featured my making a misplay right out of the gates. He equips a 1/1 deathtouch creature with an equipment that gives first strike (also +1/+1 if the creature is human). For some reason I think it gives +1/+1 (also first strike if human) and attack into it with my 3/3. He blocks and my guy dies and I'm behind as a result for a lot of the game. I do end up getting my high priest out though and he doesn't really have a way to kill it. I throw a creature away to get my Death Star online, and I equip it with silver inlaid-dagger and inquisitor's flail which makes it into a 7/5 flyer that both deals and receives double damage. I crack him for 14 the turn I equip this stuff and he's in real danger. Unfortunately he has his +3/+0 equipment and a 2/1 flyer which he holds back on defense. I have a 2/2 flyer so I figure I can throw away the Death Star, hit him for 2 (he's at 2) and win. Instead he has a spell which gives +2/+2 and lifelink which gains him 14 life when he kills the Death Star. (Stupid flail making him take double damage... I probably should have equipped something else just in case.) At any rate, I build a new Death Star because that one died. He has 14 life so I can't alpha strike him down anymore so we end up playing draw-go for a while. He gets a tapper online to shut down the Death Star and makes a couple 1/1 flyers. Then for some reason he attacks with them. I block one with my 2/2 flyer and he has another +2/+2 to kill it. Ok, fine... I replace it with The Ace Of Spades and he gains 3 life. Seems like an ok trade to me. A couple turns later he gets bored and attacks with his 5/1 first striker... So I kill it with a spell that only targets attackers and build an Acrobatic Ninjas because it died. Now I have a trio of 5/5s and he doesn't have a first striker to kill them so I start beating his face in and win.

The 13 pointer who was paired down won his game so it was all for naught. I got some planeswalker points out of it and had fun so it wasn't a waste of time by any stretch but it's a little disappointing to start 4-0 and not manage to make top 8. Oh well! There's a PTQ in Waterloo next month and I may try to head to that for a second shot...

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!)

Preliminary Planeswalker Points

Magic tournaments get reported whenever the tournament organizers get around to sending the information in. On Sunday there were no FNM events reported from last week but several were entered on Monday. So there is some data available to look at in terms of what's going on at FNMs around the world. My FNM has not yet been reported so I'm currently listed with 0 FNM points this season but I know from doing the math myself that I should get 42 points and that's the most I could have picked up at 401's FNM since I won every round. Note that I have no way of knowing what percentage of events have been reported on thus far and there could be substantially more people ahead of me but as we'll see that doesn't matter even a little bit.

The first thing I noticed is the worldwide listing only lists the top 500 people. Currently in 500th place? Someone with 54 points. Note that this is 12 points more than I could possibly have earned. The likely way of getting to 54 points is 5 match wins and 3 participation points. That only needs 32 people which isn't that unreasonable. I can imagine there being a large number of FNM's which get at least 32 people and run 5 rounds. Unless there are draws mucking things up there's guaranteed to be at least one person at every such FNM to pick up 54 points. This bodes poorly for my chances of getting more points then they do over a year but it's still possible. If the winners of those events keep rotating a lot and I always win my event I can see passing some of them.

But 54 points is currently in 500th place. Who's in first? A gent by the name of Giuseppe Splendori who somehow managed to get 99 points! FNM is run with a 3x multiplier which means he pulled in 33 normal points. How is that even possible? My best guess would be 6 participation points (requires 256-511 people) and 9 match wins. 6 rounds, cut to top 8, win the whole thing? But that doesn't work because you'd need more than 6 rounds with 256 people. Maybe they just play 9 rounds of swiss in a 256 person event? That's essentially the same as a day at a Grand Prix!

I was reading a thread on mtgontario about the new system where Dedly Edly complained that stores can actually run two FNM events each day. Let's assume this Giuseppe guy played in 2 events. Then his 6 participation points could have come from a pair of 32 person events. If they play 5 rounds at each of them then he just needed to go 5-0 at one and 4-1 at the other. That's not terribly unlikely.

How about if he managed to find 3 events to play in by running around town? Then he could get his 6 participation points from 3 16-31 player events. Play 3 rounds at each event and he just needs to go undefeated in the 9 rounds. That might sound harsh but I could easily imagine it happening if there were 3 such events to play in. Draft would probably take too long but I could see pounding out 9 rounds of constructed with a small number of players.

Ok, but that's one guy doing crazy things... How about the rest of the people near the top? 2nd place has 93 points. 3rd place has 93 points. 4th through 10th all have 90 points! This is clearly not just an aberration somewhere, this sort of thing is happening all over the place and these people have access to many, many more points than I do.

Filtering for just players in Canada gets me the leader at a mere 72 points. That could easily be 7 match wins and 3 participation points. 32 people, 4 rounds, cut to top 8 could set that up. That doesn't even seem like an unlikely tournament format, especially for constructed. But people playing in that format can earn 30 points more than I can.


Let's look at the points potential for a few different tournament set-ups. First up, the event I played in. With 25 people and 4 rounds there are 25*2=50 participation points going around. 13 matches each round could mean a total of 52 winners for 156 winning points. Triple it all and you've got a total of 618 points to go around with a minimum of 6 points, a maximum of 42 points, and an average of 24.72 points.

Now take a 32 person event with 4 rounds, cut to top 8. There are 32*3=96 participation points. 16 matches each round with 7 more in the top 8 means 71 winners for 213 winning points. Tripled the event generates 927 points with a minimum of 9 points, a maximum of 72 points, and an average of 28.97 points.

How about some of Giuseppe's possible events? A single 256 man, 9 round event? It generates 256*6=1536 participation points. With 128 matches each round there are 1152 winners for 3456 winning points. Overall the event generates 14976 points with a minimum of 18, a maximum of 99, and an average of 58.5 points.

How about 2 different 32 man, 5 round events? They'd generate 32*6=192 participation points. The 160 matches would have 480 winning points. Overall it would only generate 2016 total points. The minimum would remain 18 points, the maximum goes up to 102, and the average would actually spike up to 63 points.

3 events with 16 people and 3 rounds each? 16*6=96 participation points. 8 matches per round, 9 rounds total is 72 winners and 216 winning points. Overall we're down to 936 total points which is pretty close to my event. But the minimum is doubles to 18, the maximum is almost tripled to 99, and the average is back to 58.5.


So if someone can manage to find events at all capable of generating Giuseppe's total then I'm screwed. The average player in his events makes way more than my possible maximum. This is obscene. Consistent very high finishes might enable me to overcome the difference between a max-42 point event and a max-54 point event. There's no way it can overcome the difference between a max-42 point event and a max-99 point event. Any thoughts I may have had about making it to the FNM championship are shot, and they're shot for almost everyone in the world. If you don't have a local store or group of stores willing to run FNM events all day every Friday you simply have no chance.

As far as competitive goes the standings are currently dominated by people who played in the recent Pro Tour. This is not surprising to me in the slightest. Many of those people will already have invitations from their pro player club level and therefore won't hurt someone who may be trying to grind their way into events, but the FNM structure certainly will. My confidence in being able to grind points into Nationals next year is dropping rapidly. Maybe I need to find a new FNM that plays lots of rounds? But even then I don't know where I'd find time to play in them. I have to work a full day on Fridays...


But how could it be fixed? For competitive I'm not sure that it can. I expect it'll mostly just reward the people who go to all the GPs and such anyway (thought if someone can rake in close to 100 points every week at FNM they'll be in a good way regardless). But for the FNM championships I feel like something really needs to be done. The average player in Giuseppe's area will earn 2.5 times a many points as someone in Toronto who plays at 401. It's inconceivable that anyone from 401 could make it to the championship no matter how often they play or how much they win. This seems like a real problem to me but I think there are ways to fix the system. Some potential options...

• Restrict the definition of an FNM for the purposes of this championship. Only count the first 'FNM' a player plays in each week, for example.
• Force all FNMs to cut to top 8, or prevent any of them from cutting to top 8. Alternatively let people keep doing what they want but score the top 8 as a different 1x event thereby removing them from the FNM ranking list.
• Count a draft as a round that everybody won. Or maybe even that they all drew. It's a little silly that I'm spending more time and money to play 4 rounds than constructed people spend to play 5 rounds and yet I get fewer points.
• Do something about participation points and number of rounds. Letting people play in more rounds while scooping up more bonus points just for showing up seems like a little much. I can see wanting to reward bigger events but when you make the reward substantial you marginalize everyone who doesn't play in a big event. Possibly have participation points based on size of event vs number of rounds so a shorter event gives more participation points?

FNM Draft 1

Yesterday I headed out to the first FNM of the new Planeswalker Points season. I went to 401 Games which holds a draft for their FNM. At first I worried I'd made a mistake since the room was looking like it was going to be both crowded and sweltering again but once FNM started they kicked all the Yugioh dudes out of the room. Coupled with the extra air conditioner they installed it actually worked out ok.

They ended up getting 25 people and from what I gather that number was not what one would call massively increased. I talked to my opponents after the matches and it seemed like no one really understood the new system or even cared. There was a story about how some dude who used to sit on his rating had come out of the woodwork to play this week; I have to assume it was about me.

At any rate, 25 people meant 2 tables of 8 and a table of 9. I was in the 9, and in fact was stuck out on the end of the table which made for a lot of forced movement when people were getting out for land.

My first pack had 3 realistic choices in it. Jace's archivist which can be a certifiable bomb, gideon's lawkeeper which is an excellent one drop, and chandra's outrage which is a great burn spell. I've become convinced that red is the best colour in M12 and I also believe chandra's outrage is by far the best common in the set. If you manage to hit a 1 drop, a 2 drop, a 3 drop, and then burn out their blocker on turn 4 with an outrage you're pretty much guaranteed to win. It kills pretty much every card in the format too, missing only a kicked Al Gore and the green basilisk at common. My second pack didn't really have anything good in red, sadly. I want to play mono if I can so I took a very questionable card, goblin bangchucker. There was a discussion about that card on Matt V's Facebook wall a couple weeks ago and someone suggested it wasn't bad if you had some toughness boosting enchantments. I decided to try it out, especially since it was going to let me cut red hard. The next guy might think bangchucker is good and that red is open if I pass it! Third pick the only red card was a goblin warpaint. The very card I need to get the bangchucker running! Fourth pick there were no red cards at all. On the plus side there was a thran golem who likes that I'm playing warpaint...

The next few packs had no red cards either. I took a griffin rider to open up a second colour. Then I got an auramancer who fits into my warpaint plan... I rounded out pack one with a goblin anarchist, a  fiery hellhound and 2 more griffin riders. So my deck after pack one is a good removal spell, a couple ok red dorks, and a bunch of very questionable cards.

Pack 2 the only red card of note is a shock. Shock is ok, but there was also a serra angel and I decided I wasn't going to get any red cards in pack 3 so mono was right out and serra is pretty sweet. The next pack along had a chandra's phoenix and an overrun. I might have taken overrun over phoenix if I could throw my white away but with the serra I figured to stick to my guns and take the phoenix. The rest of the packs in pack 2 provided only a roc egg for playable white cards. On the plus side the heavy cutting of red in pack 1 worked out as I got hooked up. I got all 3 of the bloodthirst dudes (berserker, ogre, Al Gore) along with a 7th pick chandra's outrage, a slaughter cry, an act of treason and a fling. I also got a second warpaint.

Going into pack 3 I have a serra, an auramancer, and 3 griffin riders. Those guys are not playable with my 0 griffins! My opener has no decent red cards at all but it does have a stormfront pegasus. It isn't a griffin but it does beat down nicely so I run with it. I get a goblin fireslinger pick 2 and a crimson mage 4th or so. No other red cards at all. The white cards, on the other hand, weren't stopping. I got 2 more stormfront pegasus, 2 assault griffin, and a griffin sentinel. I also got a divine favor at some point to go with the bangchucker plan.

As I was building my deck it became clear that I had way more cards than I needed. I could easily cut out either the griffin rider plan or the bangchucker plan. Bangchucker seems terrible and I decided 3 griffins would be enough, so this is what I ended up with...

9 mountain
8 plains
1 goblin fireslinger
1 goblin arsonist
3 griffin rider
3 stormfront pegasus
1 crimson mage
1 stormfront berserker
1 roc egg
1 chandra's phoenix
1 griffin sentinel
1 blood ogre
2 assault griffin
1 gorehorn minotaur
1 serra angel
1 fling
1 act of treason
1 slaughter cry
2 chandra's outrage

I decided my deck was super aggressive flyer beatdown and that roc egg would make for a decent blocker in a race situation and played it over an 18th land. My deck is soooo cheap that 18 lands seemed really excessive. Maybe I should have gone down to 16 even but the colour mix was a little rough and I wanted to be able to hit outrage for sure.

Round One

My opponent is the guy drafting to my right. He is unsurprisingly playing red and is also playing black. We do a bunch of early trading in game 1 and when the smoke clears he has a fireslinger, a scepter of empires and 8 land. I have only 5 land and therefore have 3 more spells which happen to be dudes which are beating him down faster than his pingers can beat me down.

I decide red/black is likely to have enough removal to deal with the griffin riders and side them out. I bring in a warpaint, an auramancer, and a divine favor for them. Game 2 goes similarly to game 1. Some early trades and eventually I end up with a divine favored, blood thirsted berserker getting in for 4 a turn.

Round Two

My opponent this round is relatively new to Magic and hadn't hit the point in learning strategy to realize that you should save your instants for when they're best. He had a jade mage and would make tokens in his main phase, for example. He cast a turn to frog at one point for no game effect. (I think he thought it was a permanent change.) He won the first round with a deck sporting the green and blue mages, frost titan, and two overruns! I got very fast draws against him and really just ran him over with an army of 4/4 flyers in both games as my griffin riders got turned on.

Round Three

I don't remember much about this match. I know chandra's phoenix came home for a lot of damage and got recurred when I burned a creature with chandra's outrage. My opponent was not playing real removal so I did not side out my griffin riders. (He was playing pacifism, and in game 1 he pacified a griffin and then got beaten up by some griffin riders.) I won in two games.

Round Four

Game 1 I'm on the play and start with a pegasus on turn 2. He plays a looter. I beat for 2 and play a griffin rider. He loots and plays an aether adept, bouncing my pegasus. I draw and my hand is now another griffin rider, the pegasus, a slaughter cry, and a stormblood berserker. For some reason I decide to take a risk and beat in with my rider. The plan being if he blocks with his 2/2 I'll be able to kill it with slaughter cry and if he doesn't I get to play a 3/3 and a 2/1. He blocks, I use slaughter cry, and say go. He then beats with the looter and plays Al Gore. I rip an assault griffin and get in with my newly beefed up rider for 4. He cracks back for 5 and plays a belltower sphinx. This shuts down my 4/4 and is too big for my outrage if I ever draw it. I play my 2-drops and say go. He swings with Al Gore. If he has a removal spell I have no good blocks. But I can't afford to just take it over and over and have nothing in my hand or even in my deck to deal with it. I decided to double block with my two 4/4s. He has shock for the assault griffin. I draw and decide to scoop rather than prolong the agony.

If I don't attack on turn 4 and instead just play out a 2/1 and a second griffin rider then I think I win for sure. He can't attack for free with the looter so he can't get out Al Gore. (I think I trade my pegasus for the adept if it attacks, I definitely trade a rider for looter if it does.) I'll keep slaughter cry in hand to use on his 2/5 flyer as well. I didn't know I was going to rip a griffin, but when I did I definitely blow him out if it turns on a pair of 4/4s on turn 5.

He has removal, so I take out the riders. I decide that the looter is too big a problem and bring in the bangchuckers too. I go all the way and bring in 2 warpaint, 1 divine favor, 1 auramancer, 1 bangchucker, 1 thran golem. I take out the three griffin riders, the roc egg, the slaughter cry, and a mountain. Go big or go home!

Game 2 he has a fast start and is beating me down. I have my fireslinger which is slowly whittling him away and also have a pegasus. He plays the 2/5 on turn 5 which is again going to shut me down. On turn 6 he attacks with it, putting me down to almost dead, and plays a chasm drake. Unfortunately for him he is only at 12 and that isn't enough to deal with my 1/1 and my 2/1. End of turn I outrage the new creature, knocking him to 10. I pick him to 9. I warpaint up the pegasus and hit him down to 5. I fling the pegasus at him to 1. And then ping with the fireslinger for the last point.

Game 3 I stall on lands which is pretty bad for me since I also draw a lot of my expensive stuff. The only thing keeping me alive is my griffin sentinel enchanted with warpaint. He has his 2/5 flyer again along with a 2/4 ground dude so we're actually playing a long game without much attacking. I do have fireslinger again who is slowly killing my opponent. He eventually plays out TWO solemn simulacrums and then a jace's archivist. I'm still stuck on 3 land with a full hand so the archivist is probably going to end the game in his favour... But I draw a 2nd mountain on my turn and kill it with an outrage. He ends up bouncing my griffin to get rid of the warpaint but I get my serra out and draw my second warpaint. That's enough to attack through the 2/5 flyer and I have fling to finish it but I'm worried his last card is a counterspell so I just wait and attack for the win the next turn.

4-0 matches, 8-1 games. My deck worked exactly as I was hoping it would. Play some cheap dudes, beat my opponent up, use outrage to blow the game out. Prizes ended up being store credit divided evenly among anyone who went 3-1 or better so there was no monetary benefit for going 4-0. I did get more planeswalker points though! I also got an FNM foil for being 1st overall. Only having 25 people meant 2 participation points so I got a total of 42 points. I wonder if that could possibly be enough... Only being 4 rounds, being small, and not having a top 8 could be too much to overcome...

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.

Planeswalker Points

Earlier this week Wizards implemented a massive change to their sanctioned play rating system. They'd established the old system, I believe, 15 years ago. They've been tinkering with it recently but I guess it became clear to them that it simply wasn't accomplishing what they now wanted it to accomplish.

The old system was a standard ELO system like they use in chess. Each player has a rating and when two players face each other you can work out the odds of each player winning. Then after the match you see what actually happened and adjust each player's rating accordingly. The winner would always trend upwards but if he as expected to win the gain would be smaller than if he pulled off an 'upset'. The loser would always loss the opposite amount which kept the system zero-sum.

The system works really well for chess which is entirely skill based and where working out the odds of success seems like something that could actually be done reasonably. With Magic it doesn't really work that way. Over the long run the randomness would even out but the problem was your rating could swing wildly one way or the other with a particularly lucky or unlucky event. There was just too much volatility involved to make ratings a true indicator of skill the way it can be in chess.

Another issue with the old system is the way event invitations and byes were handled. I kept getting invited to Nationals based on rating year after year because my rating ended up being pretty high when I pretty much stopped playing Magic 6 years ago. Maybe my rating is where it should be and I deserved to be considered one of the top players in Canada still. More likely my true rating should have been substantially lower but it never got a chance to fall since I didn't play anymore. I'd like to think if I still played a lot and put in a lot of practice that I could be a top player but realistically World of Warcraft took that away.

Even if I had been playing a lot of Magic (on Magic Online, say, or just testing constructed with a team) I wouldn't have wanted to play in events. I was close to the Nationals invite mark as it was (tied for last place invitation in 2011, 2009, and 2007 I think?) and couldn't afford to lose even a single rating point. Playing random sanctioned matches simply couldn't help and could really hurt a lot. It was a high risk, low reward scenario. Maybe playing in a PTQ would be worth the risk, but maybe not. Certainly something like FNM or a random GP trial would be right out.


The new system is designed to deal with both of those problems. It no longer even claims to measure player skill, instead tracking participation as a primary factor. You can no longer lose anything by playing a match against anyone at all. How did they do this?

Each event type gets assigned a multiplier (x1 for a prerelease, x3 for FNM, x8 for Nationals, x12 for the Pro Tour, etc...) and then you earn 3 times the multiplier for each win and 1 times the multiplier for each draw. You also get some extra points just for showing up based on the number of entrants. You can't lose points in any way, shape, or form other than when a season resets (at which point everyone loses everything).

It doesn't matter how much better I may be than Joe Schmoe. As long as he actually shows up and plays in tournaments he's going to have more points than I do if I just sit at home and play WoW. If I want to get points I need to actually go out and play too. (And then presumably I'll earn more than he does since I'll get more winning points to go with the participating points.) Not playing to sit on your rating is a thing of the past for sure!


How does qualifying for events go now? What do I need to do to make sure I can keep getting invited to Nationals? It turns out they're making a few different buckets for these points.

You have a lifetime total which gets accumulated over your entire career. It's retroactive and will include all forms of sanctioned play. It will even include casual pick-up games if you bother to get them reported in. Want some points? Have some! They're free! They also don't seem to do anything at all except make a number bigger. (I'm level 38 out of a maximum of 50!)

You have a competitive total which gets reset every 4 months. Everything you play in except casual matches and Worlds contributes to this number. After the 4 months are up they lock in the totals, use those to hand out invitations and byes to any Pro Tours, Grand Prix, or Nationals in the next 4 months, and then wipe the slate clean. For the PT they give the top 5 uninvited finishers in each region an invite and flight, and then they give the top 65 uninvited finishers in the world an invite and flight. You can also get an invite by winning a PTQ, having a high Pro Club level, or by being in the Hall of Fame. Grand Prix byes are simpler. Top 300 in the world get 3 byes. Top 2000 get 2 byes. Top 15000 get 1 bye. Nationals invitation rules are actually not yet determined, but will care about the season which takes place from Dec 26th, 2011 to Apr 1st, 2012. (Which is actually not 4 months... I guess the seasons run 4 months, 3 months, 5 months?)

You have a Friday Night Magic total which seems to reset once a year. Only points earned at FNM go in this bucket. Wizards is going to hold an FNM championship for 100 people based on this point total (top 48 from North America) which I believe comes with a flight to wherever they end up holding it which seems pretty neat.

You have a professional total which only counts points earned at PT, GP, and Worlds. It resets once a year and is used solely to invite players to Worlds. Exactly how that works has yet to be determined just like the Nationals info.


How does this impact me and qualifying for Nationals? Well, it seems like if I want to play in Nationals again I need to start playing Magic 8 months before the event instead of 2 weeks before the event. This certainly will cause me to be better prepared for the constructed portion! I also like how you get a free flight if you qualify for the Pro Tour on planeswalker points. It certainly makes me want to at least look into when different events are held in the Toronto area. It's entirely possible I could find some sort of tournament after work each day which seems like it would give quite an advantage to someone living in a big city. Though I suppose a smaller town could just have one store run an event every day if there was demand for it. The multiplier on a random sanctioned tournament is low (x1) but it could really add up.

I really like the look of the cards being spoiled for the new set. Maybe I'll play some Magic this season and see what kind of numbers get put up...