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!)
Showing posts with label Planeswalker Points. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planeswalker Points. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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...
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?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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...
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...
Friday, September 09, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
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...
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...
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