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The Magic Tournament Scene

The Magic Tournament Scene. George Michelogiannakis , level 3 DCI judge SYMBSYS 15SI: The Theory and Design of Magic: the Gathering. Introduction. Magic: the Gathering (MTG) has many levels of play. Casual (home or store), local play, local competitive play, or global competitive play.

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The Magic Tournament Scene

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  1. The Magic Tournament Scene George Michelogiannakis, level 3 DCI judge SYMBSYS 15SI: The Theory and Design of Magic: the Gathering

  2. Introduction • Magic: the Gathering (MTG) has many levels of play. • Casual (home or store), local play, local competitive play, or global competitive play. • Everyone finds their best fit. Many casual players exist. • Some people make a living by playing this game. • The DCI is promoting and running organized play. • “We keep it fair”.

  3. What Sanctioning Means • The DCI strives for consistency. • It defines rules and policy procedures: • How to run tournaments. • How to handle infractions. • How to certify judges. • We won’t go into details. • Each player gets assigned a DCI number. • A sanctioned tournament is not a scary tournament. • Three rules enforcement levels: Regular, Competitive, Professional.

  4. Basic Tournament Procedures • After signing up, we either collect decklists, or have players build a deck from a pool or after drafting. • Then we have the Swiss rounds (number depends). • Algorithm: equal points play each other. • 50 minutes (usually) each round. • We may draft multiple times or change format. • Then maybe followed by the top 8. • Watch out for deck checks!

  5. Types of Tournaments - Regular • Local arena play. • Friday night magic. • Unique foils as prizes. • Prerelease (and then release). • Play with the new set! • They get 8-300 players. • Any non-premier tournament. • That is, tournament without a name. Organizer’s choice. • Fun atmosphere. My favorites are prereleases. • Players want to have fun.

  6. Competitive Tournaments • A gateway to professional magic. Some are really competitive. • Nationals. One for each country. • Invitation-only. $20.000 prizes. • Grand Prix (GP trials and regular REL). • Open participation. $28.000 prizes. • Easily the largest tournaments. • Current record: GP Paris 2008, 1,838 players. • Other tournaments with significant prizes may be competitive. For example: state championships.

  7. Professional Tournaments • Pro tours (PT qualifiers are competitive). • Hard to qualify. $230,000 total prizes. • WoTC pays attention to the public image. • World championship. • Like PTs, except there is a team portion. • Higher payout: $245,145. • Every country sends a national team (or only a player).

  8. Worlds 2008 (Memphis)

  9. Worlds 2008 (Memphis)

  10. Large Events • They have: • Feature matches. • Side events (large) with casual tournaments. • Artist signing. • Player welcome ceremonies. • Extra events (other ceremonies, game of the year). • Large events are big celebrations. • Participants use them to meet people, travel around the world and catch up with old friends.

  11. How Players Prepare • Constructed: • Study the metagame(what people play). • Decide a deck from the internet or one of your own. • Playtest like crazy. Decide on sideboard cards. • (Oh and prepare your decklist). • Limited: • Still study the format. Which cards are good? What do people usually play (what to expect in the game). • Study draft and deckbuilding strategies. How to choose among colors, send out signals (by what you pick).

  12. What Are Judges? • Judges ensure fair play and smooth tournaments. • We handle the following: • Answer rules questions. • Handle in and out of game errors, infractions and disagreements. • Investigate cheating. • Keep the tournament going. • Maintain presence out of tournaments. • There’s quite a number of skills involved. • Judges also train other judges, and work closely with the DCI to develop policy.

  13. More Information on Judges • Judges are certified to one of five levels. • Depends on the scope of the community they lead. • Local, area, regional, international, professional. • During tournaments levels are irrelevant. • There is the head judge, and the floor judges.

  14. Common Player Mistakes • Improper shuffling. • Not keeping track of the game state (esp. life totals). • Looking at or drawing extra cards. • Illegal decklist or deck/decklist mismatch. • Also, using card name abbreviations. • Not calling a judge. • Worn out sleeves or cards. • Sometimes sleeves that are not exactly the same. • Not signing and turning in the result slip.

  15. Example Infractions • Penalties: Caution, warning, game loss, match loss, DQ. • Plus any remedy specific to the infraction. • Illegal main decklist: 59 cards in constructed decklist. • Deck/decklist mismatch: 4 different cards recorded. • Drawing an extra card. • Is there such thing as playing slowly? • Playing a spell for less mana. • Failure to reveal a card when required. • Offering $50 in exchange for a match win.

  16. The Path to the Pro Tour • Start out casually. Get used to playing the game. • Get to know the tournament scene through Regular REL tournaments. • Also, reduce the mistakes per game ratio. • Find a deck you are excited about or a format you feel great about drafting. • And go to a GP trial, GP or PTQ. • Iterate in the last step many times until successful  • Go to a PT and through that and GPs, try to ride the train! Also, don’t forget about national tournaments.

  17. We’ve Had… • Players falling asleep during deck building. • Pro tours flooding. • GP day 1 finishing at 3:30 am. • The scorekeeper computer crashing multiple times. • Once it was dropping the opponents of the players. • Players adding Italian cards to a limited GP. • (We always give out English cards). • So many misplays… • Players playing shock targeting a creature, when their opponents are at 2 life.

  18. We’ve Had… • Players forgetting to add basic lands at a GP top 8. • They lost due to not drawing lands in any game. • Hesitating to give a game loss to an 11 year old girl. • But she had been to more GPs than most of the judges. • Players loosing their pants at local events. • Rules rulings taking 10 minutes to be decided. • 4 players with the same name at a GP.

  19. To Sum Up… • MTG has many levels. • You can find the one that fits for you. • You can even play only online (using MTG online) • You meet many great people and have fun. • Also while keeping your brain busy. • If you want to take it further you can travel. • With all the math you learnt from this class, you have an advantage! • The number of people who play MTG keeps surprising me (let alone that there is a class at Stanford for it).

  20. That’s all folks …questions?

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