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Of FNMs and Pro Tours

There aren’t many things that can keep me from FNM. Close to three feet of snow, 100+ kilometre winds and the LGS being closed all combined to do just that this past week, leaving me in quite the pickle when it came to an article. It’s kind of hard to unlock achievements while shovelling your way through three-plus feet of snow. For the record, that sucks big time and I don’t recommend you try it. I didn’t even get to play [card]Skred[/card] for a billion targeting my [card]Stuffy Doll[/card].

Social media was not its normal helpful self. Oh there were some very good suggestions for articles, but not for a person like me to write. I don’t have much knowledge to share about sideboarding or EDH, and I’m no Mark Rosewater to work a Topical Blend between a snowstorm and FNM-level Magic. What I do know is FNM-level Magic, so as Jay Lansdaal suggested…why not write about that?

What is FNM?

This might seem like an obvious question. It’s a Magic tournament, right? Sure, that’s what it is on the face of it: a weekly event held at a store that lets players show up at the same time every week and play. There’s a chance to compete and win against your local players and to get some packs for doing well.

It goes so much deeper than that though. Wizards of the Coast is a large corporation that is part of a larger corporation, and it has some absolute geniuses working in its marketing and community departments. Friday Night Magic is more than just a tournament; it’s a gateway to competitive Magic AND an advertisement for the game. It’s pretty much the only time when the competitive players and the casual ones can meet and play on a regular basis, providing the opportunity to convert one to the other. Simply put, FNM is the glue that holds a community together.

Why should you play FNM?

A lot of tournament grinders and would-be Pros stopped playing FNM once the Planeswalker Point multiplier dropped from 3x to 1x. That’s a real shame in my mind. Sure, the level of competition isn’t what you’d expect from a Grand Prix or SCG Open, but that’s not the point of it. The program exists to grow your local community, to bring more players in to your store and help them get accustomed to tournament Magic. That’s reason number 1: get more players playing tournaments. More players means more cards in your local environment, more perks for your store (bigger prerelease allotments, for example), more variety in the meta and more people to talk to. All of these are good things.

The mix of players and skill levels at FNM provides for a unique environment. Sure you get the same mix at a Prerelease, but there everyone is playing Sealed and nobody has played with the cards before. Many FNMs are Standard, and the variety of decks is unmatched. Personally I love the mystery of sitting down each round and knowing you could literally face anything from Bant Control to tribal Elementals in Standard, but I recognise that that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. However, variety makes you better.

I can sense your scepticism, so let me illustrate with an example. A few weeks ago, I played a Bruna deck at FNM and wrote about it. I…did not do well. However Chris Parsons, known by everyone locally as Goober, played a slightly similar list to an undefeated record. Goober is a brewer but most of his success has been in Modern. The list he played, however, looked remarkably similar to the one that just took first and second at GP Atlantic City. Nobody really gave it much thought at the time, but…maybe we should have? Playing established decks (which many of the more serious players here do) and losing to this seeming pile of draft leavings and [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] would have been an excellent hint that maybe, just maybe, Goober was on to something. Having the chance to play against the list and think about how to beat it before having to play against it at a major event would have been a huge advantage. At the very least, you might have decided to just play that deck instead.

I’m not for one second suggesting that every FNM is a treasure trove of Grand Prix-winning rogue decks waiting to be discovered and tweaked. Such finds are few and far between even at sixty-person FNMs. However – and this may surprise some of you – Magic is played for reasons other than competing at the highest level. Too often we lose sight of the fact that Magic is a game and we play it for fun. Or at least, we should. Having a tournament that isn’t solely focused on winning makes it easier to play fun brews and relax a bit while socialising with friends and just enjoying the local community. That’s the third reason: FNM is the perfect combination of fun and competition. I recognise that in many areas, FNM is the only tournament that happens on a regular basis and as such is a lot more cutthroat. That has been the case here for a long time too, though it’s starting to change. You are in complete control over how much fun you have at FNM. Some people will do that by playing fun decks without expecting to win, others by relaxing their normally competitive nature and focusing instead on improving their own play and the play of others.

What? Help others? Absolutely. Experienced players at FNM should, in my mind, take the opportunity to help out those less experienced than themselves. I don’t mean you should let people win or take back plays that are suboptimal, but certainly tell them about it after the fact. Unless you WANT to let them take things back, of course. One thing that a couple of local guys do is offer to take a look at people’s decks after the match and then suggest some ways to improve it. That sends the relatively new player scampering for the counter to pick up some singles, which is generally a good thing. Stores can help on this front by making the prize scheme for FNM a lot more modest than for other events, so that players have less incentive to go for the win at all costs. Judges, players and stores all stand to benefit if your FNM environment is as welcoming and fun as possible.

Invitation Unlocked

I couldn’t let this week go by without touching on the latest major scandal to hit our game. The full invitation list for Pro Tour Gatecrash in Montreal was released recently, and with it came the news of who received special invites and sponsor’s exemptions. With David Williams having qualified via winning GP San Jose, “his” slot was available. Eric Froehlich received a Sponsor’s Exemption, leaving another usual slot available. Who would get these prized gems? Dado Antunovic, Reinaldo da Silva Jr, Paul Renie, Adam Yurchick and Melissa DeTora were the lucky recipients. As usual a Twitterstorm ensued, complaining that various people did not deserve their invites. As the reasons came out, the uproar gradually calmed down; Yurchick, for example, was qualified for the last Pro Tour but could not make it due to injury. The complaints around DeTor’s invite, however, persisted.

Having talked about the aspect of Organised Play at the bottom of the competitive spectrum, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the other end.

What is the Pro Tour?

Don’t for one second think that the Pro Tour’s primary function is to reward the best players in the world on that weekend. It’s a giant advertisement and promotional expense for Wizards, one that is immensely successful. By aligning Pro Tours with set releases, players who are not as engaged as the hardcore grinders get to see new and exciting cards in action and (ideally) become engaged by the story of their favourite Pros battling with said cards. Then they go and buy them. Other players spend more money on singles and packs and tournament entry fees, hoping to get good enough to play on the Pro Tour. This makes stores happy, which makes Wizards happy. Still others will jump on MTGO during the event and start buying packs of the new set in order to emulate their favourite Pro.

It is in the best interest of Wizards of the Coast to make their Pro Tour coverage as marketable as possible. They have spent incredible amounts of time and presumably money on improving it and expanding it to the point that we now have interviews, deck techs and stats taking up every minute of the live stream. They want players with stories to tell, both during the event and after it. Cinderella stories, comeback tales, dominance from pillar to post…they all do the same thing in that they put eyes on screens. The Pro Tour is the biggest promotional activity that Wizards has, and they want to make sure that every aspect of it has potential to put more money in their collective pocket. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.

Why the Special Invites?

For the Pro Tour to work, it has to be a goal. Getting there has to be hard, it has to feel special, and it has to be sufficiently rewarding that people want to keep trying to get there. Therefore Wizards can’t just invite the 400 people it wants to have at the event and expect it to feel the same, though that would be an interesting event. Qualifying still has to be ostensibly open to anyone who can play Magic Online and/or get to a paper PTQ.

As great as the system is for allowing Joe Magicplayer with a dream and a deck to “make the big time” on one magical Saturday, sometimes the players they want to be there don’t make it. Although they can’t invite them all, they have the flexibility in budgeting to let some of those players come along anyway, with the added “storyline” aspect of being “the special invitee who could.” These aren’t just random players though, they are players with value to Wizards.

David Williams and Eric Froehlich, as mentioned above, are regular recipients of these invites. In return, they use their high profile in the world of professional poker to talk about Magic. That’s virtually free advertising to a market that already has a lot of skill crossover with the game. Essentially, that’s what these invitations are: free marketing.

Why DeTora? Why not [Player X]?

First of all, this line of logic is faulty. Melissa’s invitation did not come at the expense of anyone else. As a responsible corporation, Wizards has doubtless budgeted for far more players to qualify and attend a Pro Tour than they actually have to pay for, what with people qualifying in multiple ways and Hall of Famers declining to attend. I’m fairly certain that Wizards COULD, if they wanted, invite a dozen extra people and not make a dent in their expected bottom line.

Helene Bergeot had a lot to say about Melissa’s invite:

It’s clear that this invitation was well-considered. It may be the first time we’ve seen someone invited based on their contributions to the community as a whole, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or undeserved. Melissa has multiple GP top 16 finishes (which would have been enough to qualify for a Pro Tour just 18 months ago) and has proven that she can play at the highest level. As an L2 judge myself I can tell you that it is not an easy thing to obtain, let alone maintain. That she is able to play at a high level with the frequency that she does while still being an active L2 is remarkable in and of itself. Add in her articles and the work she does within her local community and you get a picture of someone who works to make the game better for everyone. Is that not worthy of recognition?

You might argue that yes, it is worthy of recognition but a Pro Tour invite is not the way to show it. That’s as maybe, but that decision is not ours to make. As it stands there aren’t a whole lot of ways for WotC to show appreciation for hard work in a public way, and with her audience through articles and judging Melissa will be able to tell her story to all an sundry. More advertising!

Several other names were tossed around as deserving of invitations. Even mine got mentioned, which was flattering but not at all realistic. Some of those names were good suggestions, others not so much. Here are a few names I would have liked to see get invited:

Cedric Phillips is a workhorse on his streaming. Along with Michael Jacob (who I believe is qualified), he founded the Stream Team, which basically revolutionised both the way Magic streams can be presented and the way testing for Pro Tours can be done. He’s a commentator and a writer for Star City and does an excellent job of both. Oh, and he’s made top 8 of at least two Grands Prix this season. He would have been first on my list.

Brad Nelson is someone who most people might think was already qualified. Surprise! He isn’t. As much as Cedric has done for streaming, Brad has done for general Magic content. With his articles, playtesting videos, set review videos with Evan Erwin, commentating and streaming, Brad is basically one of a small handful of “professional content providers” in the community. He is also incredibly nice, very funny, immensely talented and clearly capable of playing at the highest level. Of course I might be slightly biased.

Sean “Day9” Plott might not be known primarily as a Magic player, but the advertising he would bring would exceed what even Williams and Froehlich can manage. Listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in 2011 in the Entertainment category, Plott has a huge online following in the gaming community and has also placed well at a GP. He might not be up to the level of the other names mentioned, but he exceeds them in star power outside of Magic circles. Having him on the Pro Tour would bring unprecedented attention to the event from casual and non-Magic players alike, which can only be a good thing.

All three of these people deserve invites, but that doesn’t mean Melissa didn’t. People have written articles and tweeted incessantly about how unfair it was for her to be invited, and many of those vitriolic diatribes have ended with some variant of “instead of so-and-so.” It might be my union work talking, but why do people think that one person’s good fortune came at their expense? Surely we can support and be happy for Melissa, while simultaneously working to improve our own profile to get invited next time?

What next?

I would love to see how far down the rabbit hole these new community-based invites can go. Could we see invitations to community members/leaders who aren’t Pro Tour-level players, not to compete but to spectate, get some camera time and allow them to talk about what they do for the community in front of the camera to the biggest Magic player audience that ever assembles? Why not? It rewards that person, gets them huge exposure AND gives Wizards another lifelong fan who will sing his tale from the mountaintops.

OK, I’m off my soapbox. We’ll be back to unlocking achievements next week, I promise. Not sure if I am playing Eggs in Modern or something crazy in Standard, but you’ll all find out next week!

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