New Magic Post: The Pro Tour Was Magic

Posted on May 17, 2021 by TheZvi

If this is relevant to your interests, you can read it at CoolStuffInc here.

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17 Responses to New Magic Post: The Pro Tour Was Magic

  1. Alsadius says:
    May 17, 2021 at 5:31 pm

    Where’s the original post discussing Wizards’ changes to the tournament scene? I don’t follow M:TG as closely as I used to, so I’m not up to date on the changes.

    But tbh, the Pro Tour, and other event support, always seemed like the anchor of card values to me. “The best cards can win you a lot of money” helps justify card values better than most other things would.

    Reply
  2. Doug S. says:
    May 18, 2021 at 2:38 am

    What are the chances of “really good counterfeits” (defined as “convincing enough to pass a deck check in the top 8 of a Legacy Grand Prix”) crashing the value of Reserved List cards in the next thirty years?

    Reply
    • TheZvi says:
      May 18, 2021 at 2:43 am

      I think for the collector market to crash that’s not even good enough. You’d need them to be good enough to pass a grading inspection and come back as legit. But at some point, a fake is physically identical to the original, and then there’s nothing to be done. The good news is that a wide range of collectables of various forms seem to have gained great value and none of them have yet been counterfeited enough to collapse those markets, so I’m optimistic for now.

      But thirty years makes us think about questions like AGI.

      Reply
  3. Highly Trained Neural Network says:
    May 18, 2021 at 2:42 pm

    Really great article. Hopefully the ideas you express here gain some traction.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous-backtick says:
    May 19, 2021 at 1:04 am

    Due to a combination of burnout from grinding GPs for several years (some top 16s, no top 8s) and being turned off from supporting WOTC after they became intensely bigoted against people like me, I stopped playing Magic a year or so before the pandemic but also had always planned to eventually play another local GP someday. Would be a shame if high-level play was gone forever, but wouldn’t mind seeing another game of a similar level taking its place–Artifact seemed like it got pretty close before its big PR flameout, and I had a lot more fun playing it than Magic when I was burned out on Magic. Flying across the country to open a bad sealed pool sure seemed like a structural flaw.

    Reply
    • TheZvi says:
      May 19, 2021 at 1:58 am

      Artifact was never close, and crashed and burned very quickly after it was released – I think that’s a shame, but also was overdetermined and unavoidable.

      I do expect you’ll have the ability to play GPs in the future – I would be surprised if GP-level events didn’t come back at least at half-capacity, likely at full capacity. It’s the higher level supports and rewards that I expect not to cut it.

      If another game took Magic’s place, it would have to be a very good game and it likely would unfortunately be digital-only given who the plausible candidates are.

      Reply
      • Anonymous-backtick says:
        May 19, 2021 at 3:02 pm

        Sure, something called GPs might come back, but without the pros and bubble pros traveling to play them for Pro Tour/pro points-related reasons, it wouldn’t be the same thing.

        Reply
    • Alsadius says:
      May 21, 2021 at 3:11 am

      > WOTC…became intensely bigoted against people like me

      Dare I ask? Wizards has pissed me off a few times recently, but nothing comes to mind that I can see described this way.

      Reply
      • Anonymous-backtick says:
        May 21, 2021 at 2:37 pm

        Creating demographic-based slots in the MPL where the qualification is “not having my demographics”. This was the most shocking one–they sacrificed competitive integrity for their race and gender biases.

        Constantly complaining in their posts about competitive play that too many people in competitive play were like me.

        A strong trend in card art (see in particular Ixalan, although Rivals of Ixalan was more balanced IIRC) for portrayals of someone without my demographics killing or otherwise defeating someone with my demographics.

        Reply
      • Eric fletcher says:
        May 27, 2021 at 1:03 am

        When all you know is privilage, equality feels like oppression.

        [Pile of specific counterpoints deleted]

        Reply
      • Anonymous-backtick says:
        May 28, 2021 at 11:05 pm

        That’s an interesting choice of words, when Mark Rosewater wrote multiple posts about how equality wasn’t what they were shooting for, and instead they wanted “equity”, meaning bigoted discrimination.

        Reply
  5. Jay Searson says:
    May 19, 2021 at 10:42 am

    Hey Zvi, how does somebody go about offering to take you to lunch? I tried DMing you on Twitter, but it looks like the message is unread.

    P.S. I too was a magic pro once.

    Reply
  6. Jorge says:
    May 20, 2021 at 9:16 pm

    There’s the possibility that SCG (or CF or whatever) could take up the slack.

    It’s in their interest, since the competitive metagame creates (part of) the value churn necessary to move cardboard in the secondary market. The main thing will be to make sure they get the go-ahead from WotC and the DCI. Then it could be “SCG Presents: MtG ProTour” or whatever.

    For the past 5-6 years WotC has not shown itself to be a trustworthy custodian of the competitive aspect of the game. For example- banlist/errata decisions should start to come from some kind of DCI-sanctioned and/or collective decision-making process. Creating absolutely crystal-clear triggers for bannings would go a long way to alleviating the pain associated with such actions. We’ve been playing this game for 3 decades, we know the kinds of things that break it or create insurmountable problems. It shouldn’t take 6 months for a slow-as-molasses corporate structure with conflicts of interest to create a format change that keeps people playing.

    Looking forward to Emergent (I’m still very interested in donating my time as a playtester btw… you should make a waitlist or something).

    In the meantime, I will continue to ignore MtG.

    Reply

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  8. Lilia Platter says:
    June 21, 2021 at 11:54 am

    Good blog post.😃 🤗 2021-06-21 07h 53min

    Reply

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