Reality Checking Nationals Qualifiers

by Chris McNutt | posted at 2010-04-28 20:26:00
tagged: MTG, Magic, Magic the Gathering, ChannelFireball, Chris McNutt, Regionals, Nationals Qualifiers

 

As the Extended season comes to a close, our attention turns to Standard and the looming Eldrazi behemoths who appear to have been understudies for the movie Cloverfield. It’s also about this time of year that our hopes and our flags are raised in national pride as we near Regionals. the Regionals events in our nation have been a bit different than that of the rest of the world in years past, but the function has always been the same: they act as qualifiers for budding MTG stars to take up deadly arms and beat each other senselessly in an effort to be the ones who will venture forth in the name of Uncle Sam. These “national qualifiers” if you will, (see what I did there?) are different this year, and on this subject much gnashing of teeth can be heard from the editorial quarter.

 

There has been speculation and talk. Conjecture and debate. However, it doesn’t appear that much has been done in the way of actual research or questioning those who might lend insight.

 

For example…

 

Channel Fireball recently posted a rant video discussing their opinions on the new Regionals structure and though it was a few weeks ago, they obviously did no research at all into the topic. The only one who was correct the whole time was Humphrey (and it’s a plant). Watching that video actually accelerated my time table on completing this article since the disinformation was so appalling.

 

I don’t really want to be the crusader for the common player, but it really seems like we have only an elitist view being represented in the community. This might even be ok if “our betters” were right most of the time. However, most of them seem to be less accurate then a meteorologist in Denver, so please hang on a sec while I put on my cape in order to champion the plight of the average gamer (of which I am a member).

 

I’m not going to let this turn into a critique of the Channel Fireball video, but I do need to hit a few of the points they brought up because they are probably commonly held and have obviously been promoted by their site through their video. They have a powerful voice in the community and a lot of power in steering the hive mind.

 

Argument 1: “There are far fewer tournaments and opportunities for players this year."

 

This is not even remotely true. In 2009 there were 31 total tournaments in 26 states and the 2010 season boasts 50, one per state. At the time of writing this, 46 of those events were either loaded into the WPN event locator or easily found on Google.

 

Argument 2: “There are far fewer slots available for players to attain.”

 

If we do go so far as to assume that the three tournaments that do not have an organizer attached to them yet are not held, we still have 174 slots being given away for 2010 Nationals compared to the 120 slots from 2009. It’s very likely though that there will be an event in Illinois which has 8 slots allotted to it, and there will probably still be events in both West Virginia and Wyoming so the total available slots is likely to be 186 for 2010.

 

Argument 3: “There are fewer slots per tournament.”

 

Of the 47 states listed as holding tournaments only seven of them have fewer Nationals invites to toss to the great unwashed. California has four fewer, while Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah each have two fewer slots. In the video LSV said that he imagined that other larger states must feel similar effects to California. What his self admitted lack of research didn’t uncover is that 13 states have stayed the same and 30 states will see an INCREASE in invites. There are 24 states that didn’t even have Regionals last year that get the National Qualifier this year. Adding even greater impact to these totals is the fact that in geographies such as Washington state (which has one of, if not THE highest densities of players in the world) is guaranteed eight slots, where before they only had four. It was possible to have eight spots to award, but only if the player count at their one tournament broke 410. I do not have complete data on this but none of the data I have indicates that any single tournament received more than 4 slots in 2009.

 

Argument 4: “Fewer in-state tournaments can place a geographical hardship on players who want to attend.”

 

In 2009 there were four states that received more than a single tournament and 24 that received none at all. Of those four states, California hosted three while Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas each hosted two. I’m sure that there are many disappointed players in Northern California and near Houston, Texas who are not thrilled with a four hour drive in order to compete in something that was down the street before, but this is more than made up for by the much larger number of people who actually have one within four hours of their homes now.

 

Is basing the Nationals invites allocation on what appears to be the Electoral College System (which is universally loved and glorified for its accuracy) a good idea? Probably not, but it's better then what we used to have, and better by far.

 

Holding a greater number of tournaments across a greater diversity of locations has to be a better representation of our nation’s players then only laser guiding them into huge populations. After all, when we crown (do they use crowns?) a world champion Magic player it’s actually based on the culmination of players and games from around the world. It’s not like the World Series where the world stage is comprised solely of teams in the U.S. and Canada. I’m not into sports, so I hope Canada still has a team if only to make that sentence accurate, but the point is that we need these kinds of things to reach into the warm underbelly of North Dakota. We need to have players competing against others whose accents are so thick that there are translator requirements to judge Nationals even though everyone is speaking English.

 

Something that I think many people do not consider often enough is that Wizards of the Coast is a business, part of a rather large business actually. Their end goals have to be profitability and continued success. It is not in their best interest to lose players, and in changes like Regionals and the newer Prerelease tournament structure, we are fortunate as players that their actions to maintain and increase business tend to be aligned with the players' best interest as well. Though I personally could scream for hours about obvious mistakes I believe they have made, one thing WotC has always done very well is to remember that they have to keep the community happy in order to remain not just in business, but to continue to harbor the best gaming community around.

 

Chris McNutt

FateCreate@gmail.com

@fatecreatr on twitter

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