The Top 5 Magic Moments of 2009

by Bill Stark | posted at 2009-12-21 01:43:00
tagged: Magic, Wizards,

It is the time of the year in which we look back on what has been and reflect on what it means. To that end, TheStarkingtonPost.com presents to you the Top 5 Magic Moments of 2009.

 

Honorable Mentions

There are two happenings of note which were just on the cusp of inclusion to the Top 5, worthy of mention but outshined in the end by the five finalists. First was the creation of http://www.ggslive.com. Rashad Miller and his ragtag crew of technical assistants, announcers, broadcasters, and lackeys have turned a page in local coverage for Magic: The Gathering events. The standard for years has been the professional crew at events like Pro Tours, but Rashad has brought video and live coverage of smaller scale events like Grand Prixs to a whole new level. Not only do the GGsLive.com broadcasts record the happenings at the events for all time, they do it live and in a manner that allows players to connect to the events through their interactive chat room. This makes the events feel bigger and more inclusive, and people have begun taking note. You'll see the crew live at each of the StarCityGames.com Opens this season.

 

Second was a stat little more than a blip in the Twitterverse, but which said more about the state of Magic in 2009 than any article on the subject. Mtgaaron (aka Magic R&D head Aaron Forsythe) pointed out midway through the year that Magic had seen more active tournament participants during a single 12 month period in 2009 than it had at any other point in its history. It's harder to get louder than that: Magic was back, and it was stronger than ever.

 

5. Brian Kibler Returns

 

As the legend goes, it was on a lark that Brian Kibler headed to a PTQ in Las Vegas from California to earn his ticket back to the Pro Tour. A long time fan favorite, the Dragonmaster managed to survive the Swiss, then snuck his way through the Top 8 to earn his slot to the Big Show. By the time Pro Tour-Honolulu rolled around, Kibler had a deck (Esper Aggro), and a draft game good enough to sneak him into the Top 8. Considering his rise alongside Paul Rietzl, playing nearly the same deck during the Block Constructed portion of the event, it seemed like a fitting coda to Kibler's career, and a possible footnote for putting him into the Hall of Fame candidacy discussions for 2010.

 

That wasn't enough for Kibler. He promptly put himself back in the driver's seat a few months later in Austin, Texas, maneuvering all the way to the Finals against Tsuyoshi Ikeda. The match was a showdown between potential future Hall of Famers (Ikeda retains the highest number of lifetime Pro Points for a player not inducted into the Hall), but it was Kibler who finally emerged with his individual Pro Tour title. The victory was an exciting one to watch from a player who has been a fan favorite for many years. It was a tragedy that the integrity of the win will always be marred slightly by the missed Angel of Despair trigger in Brian's Quarterfinals match, but the moral of the story was: Brian Kibler was back on the Pro Tour.

 

4. Magic 2010

 

For nearly two decades, base sets in Magic meant the same thing: reprints of cards we had seen elsewhere in the game. This had worked for years, but in a sign of the times R&D examined the status quo and decided to tweak it. This meant going back to Magic's roots, focusing on the fantasy elements of the game, and most importantly printing new cards in the set. There was also a tweak to how often base sets would be released, moving once every year bringing the total number of Magic sets released in a year back to four, but the key was the addition of brand new cards seen for the first time.

 

And what cards they've been. Harm's Way, Baneslayer Angel, Vampire Nocturnus, Sign in Blood, Silence, duals like Sunpetal Grove, Gargoyle Castle, and Great Sable Stag? And the cards that returned? Ball Lightning, Lightning Bolt, planeswalkers, Siege-Gang Commander, Time Warp, Twincast…Magic 2010 proved itself to be the most powerful base set of the modern era, and customers responded in sales as the set quickly flew off shelves to the point where it became difficult to find the product. If this is the future of base sets for Magic, the game is in a good spot.

 

3. Gabriel Nassif Wins His Own PT

 

Gabriel Nassif is on the short list of players who are assumed auto-includes into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. But in 2009 he put an exclamation point on the discussion by taking down the first major of the season in Kyoto. It wasn't enough for the Frenchman, recognized as one of the game's all time bests both through his tournament career as well as his Player of the Year title, to be a Pro Tour champion alongside teammates during the days of the 3v3 Pro Tour; he needed an individual title and he got it.

 

And what a fashion in which he managed to take it down, too. A masterful rip against Matteo Orsini Jones in the Quarterfinals saw him pluck the must-have Cruel Ultimatum he needed after cheekishly preparing the mana for the sorcery and informing his opponent he was doing just that. Then he met Luis Scott-Vargas in the Finals, at the time the hottest player in the world and one of the game's brightest minds. Nassif took it all in stride, finishing off the competition and putting the exclamation on his inclusion to the 2010 Hall of Fame class (the point came the following weekend when he managed to win Grand Prix-Chicago!).

 

2. StarCityGames.com Announces the Open Series

 

Since Wizards of the Coast began reconfiguring how premier tournament organizers operate within their Organized Play structures, the TOs have been working out new and innovative ways to offer tournaments that appeal to their communities. Steve Port's Legion Events has gone exotic offering "The Game in the Gulf" Magic cruise, while Glenn Godard of Sun Mesa Events has taken the helm of the program formerly know as States, keeping it alive and going strong for all the fans who grew to love it. But by far the most exciting tournament series, and the one with the biggest potential impact on the game, is the $200,000 StarCityGames.com Open series.

 

It is, bar none, the largest prize pool ever offered outside of the Pro Tour for a Magic tournament. It is also the first major attempt by a tournament organizer to offer a serious supplemental event for the Pro Tour and Grand Prix circuits designed to allow players to compete at those events while playing professionally throughout the year. In addition to the very exciting prospects of the circuit (making the concept of full time Magic playing even more of a reality), the Open series provides as many as 15 marquee events for the Legacy format. Championed by a dedicated core of players, the Legacy format has moved closer to the mainstream than ever, and that is in no small part due to the success of the StarCity Open series. With a big time event in Legacy happening nearly each month, the format is getting attention in a way it never has before.

 

$200,000, a set of the Power 9, Legacy, Standard, and tournaments across the nation; the StarCityGames.com Open series is a brave new world for competitive Magic.

 

1. Magic Comes to the xBox

 

It is a difficult task to whittle a list of arbitrary things, assign them values, and carve them into a list ranking them to most important. In 2009, however, the job was easy. Bar none, the most important development in Magic this year was the dawning of a new age: Magic on video game systems. The year brought us great sets like Magic 2010 and Zendikar and "alternative" products like Slivers and Planechase, but Duels of the Planeswalkers was an entirely new breed of Magic product.

 

For the armchair quarterback Duels may not have been the product they were looking for; it was not Magic Online for the xBox, you couldn't custom design and build your own decks, there was no trading. It was perfect, however, for the xBox player who recognized Magic or was interested in fantasy based IPs. After its release, Magic's numbers have been booming and, while it's true the only entity with the hard numbers on how many players are moving from Duels to tournaments is Wizards of the Coast, it's hard to imagine Duels of the Planeswalkers doesn't have something to do with it (a big something).

 

The most exciting aspect of Duels and Wizards' expansion into the world of the xBox is that it represents a corporate understanding of expanding Magic as a whole. Consider that Magic: The Gathering is the only TCG in history that has remained a major industry player despite not having a major media presence. Pokemon, Yugioh, and other anime-based TCGs rely on the ubiquitous television show and movies to achieve mass market appeal while World of Warcraft leans on its extremely popular MMORPG. Each of those TCGs has a built in publicity machine with a brand customers are already familiar with while Magic has been forced to make due with the Pro Tour, being the first TCG ever, and having a solid game. Duels of the Planeswalkers marks a shift in that strategy to expand Magic through avenues outside the norm for the game, and that is by far the most exciting outcome for Magic in 2009 and beyond.

 

What do you think? Do you agree with our picks? Voice your opinion in the forum links below!

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