I'm making a separate post since I have some stuff I want to say,
but I don't want to bury it in the tournament report.
The Star City
Games Invitational is a very good tournament, but still has flaws.
Star City knows what they are doing. They run events so much better than
just about any other TO, even better than WotC does sometimes. They have
created a "real" pro tour for magic players. By this, I mean it's
much easier to make a living by playing SCG events than it is to play WotC
events. The prize money is almost comparable, and the travel costs are usually
much less. That said, there is still room for improvement.
The
invitational tournament is very comparable to a pro tour. However, having some
players with byes in the tournament is probably not a good thing. They
eliminated byes from the SCG opens over a year ago because they were too good,
and, while I don't think they are too good in the invitational ( an extra 7
rounds of play helps mitigate their importance), I feel like it’s not good for
the tournament. Byes are given out at GPs so that the pro players have an
incentive to show up and compete for less money. But when the real money is on
the line, byes are an arbitrary advantage for a few people. Of the
people with 2 byes at the invitational, 4 made the top 8 (Dave Thomas, Shaheen Soorani,
Todd Anderson, Ben Friedman) and 5 more made the money (Gerry Thompson, AJ Sacher,
Adam Prosak, Nick Spagnolo, Brian Braun-Duin). All but 2 made day 2. The
argument can be made that they did well because they are good players, and they
earned the byes because they are good players, but at the invitational level,
everyone is good. Reid Duke only had 1 bye. This is the current Magic Online
World Champion, played last month at the Players Championship, got 4th place at
the Invitational in December, won a Standard Open, and top 4 a Legacy Open the
same weekend. How he has only 1 bye and someone like Chris VanMeter has 2 when
he hasn't even played a SCG event this year is crazy to me.
Maybe the goal of the invitational isn't to find the best player, but to reward
the best grinders. I don't like that as a goal, as much as I otherwise enjoyed
the tournament.
Todd Anderson
claiming that the Invitational is harder than a Pro Tour is just wrong.
He's
since backed off his claim a bit, and I'm glad to see he's admitted he might
have been exaggerating a bit, but many people tried to defend his
claim when he first made it. This was my first SCG Invitational, and I've
played at 3 Pro Tours in the last year. The Pro Tours are much harder. Even
discounting the Limited portion of the Pro Tour event, deck building for a new
format at the PT is at least 3 times as hard as trying to solve a lame duck
metagame.
The
twitter discussion soon shifted to a claim that the Invitational is harder than
a GP. I disagree with this on a couple levels; in particular, the expected
value for the Invitational is just better. Fewer players, more prize money for
an equivalent finish, easier record to make the cut to day 2, one more round of
competition. It’s a lot easier to have a successful tournament at the
invitational. The player quality might be a bit tougher at the invitational by
eliminating some of the really bad players, but you also lose out on the Elite
pro level players.
Despite all this, the invitational still had the exciting feel of
playing "Big Time Magic" for "Big Time Money", and it is
still very challenging.
The Coverage
crew does a poor job of choosing which matches to feature.
This might
come off sounding like I'm complaining that I didn't get a feature match, so
let me address that first: I actually prefer not having feature matches, and I
enjoy my relative anonymity among the Good to Very Good US Magic Player
circle. I know, I'm writing this blog, tweeting, streaming, etc., but it's not
because I want to be "Magic Famous". That said, I probably should
have been featured at least once over the weekend, and for whatever reason,
they kept going with the same players over and over again.
I
only got my feature matches at the SCG in DFW because I was good friends with
one of the writers working for SCG at the time, and because none of the bigger
"names" were at that event. My only other feature matches were earned
by being undefeated at GP Dallas after day 1. But it's not just about me, or is
it just SCG Coverage. Zac Elsik finished 17th at PT Barcelona, and they didn't
even have a picture of him. I feel like coverage teams are too busy sucking up
to the "name" players to go out and do a bit of research on who is
actually doing good besides the big names.
All
that said, the coverage is getting better and better with every tournament, and
I'm excited about the future of the game.
Todd Anderson
won the Invitational. Todd Anderson is employed by Star City Games.
I am
making no accusations with this comment. I fully believe everything is on the
up and up. But whatever loophole that allows him to compete should probably be
closed, for the integrity of the game. In a world where someone can be
suspended for a year and half because it "looks like they cheated on
camera", perception is reality and I hope they fix the way this might
be perceived.
Dave Thomas
finally broke the curse!
For
about a year now, Dave hasn't done well at any event I've been at. As soon as
he goes somewhere I'm not at, he does really well. Well, finally we both had
success at the same tournament, and I'm really happy for him.
As for my
performance, I'm only a little disappointed.
My goal was top 8, and I finished only 1
win off of that goal, but I really wanted to do better. I think I could have
played a better legacy deck, or at least a better version of my deck. Because
of my finish, I'm close to qualifying for the next Invitational in Los Angeles,
and I'm considering trying to go for it.
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