I was judging at the National Qualifying tournament in Wisconsin last weekend. I was — but only for the first few rounds. Ingrid and I were part of a six-judge crew, headed by Jason Lemahieu, which was a ridiculous judge staff for a 105-player tournament. Attendance was far below expected, and that was true across the country. Last fall, attendance at The2009s (a.k.a. States) was nuts — what has changed? What went wrong?
I have to note that I am writing this on Sunday night and Monday morning — long before have seen any official comments from Wizards, and without seeing the official attendance and Top 8 lists from across the country. I did see, and hear about, a lot of Facebook status notes, IRC feeds and so forth from judges across the country. I know the Wisconsin had 105 players, and that that was more than the New England states (including New York and Massachusetts), and that attendance was bad nearly everywhere. I heard about states where the qualifiers would not have gone past five rounds (in other words, less than 32 players).
By comparison, last fall we had The2009s. These were the “replacements” for States and Provincial Championships, and were put on by the TOs after Wizards stopped supporting them. Last fall, staff’s over/under for Wisconsin was 165, and we were way over. Last weekend, the over/under was 175, and actual attendance was way under.
Attendance at The2009s was huge. Attendance has been massive at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open Events. It was way down for the National Qualifiers.
What happened?
I really don’t know. I don’t have the data. I’m sure Wizards is working hard to figure that out, but they aren’t telling me. I can’t judge, so I’ll just list everything I know or have heard, and let you try to decide. Your guess may be as good as mine — better, if you have any real data at all.
It’s Spring!
Let’s start with one probable cause. The2009s was held in late fall. U.S. National Qualifiers was held in May. In Wisconsin, late fall is generally cold, gloomy, and often rainy. May is generally warm and pleasant. Late fall people have had a lot of spring, summer, and early fall to enjoy, and being inside on a cold day is not a serious sacrifice. In May, we have been cooped up all winter, and the first really nice spring days usually happen in early May. Not to mention little things like graduations, weddings, and other such familial events.
This year, the Saturday of the Qualifier was really nice.
In general, the spring prereleases are less well attended. The same factors may have affected the Qualifiers as well.
The New Locations
Wizards did change the names and locations for these events. In the past, Regionals happened in a scattering of locations across the country. U.S. Nationals Qualifiers happened in every state. In many cases, the venues involved were new. More importantly, players were not required to play in their own states — if they were residents of the U.S., they could play in any U.S. Nationals Qualifier.
Maybe this confused players. Maybe not. The Wizards website was not all that helpful in finding a location, but most of the TOs are better at getting the word out. I don’t have data, but this does not seem like a huge problem, at last with the TOs I know.
Players may have had more trouble figuring out which state to play in. Many of the biggest names in any location were already qualified, but some were playing just for the practice [Is this allowed? — Craig]. States also had different numbers of slots, depending on the number of tournament players living in the state.
Take Madison, for example. We had a four-slot qualifier. Chicago, three hours south of us, had eight. Minneapolis — five hours if you don’t waste time getting a speeding ticket — also had eight slots. The payout was twice as large at those venues.
“I clearly cannot drink from the cup in front of me.”
However, players know this. If enough decide that just making Top 8 is easier than Top 8 plus another win, then they will travel to the Qualifier with more slots. This will lessen the competition for the Madison slots.
“Obviously, I cannot drink from the cup in front of you.”
Maybe — maybe not. However, confusion about which event to attend would not reduce the numbers everywhere. If a player is trying to make a strategic decision about which Qualifier would give the best chance of an invite, staying home is unlikely to be the best choice.
California — a.k.a. Whine Country USA
The changes in Qualifier locations meant that there were far more qualifiers, offering more slots, located closer to most players. This should have been trumpeted as a huge benefit. Of course, that’s not what anyone heard. No, we heard a constant stream of moaning from California people about how badly everyone was being screwed. Except, of course, it wasn’t everyone. Nearly everyone else was better off.
I had to dig a bit, but I have a list of the locations for the Regionals held shortly after Darksteel was released. Let’s take a look. Where I could, I included the player count as well.
Ohio Valley (684)
Detroit (380)
Midwest – Chicago (612)
Texas (South)
Mountain – Utah
No. California (537)
So. California
Florida ??? (423)
Southeast – Atlanta (616)
Northeast (New Jersey?) (561)
Seattle (432)
Maryland
Nebraska
New Mexico (Southwest) (227)
Boston
Alaska (2 slot)
Hawaii (2 slot)
Puerto Rico (2 slot)
US Military – Germany
US Military – Korea
I understand that players in Northern California would now have a long drive, since the Northern California Regionals had vanished. Welcome to the club. Sacremento to LA is a six-hour drive (according to Google Maps.) Minneapolis — where U.S. Nationals is to be held — is a seven-hour drive to Chicago or Nebraska, the nearest Regionals under the old system. There are lots of examples of longer / further / more difficult trips.
Yes, it’s bad that many Californians have a long drive, and I hope that Wizards can find a way to reinstate a closer Nats Qualifier. On the other hand, I can sympathize with the problem Wizards faced.
First, you cannot add too many qualifiers. U.S. Nationals cannot — and should not — be a 600 player tournament lasting 10+ rounds per day. That sucks. To prevent that, Wizards has to limit the total number of invites. Lots of players will already be qualified based on rating, or Pro Points, or whatever. You simply cannot add a ton of more invites through qualifiers. You have to allocate the number of tournaments, and invites, you can give out as fairly as possible.
This time around, Wizards said one event per state. Yes, that screws CA folks. However, giving more than one event to any single state starts you down a slippery slope. Sure, CA may deserve two events. It’s big, and populous, and it is a really long drive from one end to another. Texas is also big, and getting from one end to another involves long drives — should Texas get two? For that matter, the drive from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Detroit is 10-12 hours — should the UP get their own qualifier? Where do you stop? North to South Alaska is long haul — and you cannot even drive from Honolulu to Oahu, since Hawaii is a chain of islands. Do you give Hawaii two events? Do you give it seven events (one per major island?)
If you start giving states multiple qualifiers, where do you stop?
Of course, wherever you stop, the next state in line is going to scream about getting screwed.
This year, Wizards changed from a double handful of Regional tournaments to one event per state, and everyone – except the folks in Northern California – were better off. However, at least half the articles I saw in the weeks before the Nats Qualifiers complained about how bad the new plan was. Did that have an impact on attendance? I’m not sure, but I do know that no PR firm ever recommends a constant stream of bitter whining as the centerpiece of a sales campaign.
Jund / UW Control
It could be that people are unhappy with the format. Generally, by the middle of any established format, players are bored and griping. People have been complaining about Jund for a long time. Now we have added a strong control deck. Maybe that combination — the hated Jund plus control — is enough to turn players off. Maybe.
I doubt it, though. Yes, we have Jund decks. Yes, UW Control is good. However, those decks are not uniform. Jund appears in many forms, and UW Control also includes tap-put versions, versions with various counters and — well, about five different builds. In addition to those two decks, people are having considerable success with UWR Control, Mythic, Naya, Mythic Conscription, RDW, Blood Deck Wins, Time Sieve, Turbofog, etc. etc. The format is hardly stale.
Allure of States / Inclusive Tourneys
Jason Lemahieu had an interesting theory — that the name National Qualifier was less appealing to the more casual players. “States” and “Regionals” have the sound of something local, or at least dedicated to your region. They also really sound like big, open tournaments — something that anyone can feel comfortable playing in. People know what it means to be “state champion,” and that seems like a reasonable, maybe even attainable, goal. For the average player, Lems argued, Regionals or State Champs — or even The2009s — was something that they were interested in.
U.S. National Qualifier, on the other hand, is clearly linked to a national tournament. The name also sounds like a form of PTQ. PTQs clearly attract a lot of players, but they attract the more tournament-focused players. States used to attract more of the semi-casual players. Lems’ point was that the name change might not be as appealing to these players.
Could be. I’d love to be able to run some focus groups to find out.
The Whole Mythics Thing
I’ve written about Mythics. Bennie Smith wrote about Mythics. Everyone and their brother — at least everyone without a better article topic — has written about Mythics. Mythics may have affected turnout in a couple different ways.
1) Cost of decks: No question, some of the tier 1 decks cost a lot to play. Looking back, my deck from my first Vintage Tournament — back in the days when it was called Type 1 — cost less than Super Friends. It wasn’t that I was playing a bad deck: I had a beat-up Lotus, three other Moxen, Ancestral Recall, lots of duals and Workshops, but back in 1999, that totaled about $500. My Standard — sorry, Type II — decks in those days were also a lot cheaper. Price might have turned some people off. (On the other hand, many players, including some kids, arrived with complete Super Friends and Mythic Conscription decks. More importantly, Jund, RDW, even Polymorph decks are cheap.)
2) The power of the Mythic decks scared people off. Did people read articles saying that the only Tier 1 decks were based on Mythics? Maybe, but that’s hardly the feel I got going into the weekend. This is a variant on the “it’s all Jund and UW Control fallacy. The format is far broader than that, but if people believed it wasn’t, maybe that had an impact.
3) Unavailability of cards: Maybe a few people stayed home because they could not get the cards they wanted. I know that the local dealers were out of some Mythics. We even had a few people show up at FNM, asking if anyone had opened a Planeswalker, and if they could buy it. Maybe some critical cards were in short supply. I know that, had I not been judging, card availability would have affected my deck choices. In all my drafts and sealeds, online and off, I still have never opened a Gideon or Vengevine. That said, however, I would have been able to get something together. I have most of the cards for several Mythic builds, and even if I had had to play 3 Baneslayer Angels instead of four, I could have played that.
I’m quite sure Wizards is studying these issues, but I doubt I’ll see the results. If Wizards does find this to have been a problem, however, I expect to see changes next time out.
The Prizes were Better at States
One final thought — the prizes were simply better, for the average player, at The2009s. This might have had an impact, especially with the players that play PTQs more for fun than to qualify. (Yes, those people exist, and are far more common than the pros. Few people who play in multiple PTQs but don’t spend weeks playtesting and studying formats actually expect to win. Most hope to finish well and maybe get some packs. Those are the people I’m talking about here.)
The U.S. National Qualifiers had a specific prize — the top 2, 4 or 8 players would win qualifications to U.S. Nationals. If you are the type of player that travels to such events, that is huge.
For the average local player, who was unlikely to spend a weekend going to a Premier Magic Tournament, qualification was less interesting. Winning an invite is insignificant if your job, financial situation, family responsibilities, etc. are going to prevent you from going.
The2009s, on the other hand, had a very different first prize. For these events, the winner got free entry into all Constructed PTQs and other large events run by the participating TOs, in addition to bragging rights. Free entry to events you can actually attend if far better than qualification to an event that you can’t make.
Less important, but possibly significant for some players, states used to offer playmats, foils, deck boxes and lots of other loot. The U.S. National Qualifiers, well, didn’t.
Conclusions
It looks like participation rates were down across the board. I really don’t know why. I’ve listed some theories, but I have no way of testing them. Without testing, all I can really say is that some of them may be more or less right.
I’m not saying that Wizards screwed up. They may not have — the mistake may be mine. Maybe the fact that it is spring should have suppressed turnout far more than actually happened, and that Nats was a success. I don’t know, and I doubt that, but I have no proof.
Either way, I’m pretty confident that Wizards will be doing some further refinements on the structure of U.S. National Qualifiers in the future.
PRJ
“one million words” online