My TCGplayer.com 2012 MaxPoint Series Championship in Indianapolis, IN Trip Report and a few Competitive REL Tournament Pointers

So here's my TCGPlayer Indianapolis 50k trip report:

I rolled out with two friends of mine from the Chicago area super early Friday morning to head to Indianapolis. We didn't really need points as we all had enough for entry, but figured we'd play in grinders anyway just for fun since we basically had to stay in a hotel to be there early enough for the tournament on Saturday and the logic was if we're going to stay the night anyway we might as well just spend the whole day there playing Magic- Generally a very good plan.

This was the first big TCGPlayer event I've competed in, and the way the points are handled sort of rub me the wrong way. I mean, in something like a Grand Prix, you have to work to get your byes as you and your performance are the only things that matter. At this tournament, your options for admission and byes were:

-Place well in lesser TCG Player events or know someone who does that doesn't need/want points.

-Compete in $15 single elimination grinders that award a maximum of 20 points to first place.

-Buy points from someone before the event or at the actual event

-Trade cards for points before or at the event.

So, since half the ways you can even get points don't even require playing Magic, nearly everyone had two byes. It was sort of stupid actually, as during sign up on Saturday morning the registration slip stack for people with two byes was absolutely towering over the stack of a few dozen people who didn't have full byes. Now, as I understand it, the whole reason to have byes to begin with is to elevate yourself from needing to play first and second round players running weird brews that are just going to lose all day and obliterate your tiebreakers when they drop round three. ...But, if all those people who either have money or cards to trade for points come in with two byes anyway, what's the point? If you're already invested in the tournament to the tune of potentially a day of driving, a plane ticket, or at minimum, a hotel room, why wouldn't you just flip our cash for byes? It seems like a broken system.

Secondly, the way these points are treated as this weird secondary currency just seems super scummy. I get the idea of a grinder, don't get me wrong- But at ~$2 a point, you basically need to take third place or better in a grinder to even "break even" compared to just buying or trading for points. So, hardly anyone was playing grinders, as it just made no sense. We got to the convention center when the event opened on 11:00 AM on Friday, and sat and waited for 13 other players for the grinder to fire until like 2:00.

What really doesn't make sense to me is if these points essentially have zero value to TCGPlayer and all of their value is on the secondary market, why TCGPlayer isn't a more liberal with passing them out- especially in a grinder-like situation. What seemed to be happening was people were arriving and were like, "Oh hell yeah grinders this sounds awesome!" People would pay their $15, lose the first round, get nothing, then just be like "...Welp." I guess you could argue they need to control supply to not have points "inflation," but when a dude walks up to you and is like "You guys need points? I have 480 to trade," I think the train has already left that station in a big way.

Comparatively, if the prize split was something more along the lines of $15 for a 16 player four round Swiss with TCGPlayer points awarded in line with match points (i.e. 3 points for winning each round, etc.) I think the grinder room would've been filled with people playing all day. As it was, the risk/reward for a $15 single elimination that at BEST would win you $15-40 "worth" of points on the secondary market? That's just crazy. People with tons of points were EVERYWHERE too. It actually got kind of annoying hanging out in the grinder room deck testing as you were dealing with a constant stream of "Hey, you guys need any points?" as everyone with a binder full tried to unload them for as much cash as possible.

At around 6:00 my crew of dudes had done a ton of deck testing, figured out what we wanted to play for tomorrow, and decided to look up a local FNM. Here's what I ended up playing for the weekend:

Main:

• 4 Ash Zealot
• 2 Brimstone Volley
• 3 Gore-House Chainwalker
• 4 Hellrider
• 3 Lightning Mauler
• 3 Pillar of Flame
• 4 Pyreheart Wolf
• 4 Rakdos Cackler
• 4 Searing Spear
• 4 Stromkirk Noble
• 2 Thundermaw Hellkite
• 2 Hellion Crucible
• 21 Mountain

Side:

• 2 Flames of the Firebrand
• 1 Mark of Mutiny
• 1 Pillar of Flame
• 3 Thunderbolt
• 4 Reckless Waif
• 2 Volcanic Strength
• 2 Zealous Conscripts

Unrelated to the 50K, but the FNM we went to was hilarious. It was in a not so great area of Indianapolis, in a part of town loaded with Cash 4 Golds and Rent-a-Centers. We walk in, and people are playing weird mishmashes of decks, and the venue wasn't even charging for FNM. We got super cocky (in a very self-deprecating joking way), talking about how our tournament-tested decks were just going to dominate everyone, and what happened was the exact opposite, to such a hilarious extent that we just dropped after round two to go get dinner

The local meta there was just insane, the stuff people were playing made no sense, and were closer to decks comprised of "These cards seem cool!" than any actual conceivable strategy. What was crazy though was these dudes were just drawing all answers to EVERYTHING or playing insane obscure creatures that were just impossible to deal with. The absolute best dream crush of the night was from a friend of mine playing against a kid who was doing nothing other than pumping up his Ajani. He hits 8 counters, passes turn, and my bro steals Ajani with Zealous Conscripts, blows him up, carefully positions all the dice representing the dudes, and passes turn.

The kid sits there, looks a little confused, then drops Planar Cleansing- Announcing the card with a rising intonation like he was asking it as a question. Wipes board, plays some other weird top decked creature, and then kills him via straight up bashing. It was bananas. I guess it just goes to show how bad your deck can be when you build it with a narrow tournament-ready meta game focus. Either way, it was a very amusing and humbling experience.

The actual 50K was run surprisingly well. I'm not sure if turnout was lower than expected or what but there were like 6-8 seats available for every two tables. I liked the extra room, but I was expecting a totally full house. I had two byes, so after the player meeting we headed to go get some breakfast and come back.

Round three I played a green white Unburial Rites deck that I pooped on pretty easily in the first game. Typically when playing a deck like that, I'll win fairly easily the first game regardless of whether or not I win the die roll as they don't really start doing things until turn three (aside from dropping mana dorks potentially) and by then I can already have them at 10 (or less) life. They'll sideboard, typically have answers for my stuff, I'll lose the next game, and then come back in a big way on the third game.

What I do against that deck is site out two Thundermaw Hellkite, two Hellion Crucibles, and bring in four Reckless Waifs to bring my curve way down and get a totally explosive start. Mulligan to the point of having at least one land and one Reckless Waif and things just go crazy. There's seriously nothing better than turn one Mountain, Reckless Waif, Go, and have them drop a come into play tapped land and pass turn.

That's almost exactly how round four went, and I ended up losing round five stumbling in game three. I might not have lost my second game in round five, but I made my only major play mistake of the day. I had a Hellrider and Pyreheart Wolf out with two other creatures. I declare attacks, tap the Pyreheart Wolf and announce its trigger, then look to my hand to see how I could get the most out of this attack and if it was better to use burn now to try to get him on an uneven number of blockers or try to hold it back in case I need to deal with a potential Thragtusk bounce or something that'd result in some sort of crazy life gain.

Playing out a few different scenarios, I decide not to nuke anything, put my hand on the table, and the dude says, "Blocks?" and I nod- Not noticing that I didn't announce the Hellrider trigger until he started stacking up dudes to block my guys. No sense in really calling a judge, as I made a mistake, and I'm really not sure the four damage that would've caused would make any difference as he already had a Rhox Faithmender online that he was being very conservative with and a graveyard full of life gain.

Oh well!

The best thing that happened to me in these rounds was Zealous Conscripts-ing a Griselbrand. The dude I was playing against Unburial Rites-ed it, next turn I drop Zealous Conscripts, swing with everything, draw seven cards (which is absolutely INSANE for me on turn five where I'm typically out of cards or holding on to an extra land). I drew like seven different ways I could beat this dude the next turn, it was like Christmas morning.

Round six I once again played some sort of weird green/white human aggro brew that was just totally shutdown by Stromkirk Noble which got totally out of control both games. The second game I even had two out, and a morbid-active Brimstone Volley finished the job.

Round seven was the first match I had against a fast aggro deck, and the dude was playing the super standard black/red zombie list. He won the die roll, which turned into who won the match. We both had pretty explosive starts, and take turns winning games equally quickly. Game three was sort of interesting as we were both playing a bit more conservatively and I was getting lucky with Pillar of Flame and getting rid of his Geralf's Messengers. The game ended with him at 2 life, me at 3 life, and him top decking a Searing Spear. Such is life in the super-fast-aggro mirror.

Round eight was over pretty quick as it was just one of those rounds where you keep what seems like a great hand, play everything the best you can with your deck, and your deck just not giving you what you need combined with them having answers for everything. I sort of expected this kind of thing once I got deeper into the winners bracket as my deck is a super one trick pony, and is really bad against the sort of answers-filled decks that "better" players typically play.

So, with three losses, and it being late in the day, I dropped and we headed home. Overall I had a ton of fun, and definitely will be back to future events, but I'm totally not going to put any effort into farming up anything but the bare minimum of points I need. I really just go to events like this to have fun and play competitive Magic, and sort of wished I had gotten two more rounds of actual play in instead of standing around with 400 other people who managed to skeeze up byes.

Oh, something I hope to see at EVERY future event is posting match assignments online. Pastimes was tweeting a link to the text output of the DCI Reporter when pairings went up and just being able to pull that up on your phone, scroll down to your name, and heading to your table without needing to crowd around pairings printed on 12 point font on a piece of paper was SO much better that I think I'm even going to try to talk the place I play FNM at into doing that same thing.

I highly encourage everyone on the fence of getting involved in competitive REL tournaments to give them a try. It's a shocking amount of fun to play super-tight highly-technical Magic in an environment where you need to be careful of absolutely everything. Yeah, the trigger rules are annoying, but spending the day with tons of cool players isn't something you should pass up. Oddly enough, at the 50K I didn't play against any terrible sports. Everyone was great, sharing side boarding strategies and wishing good luck after each round. Despite points weirdness, and the inevitable high levels of theft at big events, the overall vibe of the 50K was incredible.

If anyone who had anything to do with judging or running the event is reading this, and I didn't get a chance to thank you personally on Saturday, thanks for putting this on! I had a great time, and a lot of people worked really hard to give us two days of awesome Magic playing. I can't wait for next year.