Magic organized play has come a long way in the last few years. The game has exploded in popularity, and that explosion has resulted in commensurate growth in tournament attendance as well. Even the dramatic increase in the number of large events for players to attend – with SCG Open Series events every weekend in the US and a Grand Prix somewhere in the world nearly as often – hasn’t caused demand for large events to drop. Whereas a thousand players was once an almost unheard of number, it is now a disappointing attendance figure for a GP, with events regularly eclipsing 1500 players, to say nothing of the enormity that was the 4500 player GP Vegas.

WotC has been remarkably responsive to player feedback about the growing pains associated with these massive events. We’ve already seen an increase in the number of players who qualify from Grand Prix, with every player with two or fewer losses receiving an invite from larger tournaments. Starting next year, Grand Prix payouts will scale based on attendance, paying out both more money to top finishers as well as paying a higher percentage of the field.

These are good things, and more importantly demonstrate that WotC is willing to listen to feedback from players about how to improve events. With that in mind, I wanted to share some thoughts I have on what is and isn’t working, along with suggestions for how to do better.

1) Number of Rounds

One of the recent changes to Grand Prix was to lock in the number of rounds no matter how many players are in the event to a maximum of fifteen – nine on day one, six on day two. I can’t say I understand this change, because it exacerbates a number of the issues that come with big events. At the GP in Washington DC this weekend, three players with a 13-2 record missed Top 8. Yes, those players received invitations to the Pro Tour, but they don’t receive either the plane ticket to the event or the prize money for the Top 8 finish, which means that they might not be able to actually afford the flight to Spain. Not only that, but they don’t get the chance to play off for the title, which is insane given how excellent their performances were over the course of the weekend. At the extreme end of things, GP Las Vegas had *nineteen* players with a 13-2 record or better, with only two of them actually getting a chance to draft for the championship.

It’s important to note that this doesn’t impact just the Top 8 cut either – the crowding out for placement gets even worse as you go down the standings. At GPDC, 12-3 went all the way from 14th to 37th, and 11-4 from 49th to 96th. Unlike the players who narrowly missed Top 8, those who missed out on Top 16, Top 32, or Top 64 on tiebreakers don’t get a PT invitation to make up for it. And at the extreme end, GP Vegas saw some players with 12-3 records miss Top 64, getting absolutely nothing for an excellent performance that used to be almost guaranteed Top 16 and sometimes even squeaked into Top 8 at smaller events.

Let’s face it – no one likes tiebreakers. They’re a necessary evil, since the math isn’t always clean when we’re trying to figure out final placement. But running huge events with rounds capped exacerbates the impact of tiebreakers – in the case of GP DC, they meant the difference between a chance to win the tournament for Sam Black but not the three players in 9th-11th, and a Top 16 finish for three lucky players at 12-3, while five others who won the exact same number of matches only made Top 64, receiving several hundred dollars and two pro points fewer for essentially the same result.

The increased importance of tiebreakers similarly increases the importance of byes. Sam Black’s three byes were almost certainly the culprit for his Top 8 finish over the players below him, since byes are incredibly valuable for improving your tiebreakers. A player with no byes has a tough enough time already navigating a massive field, and running too few rounds increases both the relative value of each bye in terms of its contribution to your overall record, but also because of the almost insurmountable tiebreaker edge they offer in the final standings.

Did you know that GPs used to cut to Top 64 rather than X-2 after day one? The change was eventually made because of the sheer amount of feel-bad moments caused by missing the cut on tiebreakers, and I think it’s important to avoid similar tiebreaker heartbreak with the final results now.

What should WotC do? Well, there are a few options. One is to simply run more rounds. I’m not sure why fifteen was decided as the sweet spot. I can certainly see the logistical challenges involved in running many more, but every additional round helps break up the clustering in the field and reduce the importance – and feel-bad moments – of tiebreakers. A tenth round on day one, or a seventh round on day two would go a long way toward improving these problems in larger events. There’s certainly an upper limit to how many rounds you can reasonably expect to complete in a weekend, but GPs in previous years ran more without too much difficulty – as event sizes increase, the fifteen round cap just causes more issues, as can be seen in the results of GP Vegas. Running more rounds doesn’t eliminate tiebreaker problems, but it breaks up the big point clusters and spreads out records, so it makes them impact less players.

Another option is to do away with payouts based on placement and change them to payout to given records, much like is now done with invitations for everyone at 13-2. This change seems unlikely to happen simply because it doesn’t allow for a set budget for event payouts. It would certainly help mitigate tiebreaker drama – they would essentially only matter for Top 8 playoffs – but I doubt anything like this would be implemented when it means an event like Vegas could mean paying out many times the budgeted prize pool.

While the expanded payouts coming next year are nice, they won’t really do all that much to mitigate these problems. You’ll still have people getting dramatically different payouts with the same record and feeling bad as a result. The expanded payout also doesn’t change Pro Points awarded in any way, so someone like LSV at GP Vegas may get a few hundred dollars for his 12-3 record, but he won’t get any Pro Points, which is the primary reason he’s at the event in the first place.

Can’t we just get another round or two? It makes no sense that we’re playing fewer rounds today in tournaments with more people than a year or two ago.

2) Coverage

“Coverage” is a really broad category. There are a lot of ways that coverage could be improved, and I could probably write an entire post just on that. There are a few specific things I want to touch on right now, though.

The first is when coverage starts, which is round four of the event. I understand the reasoning – round four is when all of the pro players are coming off of their byes, so you’re certain to be able to find matches that people want to watch. But I disagree. I think starting coverage in round four sends a terrible message to the rest of the players, which is that nothing matters until the pros are in the mix. These first few rounds you’re playing? They’re just the preamble to the actual tournament, which hasn’t really started yet.

Frankly, that sucks. And the idea that you can’t find anyone to feature in the first few rounds of an event is just incorrect. Chris Pikula played in GP DC with zero byes – is he not worth getting on camera? Magic has an incredibly long history at this point, and there are a huge number of players who come out of the woodwork for a local event. There has to be SOMEONE worth putting on camera during the first few rounds. Even if you somehow had to feature someone no one had ever heard of, it’s better than just ignoring those first few rounds – how excited would you be if you got to play on camera for the first time? SCG Opens and Pro Tours start broadcasting from round one – so should Grand Prix.

In a similar vein of broadcasting something rather than nothing – coverage should have far fewer replays of previous rounds. Nothing makes me turn the stream off faster than seeing an old match on camera, and yet somehow these have become the go-to method for filling time whenever there isn’t a match on camera. I understand that commentary is a difficult job and breaks are important, but I’d rather see just about anything else.

I really like what SCG does at their events with deck techs and player interviews filmed separately that can be run during downtime – it provides a steady stream of new and interesting content that lets the live casters take a break. Grand Prix have a ton of pro players the audience would love to hear from – why not get them into the booth and ask them some quick questions or just let them talk about interesting moments from the tournament? I know I’m always happy to come into the booth and chat when I’m not playing. The broadcast should take advantage of that rather than replaying old matches.

Oh, and DEFINITELY don’t play matches from other tournaments. The most jarring part of watching the GP Louisville coverage for me was the times when they cut away to the finals match at PT Dublin. Not only was it confusing and unrelated to the event going on, but it served to highlight the massive difference in production quality between the two events. The need for higher levels of professionalism in GP coverage is another subject altogether, but there’s no need to shine a light on it by contrasting it directly with the PT.

One comment I see frequently from the community is about the skill level of the commentators, and how they’ll miss certain interactions that other high level players notice. There’s two things I want to say with regards to this critique.

First, it’s important to remember that commentary is not and should not be aimed at top competitive players. The goal of the commentary is to make what’s going on accessible and entertaining for the audience, not to analyze every possible option the players have and come up with the best possible line of play. Commentators should be familiar with the commonly played cards and decks in a format, and understand them in broad strokes, but they don’t have to be experts, because their primary audience is not experts either. It’s true that some commentators sometimes don’t have this level of knowledge, and that’s a problem.

Secondly, it’s hard to attract commentators for Grand Prix who are experts, because those same experts could be playing instead. Magic is not like football, or even like League of Legends, because the game is entirely mental. There’s no point at which a player is unable to continue to compete but still has an expert level knowledge of the game. Most players who are capable of providing expert level commentary would rather play Magic than talk about it – I know I would.

I’ve seen similar critiques comparing the knowledge of GP commentators to those employed by StarCityGames. The reason the SCG circuit is able to attract commentators with more playing chops is because those players are not sacrificing an opportunity to play in a Grand Prix and potentially qualify for the pro tour or earn pro points. I’ve been in the booth for an SCG event – I would not do the same thing for a GP, barring being offered likely more than they’re willing to pay, because if I’m going to fly to a Grand Prix, I’m going to want to play in it. Though hey, once I hit my five finishes, that might change – an unforeseen bonus of the new rule.

It’s also worth noting that the SCG commentators are constantly covering the same two formats, while GPs vary widely. I think Marshal Sutcliffe has a lot of talent, and he’s great at talking about limited in particular, because that’s something with which he’s very familiar. It’s a bit of a stretch to expect him to be able to speak as intelligently about Standard, Modern, and Legacy as well. I imagine Wizards would be well served to offer compensation sufficient to make it worth his while to spend time becoming more familiar with all of them if they’re going to have him in the booth to cover all of those types of events.

3) Start Times

Why does the tournament start at 9 AM on Sunday, but 10 AM on Saturday? Given that Saturday is far more likely to run long, doesn’t it make more sense to start that day earlier? The swiss rounds at GP DC weren’t over until after 10 PM on Saturday, but the entire Top 8 was done around 6 PM on Sunday. What’s the deal?

I think the move to eliminate Saturday morning registration was an excellent way to try to get tournaments going faster and ending earlier, and I think we should go one step further and simply move up the start time as well. That would give us time to fit in another round, or at least get done with the day in time to go to dinner at a reasonable hour.

While we’re at it – can we please follow the announced start time for day two? I have played in nearly one hundred Grand Prix over the past sixteen years, and I have never once been late for day two. And yet at nearly every event, there are a handful of people who are not in their seats on time at the start of day two, who end up holding up the tournament for everyone else. Players receive a game loss if they are late to any other round, and they’re not even delaying the rest of the tournament – why is an exception made for round one of the day, when players are actually holding up the rest of the event from progressing?

Start earlier, and start on time. That should free up more than enough time for another round or two, shouldn’t it?

Overall, I’ve been a huge fan of the changes made to organized play recently. The five Grand Prix cap means that I can spend Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and her family without feeling obligated to rush away on Friday and fly across the country to play sealed deck in Canada in search of another point – although I still only have one finish, so one could argue that I should be going anyway. I appreciate the expanded payouts for larger Grand Prix, but I don’t feel like they address the core problems of larger events for those who care more about making Top 8 and earning pro points than making some of their money back. We’re making progress, but we can still do better.

What do you think? How could Grand Prix be improved for both players and those following along at home?