A couple days seems like forever now. Planning a Modern Masters GP has been a wild ride. I started this journey by renting a hall bigger than two football fields. As one of my judges who used to work at Home Depot pointed out last night, the building is bigger than his old Home Depot store.

I then made plans with my staffing manger to recruit 151 staff people. (Judge + Admin staff)

My goal has been and continues to be, to create a great experence for the players in the event. Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate the attendance continuing to grow at the incredible rate it did. Take a look at the chart that shows the actual registration and then the light blue area that is the projected attendance if this rate continues.

I like to think that I’m good at my job. I know that some might disagree. However, I do know that there is a point where I cannot deliver a good experence with the room and staff we have. I want the players in the event to have a great time and that degrades as we pass 4500 and it completely falls apart in the 6000 person range.

If attendance continued at the current projected rate we end up with at least 6629 players and it is possible that it exceeds 7000 players. I just can’t serve that many people.

So I had to make one of the hardest decisions I have faced. Do I cap the event, knowing that this will create hardship and disappointment for some players? Or do I keep registration open and be sure that the event is going to be a bad experence for everyone?

So I made a decision. Yes, I reversed myself. Yes, I was wrong and I’m sorry. If you would like a apology in person I will be happy do that. I really am sorry. But I made the best decision I can under these conditions.

The good news is drafts are easier to run than GPs. It’s just straight up easier to manage the player experence in a draft based event than a huge GP, especially if that GP is the largest TCG event in history. So I’m working with my team to create a draft based event using Modern Master packs for anyone who I am forced to turn away from the GP.

Details ASAP.

And sorry.

Tim