Casey Laughman: Regional Bias
After missing out on the first couple seasons, I was able to qualify for the most recent round of Regional PTQs. It was certainly an interesting experience, and I have some thoughts to share.
Overall, there were things that I both liked and disliked, so I’ll break my experience down into each category.
Like: Prize Support
The fancy-pants Snapcaster Mage was pretty cool, of course. 
(Especially because I was able to trade it away that day at a pretty insane number). In addition to that, the prize support mandated by Wizards was such that I went 4-3, finished 23rd, and still walked away with 18 packs. While packs obviously weren’t the goal, it was still a decent consolation prize for a free tournament.
On a slight tangent, I wish that PPTQs had mandated prize support as well. Sometimes you hit the jackpot — I won one this season where in addition to the invite to the next regional, I walked away with a full box — but sometimes you end up with just a couple packs because the TO wanted to keep the cost of entry down and had to pay an L2 judge. That’s admirable, but I would prefer if Wizards would set a standard entry fee, then kick in prize support to help ensure that not only do store owners want to run the PPTQs, but that players want to play in them.
Dislike: Pro Tour-Qualified Players Getting Automatic Invites to the RPTQ
This is certainly not because I dislike Silver-level pros or think they shouldn’t have a chance to win airfare. Rather, it’s because I have a pretty simple stance on qualifications: If you are qualified for a Pro Tour, regardless of how, you should receive airfare for that Pro Tour. If a Silver pro is not qualified for the next tour, then by all means give them an invite to the Regional.
Obviously, compensation for pros has been a big topic in the community lately. What it comes down to is this: If you want to be able to use people to promote your game, you need to invest in making it easy for them to do so. For example, if a Silver-level pro is a big deal in his or her local community or the community at large, yet skips the upcoming PT in Australia because it’s really expensive to fly there, doesn’t WOTC lose out on a certain amount of interest in the Pro Tour? It’s almost impossible to quantify the exact effects of that, but I’ll make this statement: The PR boost that Wizards would gain from instituting a “you qualify and your flight’s on us” policy would outweigh the cost.
Doing this would set the Regionals up as a more interesting system as well. By removing the qualified players, the Regionals become wide-open and help drive player interest in qualifying for them, because they would know that they would be on a more even footing with the other competitors at the Regional.
Like: The Odds Being (Somewhat) Better
The regional I went to (Madison, Wis.) had 65 players, and the top four qualified for Sydney. I’m no
Dracogenius, but it seems to me that a 4-in-65 chance to qualify is better for players than a 1-in-200 chance under the old PTQ system.
The downside, of course, is that you have to win a PPTQ to get a chance to play in the Regional. During the first season of PPTQs, I top 8’d two and top 4’d one, yet wasn’t qualified for the Regional, which left me pretty disillusioned with the system. A possible solution: If a player top 8’s at least three PPTQs during a season, yet doesn’t win one, give them an invite to the Regional. This would probably result in a similar or slightly smaller number of qualifications as there are now with Silver pros, so it wouldn’t skew the numbers.
Dislike: The Missing “Big Event” Feel
Old-school PTQs always felt like a big deal. Walking into a 200-person tournament that was awarding an invitation to the Pro Tour had a certain energy about it that not even bigger events such as SCG Opens can match. That feeling just wasn’t there for the Regional.
Sure, it was a big deal, but it just didn’t feel like a big deal. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it didn’t have the same vibe to it as PTQs did. It might be because four players were going to be qualifying that it didn’t have the same level of excitement, but whatever it was, there was something missing.
To put it simply, I have one PTQ top 8 under my belt. I’ve qualified for two Regionals in a row. Obviously, my chances of qualifying for the PT are a lot better under this system, and that is a big plus, but I still miss the excitement of PTQs. That may just be me, but I don’t think it is.
Like/Dislike: The Flexibility of Regionals/The Location of Regionals
Regionals are spread out over two weekends in a number of places, as well as being held on MTGO. This is great if you can’t make it to your “local” regional for some reason. However, the fact that I had to put local in quotation marks shows the downside of the system as it is currently designed.
There is no reason — none — that there should not be Regional PTQs each season in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta. That still leaves eight Regionals to be spread out around the country, and it makes it easy for people to make it to the major ones.
I understand that WOTC wants to give other places the chance to host tournaments like this, and living in Chicagoland means that I likely won’t have to travel an exceptional distance to get to a Regional. But anchoring Regionals in certain areas each season would make the system more manageable in a lot of ways. (Don’t even get me started on the fact that the closest WMCQ is in Nebraska.)
Dislike: Sealed as a Regional Format
My six rares from my Regional Sealed pool:
Now, I understand that commons and uncommons are going to be the backbone of a Sealed deck, but opening a couple bomb rares that play well with each other can be the difference between 4-3 and top 8. In my case, I ended up playing Slayer’s Plate, Silverfur Partisan and Traverse the Ulvenwald in a Jund build because I had some decent red and black removal, but it didn’t feel like a real strong deck. In round 2, I played against another player who had a pool very similar to mine and built a similar deck. The difference is that his pool had Inexorable Blob and Ulvenwald Hydra. Guess who won?
I would be fine with every Regional being Constructed; I would even be fine with Regionals being Draft instead of Sealed, because then you have more control over what your deck will end up being. (I concede that the logistics of Draft could be tricky with the number of attendees not being set in stone).
The other reason for my dislike of Sealed being a Regional format is that both Standard and Draft are Pro Tour formats, while Sealed is not. It would make more sense to use Pro Tour formats for the Regional. Heck, why not Standard for Swiss and Draft for top 8? That would liven things up a bit.
Overall, the new system has some advantages. But it has some big disadvantages as well, and I hope that WOTC continues to refine the system to fix them. Regardless, I look forward to a trip to Indianapolis this August.
Casey Laughman is editor of NerdRageGaming.com. Contact him at claughman@gmail.com.
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