On Oct. 4 Wizards of the Coast announced multiple changes to their organized play program, one of which was the re-branding of Grand Prix events to “MagicFests”. This change seems to be driven by a desire on Wizards’ part to broaden the scope of Grand Prix’ beyond tournament Magic, turning them into weekend-long conventions, or, in their own words “celebrations” of Magic.

TL;DR of today’s announcement:https://t.co/N8ZIkfNaP0

— Willy Edel (@bazardebagda) October 4, 2018

One of the real flaws with the announcement was that despite the re-branding there were no substantive changes to the structure of Grand Prix weekends, meaning that, as the announcement itself said “what [players] have come to expect at a Grand Prix isn’t changing much.” While a re-branding can accomplish many things I think that merely renaming Grand Prix’ is a missed opportunity to improve on organized play in a substantive way. What I’d like to propose is a more radical change in structure to what are still being called Grand Prix and a resulting change in the relationship between Grand Prix tournaments and the larger organized play ecosystem.

The New Grand Prix

Before diving into a detailed description of the event structure I’d like to talk a minute about the philosophy behind this proposal and what it hopes to accomplish. The goal with this change has two parts: the first being to remove MagicFests from the Pro Tour ecosystem and move the weekend towards truly being a celebration of Magic that has space for all sorts of play experiences and the second being to create a single event within a MagicFest that is more media-friendly and exciting. Grand Prix’ in their current form are a slog to both play and watch and the hope is that a smaller single-day event can provide the sort of exciting narrative-driven matches that players would want to both play and watch. This document is meant to be on outline rather than a comprehensive plan for implementation and I hope it is read in that light.

Grand Prix Structure

Run on the Sunday of a MagicFest this would be a 128-person, invite-only event. 114 players would qualify through Grand Prix Qualifiers (GPQ) being run on-site with 14 “organizer” invites set aside primarily for players, media personalities, artists or other people who have contributed to other events being run during the first two days of MagicFest. The other 14 invites would come from at-large births earned by doing well in GPQs without having won one.

Constructed Grand Prix would be run as a seven-round single-elimination event with prizes for the top 64 finishers. Limited Grand Prix would be slightly more complicated. The 128 players would be divided into 16 draft pods. The first draft would be run as a single-elimination event with the winners of each pod moving on to draft again. The players would then form two new drafts pods, with the winner of each pod facing off in the championship match. An alternate structure, if cross-pod play was too undesirable, would be to have the second draft run as Swiss with the 3-0 and 2-1 players from each pod moving on to a third, single-elimination, eight-player draft pod.

How to Qualify?

On Friday and Saturday of each MagicFest weekend up to 100 five-round qualifiers would be run with the winner of each qualifier being given a spot in the Sunday Grand Prix. Additionally there would be fourteen “at-large” spots given to players who failed to win a qualifier but still accrued a large number of wins in these events. The final fourteen spots would be invite slots given out at the discretion of the tournament organizer and/or Wizards of the Coast. The thinking behind this is that it allows Wizards to guarantee some amount “star-power” to enhance the broadcast of the Grand Prix. But I think some number of these slots should also go to people who have participated on Friday and Saturday in other MagicFest activities like panels, spell-slinging, charity events, cosplay or any event that improves the quality of MagicFest but would prevent someone for otherwise playing qualifiers. I would stress these invites should not just be rewards for the same old pro faces but rather an opportunity to make each Grand Prix as exciting to compete in and spectate as possible. In the event that fewer than one hundred qualifier events are run the number of at-large invites would increase to make up the difference.

A sample structure for a Grand Prix Qualifier (GPQ) might be something like:

• 32 players, 5 rounds
• Swiss structure with the single-elimination end of round rules to avoid draws
• Prizes for records of 3-2 or better with Qualifier Points for 4-1 and 3-2 going towards the at-large berths

Whether or not these events should be run as on-demand or scheduled events or in the same format as the GP or multiple formats can be decided after consultation with players and some general community feedback. Exact prizes and entry fees can also be determined later but I would stress the importance of making these events worth playing in and of themselves. Too often qualifier events are the dreary vegetables players must eat to get their dessert rather than exciting and rewarding tournaments inherently.

What is MagicFest?

If the goal of MagicFest is to continue to expand Grand Prix weekends beyond just a single large tournament than it makes sense to create an environment in which other, non-Grand Prix events can thrive. By opening up the Saturday to other events MagicFest can start to have the sort of events that currently drive attendance at other gaming conventions. The opportunity to have panels, discussions, special drafts, charity pro-am events and other events leveraging name-players seems like it would greatly enhance the MagicFest experience.

For more competitive players MagicFest could host both Saturday and Sunday Pro Tour Qualifiers. Adding a Saturday PTQ to the schedule would allow players uninterested in playing the Grand Prix or already qualified to play a competitive event and also give players whose Saturday PTQ goes poorly to play in another meaningful event. The goal should be to offer a diversity of interesting events to all players and as long as MagicFest is dominated by a single, competitive event that will be hard to achieve.

In addition to offering a broader and more exciting slate of events to players I believe that a leaner Grand Prix tournament would make for a better broadcast. Each match being single-elimination creates real drama and a smaller roster of players would help the broadcast team find and craft narratives for the event. To often the early rounds of Grand Prix feel meaningless, plagued by poor gameplay and faceless competitors and this can last well into the event. If Magic is serious about providing a viewer-driven competitive scene this change could make a real difference to what are currently the most frequently streamed premier events.

Grand Prix and the Pro Players Club

As part of changing Grand Prix into more exclusive, high-value events they should no longer offer Pro Points. They could still offer Pro Tour invites but I think it is important they not become events players feel compelled to grind in order to maintain their Pro Player’s Club status. As the Beta and Unlimited drafts that took place earlier this year attest even the most established pro players will participate in events if they are exciting enough. This change would also have the benefit of removing some of the regional advantage North American players have obtaining Pro Points and allow for a more level playing field globally. I would suggest adding Pro Points to one of the various tiers of PTQ events that Wizards plans on introducing and opening up registration to already qualified players with invites cascading down to the highest finishing unqualified player.

This is clearly a transitional period for Organized Play. As players I think it is important that we as players advocate for the type of events we want to see. As they currently exist Grand Prix are fun tournaments but they don’t perfectly fit any constituency. With the return of PTQs this is a fantastic opportunity to break up the space in tournament Magic currently being used by Grand Prix into more tailored events for these different constituencies. Whether this specific proposal is the best way to do so is certainly debatable but I would encourage everyone to push Organized Play to use this moment to truly innovate, and to provide the sort of engaging, exciting events you want to play and watch.