MES + Masters Results

Preamble+ MES

WOW, it has been so long since I posted on here. Sorry about that, from this point forward I will be doing my best to post weekly on here. I have updated the site name and the name of the blog to something a little more respectable as well as start to reveal the MVS in 2013. While nothing has been finalised, I am pushing for NLG (who are on board) and some of the other stores to become a part of the biggest structured tournament system eternal in Melbourne has ever seen (to my knowledge).

The tournament system would be based of the NEV run by Coss, Detweiler etc (excuse spelling) and would involve the preexisting monthly events at any of the participating stores. Each of these monthly tournaments (call it 20 events over the year) would award points to the highest placing attendees and those who managed to make enough points over the year would be given a free invitation to an end of your tournament for real prize support. I believe that this is better than the current situation (particuarly with legacy) where there is a huge saturation, people are pushing for weekly tournaments where I believe players will burn out leading to the "Ill just play next week " syndrome that we have seen in Highlander both with GLabs weeklies and GG's Sundays. I believe that a strong structured system which rewards attendance over time is a much more sound tournament base. Having a once a month tournament, which rewards attendance regardless of placing will surely have more pull on players than "the weekly for credit". The MES would not overtake any tournaments currently held but would settle on any existing tournament that the store involved would choose. As I have said, nothing has been finalised, but I have written to each of the major stores with the proposition. I do hope that this is realised as a Melbourne wide series but that remains to be seen.

Masters

Masters has also come and gone with all my hard work paying off with a whopping 48 players for the Legacy; 32 players for the Vintage and a disappointing 24 for the Highlander, almost exactly the opposite of what we were originally planning back in June. I am going to address each format, what we did right and what we did wrong seperately.

Legacy- Legacy's popularity has been booming since Alexander Johnston started his campaign for more legacy. That campaign was just starting when we were organising dates and Legacy was not much bigger than Vintage. After we finalised dates and time (the Friday Night) legacy started getting bigger and bigger however we were not expecting more than 25 players due to the date and time. Friday night was going to be hard to attend and we did not want to push it back further because then it would end up finishing far too late.
Also the fact that Legacy was only firing small tournaments weighed on my mind. The overwhelming support for the for the tournament was a great way of starting Masters. It was a great tournament with so many great players and I thank everyone who attended and made it the event it was.

We failed the legacy crowd because we underestimated the support that the format had. The Date/Time and prize support were not up to scratch for a long tournament. I believe that we made the tournament a bit to top heavy for the prize support we did give out, and that what we did give out was not enough. I have laid out the reasons why we only expected 25 or so and scheduled it as we did and I believe I am justified in this view, however, if I were to do it again, I would certainly move the event to the Sunday and up the support.


Vintage- Vintage managed to get an awesome 32 players which was fantastic. Beating last year's numbers was my goal for this event as we certainly trumped it. We had 7 different decks in the top 8 with Grixis control taking the top spot by none other than Dan Unwin (who has posted a tidbit on Vintage on starcitygames.com). Oath remains a strong staple for the Melbourne scene posting 18% of all decks (split between GG and Gristlebrand). Surprising though was the under representation of both Workshops and Dredge. Dredge only posted 2 copies and Workshops 5. Dredge has been a mainstay of Melbourne in 2012 so almost the complete absence is unsettling. Worskhops, which Melbourne has been famous for have a strong presence in nearly every tournament for over two years (I myself have faced 2 workshop opponents in 3 rounds at 3 different tournaments this year), were small in number and split between 2 Mono R, 2 MUD and 1 Martello lists. The support for sanctioned Vintage was great and having 32 players does make it miss out on being classified as a large tournament (by 1) but I was happy with the overall tournament.

The Vintage was what we did the best with. Again we underestimated numbers but not by such a great margin as Legacy. Next year, I believe we can still pull players out of the woodwork as well as try and pull in more unpowered /newer players

Highlander- I was very disappointed in the Highlander turnout. Only 24 players made it out to Dandenong despite the highest prize support of any of the tournaments. Of the 24 players, maybe 12 were regular Melbourne players, too many people we thought would turn up did not and we ended up have prize support far greater than the number of players. We had players the week before the tournament ask for it to be changed etc which we could not do in reference to interstate players and already published start times that had been out for 3 months. If these issues had been raised when they were published, they might have been dealt with but the turnout was still far below what was expected.

Highlander unless we get a new surge of players, will certainly be making way for the powerhouse that is Melbourne's Legacy scene.