Hey guys! The Romancing The Stones crew has been throwing around ideas for hosting a larger Vintage tournament, and I wanted some feedback on a few questions:

• If you were to fly to a large event, how far in advance would you want/need to know about the event?
• How good of a prize pool would you want to justify flying to an event? (This is obviously a little bit dependent on entry fees, obviously.)
• How many big Vintage events would you likely attend in one year? Vintage Champs, NYSE, The Waterbury, and The Power 9 Series already exist; is there any demand for another?
• Is Austin, TX an appealing destination? (I will judge the shit out of you if you say no.)

• A month or two of notice
• Prize pool is mostly irrelevant; personally, I care more about the size/duration, and travel distance for an event
• I would love something that is not East-Coast. A cross-country trek every now-and-then is fine, but it is challenging to gain buy-in from my other half
• Wait, you're telling me that this place called Austin is more than just a myth?

Judge away!

• At least 3 months, but 4-5 is great (cheaper tickets)
• Agree with the above. It's kinda irrelevant if the event is big enough to justify the travel. I'm much more inclined to travel to an event that has great side events (Old School, etc)
• Can't answer that correctly because a lot of stars have to align for me to be able to travel to an event (for example, I can't attend EW this year because it overlaps with Dia de Los Muertos)
• Austin is perfect for me, since I live in Mexico City

I need 2 - 3 months notice. I really do not care about prize pool, I just want an event that is well run. I try to make 2 or 3 events a year but it really depends on how far it is and what the expected turn out will be. Please try to schedule it so that it is not overlapping with a holiday. I have a family and I wanted to go to Waterbury but it was on Mother's day weekend. I would love to check out Austin. I hope you guys can get something worked out. We appear to have slow summers in Vintage - hint, hint.

If you were to fly to a large event, how far in advance would you want/need to know about the event?

• Bare Minimum 3 Months, but prefer 3rd, because I have a professional career where my schedule is usually at least this far in advance.

How good of a prize pool would you want to justify flying to an event? (This is obviously a little bit dependent on entry fees, obviously.)

• I prefer with these that it's a theme. SCGCon had the Power 9, but I think a theme like "Feelin' Blue" or something, which would look like this (Using High End Magic Facebook Group for pricing based on available cards or TCGPlayer)
  if expecting 75 people:
  1st: Ancestral Recall (2,100)
  2nd: Library of Alexandria (900)
  3rd: Time Vault (600)
  4th: Time Vault (600)
  5th: 1st choice of 5th - 8th Prize (300)
  6th: 2nd choice of 5th - 8th Prize (300)
  7th: 3rd choice of 5th - 8th Prize (300)
  8th: 4th choice of 5th - 8th Prize (300)

• 5th through 8th Prizes
  4x Alliances Force of Will
  1x Tropical Island
  1x Revised Tundra
  4x Mox Opal
  TOTAL PRIZE COST: $5,400
  ENTRY FEE: $7,500

• That gives you enough room for judge staff, a venue, and some sweet door prizes.

How many big Vintage events would you likely attend in one year? Vintage Champs, NYSE, The Waterbury, and The Power 9 Series already exist; is there any demand for another?

• I think I could convince my wife to allow me to do 3 - now, finding power/duals for more sanctioned events is tough - so I would prefer 15 Proxy (Enough for Power 8, Duals, and Library for Blue decks, Bazaars + others for dredge, and Power + Workshop + space for shops decks.)

Is Austin, TX an appealing destination? (I will judge the shit out of you if you say no.)

• LOL I know you knew the answer to this question, but I'll entertain you.
  Of course, everyone's situation is different, but if I were to book flights RIGHT NOW to fly there Nov 30th to Dec 2nd (realistically around that 4 month period), I could fly from Milwaukee to Austin for roughly $200. Madison to Austin for $375, and Chicago O'Hare for $275. That's doable for me for a weekend of fun, depending on who else goes.

• The truth of the matter though is my prizes above make it probably not worth a lot of people travelling, even if the prizes/cost is in your favor.

You had me at "Austin"! I was just there in april for a "Mancation" with my buddies from college and we tore it up. I'd go back just for another day of boozing on Lake Travis, but a day of playing magic would be a bonus.

Would need minimum 3 months notice, preferably 4 or 5. Personally, an entry fee over $150 is excessive to me, but you need to give away power to get butts in the seats...its a fine line these days with absurd prices. I hope you manage to get this off the ground!

Keep in mind, giving away Power MINUS Lotus right now would be completely acceptable. Again, assuming High End Facebook.

Black Lotus: 4,800
Ancestral Recall: 2,000
Timetwister: 1,800
Time Walk: 1,600
Mox Sapphire: 2,100
Mox Emerald: 1,700
Mox Jet: 1,700
Mox Ruby 1,600
Mox Pearl 1,600
TOTAL: $18,900

Of this total, Black Lotus alone equates to 25% of that cost.

So, this is the difference between charging $100 for the event and giving away the full Power 9, or charging $75 Dollars and giving away all power EXCEPT lotus.

... Seems obvious to pay the extra 25 dollars and play for the lotus, right?

But this is also 189 players at $100 a piece TO BREAK EVEN, versus 141 players TO BREAK EVEN without the Lotus.

That's right, you require fourty eight extra players JUST to account for the Lotus.

Alternatively, you could give away the Lotus and a Mox for 1st and second, Library for 3rd and 4th, and Time Vaults for 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th.

4,800
2,000
900
900
600
600
600
600

you're STILL looking at 11,000 dollars, needing 110 players to break even, of which 62! of them would be needed to just pay for the lotus.

Austin is awesome. Proxies suck. Prizes could be cash, power or brisket.

I'll add that, for me, 100 bucks to play is A LOT of money. I could see myself doing it, but man, I'd rather have a smaller prize pool and be able to play several Side events too.

@nedleeds said in Questions about large Vintage tournaments:

Austin is awesome. Proxies suck. Prizes could be cash, power or brisket.

"How much brisket are you willing to pay out for a mox" is a question I want to be asking in my life.

@moorebrother1 Emphasize on slow summers Vintage.

@fsecco said in Questions about large Vintage tournaments:

I'll add that, for me, 100 bucks to play is A LOT of money. I could see myself doing it, but man, I'd rather have a smaller prize pool and be able to play several Side events too.

The problem for a lot of us who've done this for awhile is that travelling needs to be worthwhile. If I'm flying and paying for an uber and a hotel, I need to have something worth chasing, as far as prizes go.

Damn, what a great response. Thanks guys! I'm meeting up with the planning committee tonight, as we'd like to get this finalized and announced within a week. Expect updates soon.

@nedleeds catered brisket or tacos are being thrown around.

@Stuart

One thing that could offset the cost analysis for a trip would be to also give some history of some of the cool things out of towners could do. I could REALLY see taking a long weekend trip with my wife if there were things we could do together outside my playing magic one day.

@nedleeds You may think proxies suck (and I tend to mostly agree), but I can't justify 20,000 to re-buy my power at this junction of time. and I'd like to borrow cards for as few events as possible (though as you know, I haven't had trouble in the past).

Austin is great.

More high end Vintage is great.

I'd try to aim for January/February if I were you; your Northerner friends would be able to escape the cold for a few days, and June-October is packed between the N.Y.S.E., Waterbury, potential future SCG Cons, and Champs. You don't want to split attendance with another T/O.

Also, I don't know if you have some sweet deals set up, but you can't forget to include venue, judges, etc. The judges for the N.Y.S.E. Open in 2017 were north of $2,000.

@nedleeds I too, agree on proxies, but you are talking about cutting literally dozens of players out of the mix if you ran this as sanctioned. Hell i'd wager SCG would have easily pulled over 200 if their event was proxied like the SCG P9 events of old.

@p3temangus I think we all agree that using real cards is better and proxies increase the turnout, but I will not travel for a proxy event even with a large prize. The audience tends to be very different and I get very concerned about theft.

I appreciate that not everyone has 20K - 40K in cards but playing old school has shown me that if you want to be in the format you find a way.

That's just my opinion.

Cheers guys.

@13NoVa that's a great idea. We should put together a "welcome to Austin" document for attendees.

@Prospero the venue is taken care of; a member of the team owns a few clubs in town, so he's gonna host us at one of them. Judges are a bit trickier. We're friends with a local judge who can probably help us out, but depending on the size of the event, 1 might not be enough.

Follow-up question: does running an event on a Sunday make this a non-starter?

@stuart Sunday is very doable. Would there be any Saturday events, like a Legacy or Old School?

@13nova said in Questions about large Vintage tournaments:

@fsecco said in Questions about large Vintage tournaments:

I'll add that, for me, 100 bucks to play is A LOT of money. I could see myself doing it, but man, I'd rather have a smaller prize pool and be able to play several Side events too.

The problem for a lot of us who've done this for awhile is that travelling needs to be worthwhile. If I'm flying and paying for an uber and a hotel, I need to have something worth chasing, as far as prizes go.

I need to have an event with a lot of options. For people that are trained in Vintage, that play it regularly and are probably playing for the top spots, like you, great. For people like me, who live in a place where Vintage is non-existent, that have no computer to play MTGO and so play Vintage 3 times a year, it's waaaay more relevant to have a bunch of great side-events and a main event I can play without spending all my money.

(also, think what would happen if you had to pay 500 dollars for the main event, which is kinda how much it costs for me, regarding money conversions - but that's a problem I'll be one of the only ones to have, since I live in a different country)

@stuart said in Questions about large Vintage tournaments:

Follow-up question: does running an event on a Sunday make this a non-starter?

No problem, but I wouldn't travel for a 1-day event and would rather prioritize those larger ones with more days to do stuff.