@joshuabrooks I had a format that I put very little work into developing, but it was basically Vintage through Scourge. It was a lot of fun, and I should have put more work into it. Maybe in the future, unless somebody else wants to take up the mantle.
I always thought the NYSE Open trophy was the best trophy...
@doomfinite For whatever it's worth, past NYSE's have had the Vintage FNM the night before, and a Sunday event the day after. We messed around with Vintage events on Sunday, then tried a Classic event, but have settled on Old School. The turnout for last year's Old School event on Sunday was strong (I could be wrong, but I feel like it was north of 30 players).
If you were able to make the event in 2019, I can promise that it would be a full weekend of Magic.
@desolutionist - I hadn't considered it. Given the cost of cards, I understand the pressure, but there's a quality of event experience that is certainly diminished with excessive proxies. I'd want to really think about it before I committed to something like that.
@Smmenen - Last year, the Lotus was about 25% of the cost of the prize support (which doesn't include the venue, judges, security, etc.). The venue and the judges are pretty much fixed costs; I've searched for venues that were affordable enough without sacrificing too much on the quality of the experience, and the Four Point Sheraton really is just the best venue available for this event. As far as the judges go, there's an appropriate ratio of players to judges, and given that the attendance is never going to be set in stone with enough time to ensure that the ratio is exactly correct, without going over with judges (incurring the costs), and without going under (ensuring that the event has delays/problems), I choose to potentially go over each year. I'd rather have one or two extra judges in the room than have one or two judges less than I really needed that day. I think we can all agree that security is not somewhere any of us want cuts to be made. These costs are significant, and necessary.
This just circles us back to the original problem of the cost of the prize support. Even a diminished prize support is still astronomical. Giving out P8, sans Lotus, would already eat up the full prize support budget and put us about $1,200 over, with nothing going to 9th-16th. It's untenable. I very much want to run the event that I've run for that five year period, but unless we had 130-140 people willing to pay about $250 to play, it's just not going to happen. Handing out Underground Seas to 5th-8th would feel wrong to me.
Cash is also scalable. It's protection against getting blown out on the day. I could drop the entry fee to $100. The trophy, which I still believe is the best trophy in Magic, would go out. The altered Karns would go out, one to the winner, one to the sportsperson of my choice, etc. I'd be able to do a significant amount in giveaways, which I really, really like, as it's an opportunity to spread the love, and to support artists that the Magic community as a whole has benefited from, and maybe taken for granted, for the last 25 years.
I don't want to give out cash. If you remember, Steve, you interviewed me at GenCon back in 2011, and I discussed how I thought cash was the inferior prize. I genuinely don't like it, but I think, at this point, that it's likely a necessity. I don't want to look back at prize support that I gave out and think that it was weak. Underground Sea, Volcanic Island, et al, don't have the mystique that power, Shops and Bazaars do. Revised duals suck. Giving those out to people who flew in would feel wrong. The shop I went to from the time I was 18 till I was in my early 30's once had a thousand count box with duals in it. They were $5 per. To hand a dual to someone who paid $100 to play would feel wrong, even if it's technically not.
Nothing is certain. This is still a big commitment, there are a lot of things that could go wrong and kill this before it happens. That said, I hope to run the event. I'd need to have a rough idea how many players I'd be looking at beforehand, so when Brass Man is back from vacation, I'll follow up with a poll.
@Brass-Man, I tried creating a poll initially and was told I didn't have the permission to do so. I really need to do a poll here. Help?
We're coming up on the time of year when I'd have to lock down the venue for an N.Y.S.E. Open the following year, and I'm considering it.
I haven't played Vintage in more than a year now, but I'm beginning to feel the itch, and that makes me more willing to consider the incredible time sink that is the N.Y.S.E. Open.
The biggest stumbling block is going to be the prize support. Last year, I got hurt on us having 131 players (and fighting to get the last two dozen or so whom we got). The prize support was expensive enough last year, now it's impossible. In order to offer last year's prize event, the entry (assuming 130 players), would have to be something like $220 per, and that's with (literally) zero margin for error.
I'm all for high-roller events, but that's a bridge too far.
Does the event lose too much of its mystique if it's for cash? At the very least, the entry could go back down to $100 per, and the prizes would scale easily enough.
Thoughts?
It's very early in the process, so I'm a little more open to ideas than I would be later in the year.
@qq I'm happy for the people who showed, since it seems like a great chance to win some power, but I'm happy with their turnout being what it was. If the NYSE Open, in any form (as I'm not moving off June), was going to happen ever again, this event had to have bad turnout. It looks like that has happened. I would have greatly appreciated the professional courtesy of some contact before they just announced this, but they're the 800 lb gorilla in the room and they do what they want.
There are layers to the responsibility that we all have for the games that we play, and lose. To name some of the prominent ones:
Each of these points could be expounded on at length, but I'm a bit crushed for time at the moment, so I'll just let them sit as is.
Finally, when you test, do you test with players who are better than you are? Do you know what specifically you're looking for when you play? You need to realize what turns the match (sometimes it's blatantly obvious, sometimes it's not), and then see how you can change that.
Regardless, good luck. Being a better player is difficult, and it takes time. We were all terrible at one point, and it took many of us years to truly get better. I'm currently playing mediocre Magic in Dominaria drafts, so I feel your pain, as I keep reminding myself to RTFC.
@matori I think Josh is going to set this up through OMA (I won’t be handling money on this). I’m waiting on confirmation too.
@matori Josh confirmed that they will ship to Europe.