Hello and welcome to the new season! Right now we are in a very exciting time of the year because a lot of things are going on at the same time.

We have the Dinosaurs of Ixalan around the corner, 《Mana Drain》 in one of the most iconic sets in the near future and the Magic players were able to participate in their countries national championship.

For most players this was the first time they were able to participate in their Nationals, which is the best local tournament without a doubt. Some countries, like the USA still have their Nationals to come, but for Japan, my country Austria and several other countries their events are in the books. But why are Nationals such a great event?

There are several different arguments why Nationals are the best tournament around and I assume not every point counts to full extend for all countries, but for most:

The best players battle against each other!

This point is not exactly valid for all countries, especially for the US and Canada, but for all other countries every good player shows up for Nationals. This includes most of the oldtimers and they do have success at this events. Just to give you an idea those players had their greatest times several years ago but all managed to climb the semifinals of their Nationals: Gabriel Nassif (France), Quentin Martin (UK), Marijn Lybeart (Belgium) just to name a few.

Image Copyright: Wizards of the Coast

Nationals qualifies for one of the coolest Events.

The World Magic Cup and even former World Championships with the team portion are just awesome. You get the chance to represent your country at the highest level of competition alongside your teammates, which can be or become good friends. Winning on your own is nice, but winning as a team and as a country gives you triple the joy and the World Magic Cup will always be a memorable Event.

You get national fame.

Saying that you won Nationals in the game that you truly love is an accomplishment and everybody outside Magic will understand what it means. There are a lot of different competitions out there and being national champion is something that has value in all competitions. Besides that, price money at Nationals is also quite appealing.

You meet old friends and make new friends

That is one thing that was particularly big in my country as literally everybody comes out to play. And the nights before and during nationals people talk, eat, drink and party together and some of them you don’t see for a full year.

So this year was the return of Nationals after a hiatus of 6 years but it came back in different shape which had some negative effects compared to past Nationals, but it was a trial run and I am sure this will be improved for next year.

Wizards tried something new and changed to old structure with the believe to create a better tournament for their players.

My honest opinion, all positives intentions aside, they did not succeed. Tournament structures were bad, there were several issues with the tournament program and things were not as transparent as it was supposed to be.

Back then big countries had 14 rounds (6 limited) and smaller countries had 12 rounds. This year big countries had 12 rounds, which lead to some awkward results, and smaller countries had somewhere between 6 and 8 rounds. For multiformat events everything below 12 rounds is not sufficient and therefore smaller countries had the impression that is was a somewhat pimped WMCQ/PTQ. We had 160 players, 8 rounds and the Draft started after round 5. At this Point it was crystal clear that noone after Pod 3 could make it to the single elimination stage and therefore drafting was somewhat uninteresting for most players.

Byes are bad at such events!

Having a bye at any tournament with 6-8 rounds is a huge advantage, having two is pretty unfair and messes with the integrity of the tournament as tiebreakers are screwed. I don’t argue against one Bye at a 12 Round tournament but besides that I believe that all players should play all rounds. You have such an event once a year and people travel to this event to play as much as possible, so ending this festivity after one day is probably (and hopefully) not something we will see in the future.

Information given out was not correct due to communication errors

There were several thing wrong at our event and therefore I hope that in the future Wizards gives clear guidelines that players know what they can expect. We had unclear information about the price structure at the very beginning, we were told that the tournament structure is 2 rounds Standard followed by draft and afterwards constructed(which would have been much better) and we were told that trials give out two byes for the event. This was not the case and everybody with already one bye showed up, which of course was not the best use of our time.

Besides all this errors the tournament was a blast to play, even though it could have been so much better. I found myself playing Mardu for the Constructed portion, but I lost two very close matches so I was dead for Top8. Here is the list I decided to play:

I know it is not the most fancy list, but I thought it is the best call for the tournament as 《Heart of Kiran》 seemed to be very well positioned. I also would run it back, so I can’t blame myself for picking a bad deck. At this point I would like to congratulate Elias Klocker on winning our Nationals with Boros Vehicles, I am looking forward to compete at the WMC together.

Elias Klocker
Image Copyright: Wizards of the Coast

As mentioned before I was dead for Top8 before the draft started, so I decided to draft the most fun deck I could assemble and ended up with this masterpiece, which sends Hour of Devastation limited to bed.

So now there is time to concentrate on Ixalan, as the previews start this very weekend. I am excited to enter this new world and leave the Pharaohs behind. There is no official tournament for me until the GP before the PT, so I have plenty of time to prepare for the PT and hopefully post a great result there. Until that I wish you good luck and plenty of fun with Ixalan!

Oliver