The 2009 Player of the Year race should be a matter of pride to all of the winners and to the Classic community in general. I'd like to take a look back at the race, and perhaps raise points that I think the POTY race brought to light.

First and foremost, this race was always going to be a grind. No matter what scoring system was in place, a race that takes place of the whole year requires at the very least a small amount of dedication – or at least it should. Much like professional sports – they play all those games for a reason (except football – 16 games? What's with that? Golfers play more games a year than professional football players – wimps). Sadly, once Premier Events (PEs) stopped firing and Daily Event (DEs) became more de rigour, the grind, I think, really whittled people down since for the first half of the year, people were earning more points for top 8 tourneys. Sure, there were maybe three times as many tournies to participate in once DEs were available, and DEs were much shorter and easier to earn points in, but you had to participate more rather than simply win at the big tournaments. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with that – it was only too bad that the PEs simply stopped firing, which simply landed those who'd played more in the beginning of the year a little more weight. With the 2010 series, that shouldn't happen – so long as WoTC doesn't invent a totally new type of Event we feel we need to include (and we are covered in many more way than just two with the new scoring structure) I hope not to have a repeat of that problem.

In fact, rewarding grinding has many benefits – the most important for the community is to inspire continued participation. For 2010 – awarding points for participation means that you can score points without having to win – a side I think WoTC probably wishes it could implement for MOCs. In 2009, there were 143 tournaments. To illustrate how important participation could be – imagine that all the people on the 2009 list only participated in the tournaments they placed in (which is obviously not the case, but illustrative to the point). If you participated in all 143 tournaments giving a single point for participating, you'd be in 4th place. Participation will be key to winning in 2010, and it gives the DEs that little cushioning they need to make them more relevant than in 2009.

The meta underwent massive changes throughout 2009. There were essentially 3 big events.

Changed the scenery - in more ways than one

The release of Tempest.

Tempest brought us two very key cards – Wasteland and Lotus Petal - thankfully neither of which are rare. Lotus Petal finally gave the format free mana with no restrictions – Chrome Mox (and later Mox Diamond) all come at the cost of card advantage for their stability, which isn't to say they aren't as good, but Lotus Petal operates in a very different space – mainly in combo decks. Wasteland really stuck it to the dual land decks that had previously dominated much of the meta until that time and gave rise to several decks that would, for varying degrees of time, affect the meta – notably Merfolk, Pox, and Elves. Those decks would operate very well in a Wasteland dominated meta because they rely very little on their non-basic lands to achieve their win conditions. However, there was one deck that was so utterly powerful that it deserves its own mention as a significant event.

The restriction of Necropotence.

Top finisher Javasci got it half right when he remarked in our forums that the release of Lotus Petal is what put Necropotence over the top. I don't think that really paints the whole picture of why Necro was able to dominate. What made Necro work so well that that is was now extremely fast (Petal virtually assured a turn 2 Necro) and it was mostly immune to the effects of Wasteland. Such a combination at that point in time was devastating to the environment, and so it got itself restricted along with Demonic Consultation.

Dominated until restricted

The rise of the restricted List

That period came to a skidding halt - it began with the release of FTV: Exiled and ended abruptly with the release of MED3. Once Strip Mine, Balance, Tinker, and especially Bazaar of Baghdad and to a lesser extent Goblin Lackey and Mana Drain were in the format, it was suddenly much too hard to ignore more powerful and dominant strategies – especially Dredge. Bazaar's effect on Dredge (which was already a contender prior to it's release) was to vault it up into the echelon of "Top Deck" whereby every other deck was gunning for it. That effect eventually culminated in the return of Combo – once you are spending 8 slots in your sideboard for dredge, you simply can't have enough slots that will allow your aggro hoard to fend off various combos – excepting of course those that use the graveyard. In particular, Helm of Obedience and Leyline of the Void fuelled decks performed very well in that they had a built in resistance to Dredge and a faster clock than aggro decks. Those two decks forced down the meta into either a harder control stance (Pox/Prison, 2/2 decks, and Force of Will based decks) or even faster combo decks (ANT, Belcher). At the very tail end of the year, Oath of Druids's release put a real kibosh on hoarding creatures in your deck with the express intent on turning them sideways for the win.

The Faux-Format

What you played if you didn't want to pay

Why this created a faux-community is simple. A lot of the people who were playing (though not all) these decks were pet-decking. What is pet-decking? Pet-decking is the act of playing in a tournament with only a single deck of your choosing, and simply refusing to play if either a) you can't play with that deck, or much more often b) it's no longer competitive. On the surface, this attitude seems perfectly harmless – why shouldn't a player play what they like? Far be it from me to tell someone they shouldn't play something they like. However, there are consequences for doing so – the most important consequence is that if your pet-deck is no longer competitive, you are no longer participating in the format. For some time, there were a significant number of pet-deckers making up the tournament scene and of course, as soon as the people who adjust to new releases and move on to more powerful strategies take over, these people often disappear – never to be seen again.

In essence, for some time Classic was living on a borrowed player base. As any good magic enthusiast (and in particular, an eternal magic enthusiast) will tell you, building and maintaining your player base is the most important part of the community. If Classic had a player base of 1000 players, we'd never, ever have a problem with a tournament firing. Sadly, it's much smaller that that. But while we were firing 7 tournaments a week, we were essentially only accomplishing that with a player base we borrowed from extended – a much malilgned group who has just as much problem firing tournaments as Classic does (probably more) and had only as recently as 6 months earlier experienced the shell shock of several sets leaving their card pool. They traded in their Destructive Flows and Absorbs for the cards they needed to play Classic, but now that Classic isn't anything like Extended, they've already almost all disappeared from our scene. Hopefully, they eventually find Legacy a little more to their liking.

While I think that any participation is good participation, ultimately, I think that this period cemented in WoTC's mind that Classic had built up it's community base to the point where it would be a little more self-sustaining – much more so than say those formats that don't have PTQ status (Block, Standard, Extended). I think if you are reading this know you realize isn't quite the case – yet. Certainly Classic has been more successful as a format than those formats which only get themselves a weekend challenge and possibly close to Pauper (which is astounding considering the difference in price to play). It's possible, perhaps skating on the edge of likely, that Classic will never enjoy a proper following until it is finally divided into Legacy and Vintage – a point for discussion that consistently pokes its head into any Classic discussion. Sadly, while I think Classic itself is a fine format that I wish people would fully embrace, the benefits of splitting the format seem overwhelming in terms of the strength they would gain by lining up with paper as opposed to forcing all the eternal enthusiasts into one format. Much like how you can hit more marbles with two smaller marbles than with one twice the size – it precisely because you can aim them in different directions that they will accomplish more. However, in terms of the Player of the Year race – for now, Classic remains unabated.

In the end I'm confidant (and glad) to say the best player won – as it should be. prolepsis9 not only was a fantastic player, but a brilliant strategist and I believe that won him the race. Looking at his stats, 9rolepsis9 played 10 or so archetypes with many minute changes in each one tailored to the current meta game. If you ask me, that's the kind of player I think people should be emulating if they wish to compete for next year's title. Too boot, what you don't see there is the number of tournaments prolepsis9 played – though I don't have stats on this, my guess is he would be near the top of the list in participation as well.

Finally, I'd like to congratulate each and every participant – over 250 of them – in this years race, and I hope to see you in next year's race – details of which are finalized bu need confirmation and will be posted shortly.