Now I remember why PREs are a pain. It had been a long time since I had run a Player Run Event. From all the manual work to trying to play Tournament Organizer over the Internet, running a PRE is just not a fun time. I suppose it might be a little easier if there were like 8 or 10 or so people, but 33 people is a lot to organize.

I haven’t talked a lot about the invitational, either before or afterwards in any capacity as to my motivation to run a PRE. For those of you who are old-timers on the classic scene, you’ll recall that I stopped running PREs the minute WoTC reinstituted sanctioned constructed Events back in 2007. I honestly don’t see a need to run a PRE while WoTC is running PEs, and for that matter I even feel that a PRE might be detrimental to getting those PEs to fire. PEs start to feel a lot less special when PREs are around and they start to feel expensive when PREs are free. However, admittedly they are a good bit of fun, and can serve to help people become acclimatized to classic before jumping into PEs and DEs. Still, I’m a “throw them in the deep end and then offer help” kind of guy (my daughters get tough love with learning things – yup!), so the effort to run a PRE nowadays has to be balanced by far more than they normally offer.

So why did I run the Invitational?

It was a cross-roads of purposes. The first and foremost was that ClassicQuarter.com has been running very well for some time now, and I felt I needed to reward the people who participate on the forums and play in sanctioned events (which helps the site – having things to report on is good). In this regard, I actually wish I could do more for everyone – and if you have any suggestions, believe me, I’ll listen.

The second, and far more hidden agenda was I was worried about Classic post MED4. The biggest problem we seem to have in classic whenever a new set is released with lots of Classic-worthy cards (Tempest, MED3, and Urza’s all showed this trend) is getting people to come out and play Classic in what will be an “unknown meta”. It seems while everyone has an opinion on how things will turn out (some stronger than others), it also seems there is a lot of hesitance for people to put 6 tickets down to test that meta. Since MED4 obviously would drastically alter the Classic landscape, I struggled with ways I thought the community could get a little quicker out of the gate. It occurred to me that at least some of the problem was getting people out to well-timed PEs, and some of the problem was buying the cards, and some of the problem was people are slightly risk averse, and I so I came to the conclusion that a PRE, which was scheduled well in advance and free to enter would solve most of the problems. So then, of course, how to make sure people came out?

I have to admit I got the idea from the novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I happened to be reading to my daughter at the time. In the novel (not the movie version), King Caspian needs to get his shipmates to leave the comfort of a fantastic island to continue on to the edge of the world, and so instead of simply leaving the invitation open to anyone who wanted to join, he made them apply and have it seemed like he’d accept only qualified people. What that did is make the voyage feel special and exclusive, and so I essentially stole that idea. In reality, almost anyone could have made the invitational if they spent time on the CQ forums talking about classic or participating in DEs, but in the end the people who were already doing that were the ones extended an invitation, and when something feels more special, people are more likely to go out of their way to be there.

Now, I assume most people reading this felt that I asked the WoTC people to play because that would make the invitational feel like you were playing in a pick up game of your favourite sport with your local legend (feel free to insert your own favourite activity and celebrity in that analogy), but while that was probably the effect it had, it wasn’t the reason behind inviting the WoTC folk. No, I invited the WoTC folk for their two completely separate reasons. Firstly, I have had the luxury of talking to some really incredible people at WoTC, and they’ve certainly listened to me talk my head off on multiple subjects, and so I thought it was only fair to extend them an invitation as well. While I suppose I could have invited a lot of WoTC employees (and to any WoTC folk reading this whom I didn’t invite, I apologize, and believe me, I wanted to), I had to keep the number down because I wanted the event to be about classic and not about WoTC gunslinging. Secondly, I thought this would be a good opportunity for WoTC to see just how serious he most serious group of classic players take this format. I feel that is an important go-forward step with what I hope will ultimately result in the transition from Classic to Vintage, because I wanted to show that there are a whole group of people out there who are already so willing to play in mostly Vintage-like landscape that they’ll skip out on sanctioned events to come play in a tournament where frankly, while the prizes were cool, were mostly far less than you’d get from playing in a single Classic PE – even if the entry fee is present. I should also mention that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a WoTC member play in a PRE, and while it’s been a long time since I’d run one, I’m still on the crusade to get PREs to be something you can run in the client without the need for external controls, and I really wanted WoTC to see just what a pain in the rear they are for us now. It might just help get that bit of functionality on the table.

In addition to everything I wrote above, you can also include the article “The 12 Decks of Christmas” as having practically the exact same impetus.

In essence what I really want to people to understand about the invitational is that it was like the first push you give to rowboat going out on the lake. You push hard and fast for a short while and then you let the rowers take care of the rest (PS, I’d use a bobsledding analogy if I thought more people who understood bobsledding were reading this). In case you haven’t noticed already, while I spend hours and hours writing, working on and playing classic and working on this site, I am not and never will be the format’s best player, most innovative designer, or best tournament reporter. While I think I do those things fairly well, there are many others out there who do those things much better than I do. The invitational was the first push and now it’s up to those people to start rowing.

Hence, I don’t know when the next invitational will be. I don’t even know that there will be a next invitational, as the circumstances may never appear again. So for those of you asking about it, I hope you read everything I wrote, and understand that there are just some things that you do because they were either appropriate and/or necessary at the time they were done, and will never be needed again. When and if the P9 ever get here, I’m not sure anybody will need a push, but then maybe there will be another reason. I certainly have no plans on running another PRE – I’d much rather see everyone in the DE and especially the once-a-month PE.

I want to take the time to thank everyone who showed up and played, everyone who didn’t show up but wanted to, everyone who donated to the prize pool and especially WoTC members Tom LaPille and Chris Kiritz for coming out, Erik Lauer for wanting to come out but being too ill, but not Worth Wollpert for taking yet another trip to Las Vegas. Hopefully, he lost a lot of money and next time will think twice about skipping an invite to go off gambling in the real world :) A second kudos for Chris Kiritz for at least thinking about trying to run this in the client properly – even if we both came to the same conclusion that it would open a pandora’s box for every Tom, Dick and Harry to make a similar request. I sincerely hope everyone had a good time, and it should be a great year for classic!