Gold, Goals, Gadgets and Games Day

As you may have heard there is an Olympic games going on in London at the moment.  Like it or loathe it you can’t ignore it.  Every newspaper, news programme on the telly and general website of topical information is splattered with headlines about who did or didn’t win this or that gold medal (at this point the UK have won 2 Gold’s and 9 medals total).  It takes tremendous dedication and fanatical devotion to your sport to be an Olympian – winner or not.

Each competitor in the Olympics has a distinct goal – to be the best in the world at what they do, none of them compete to come second, and they want to win.  Ultimately in Magic we have the same goal, although we have the same goal but recognise there are stages we need to go through in order to get there – winning FNM, winning your first draft, top 8 in a PTQ, winning a GP, going to the pro tour all of these are steps along a very long road to achieving your goals.

In Magic we have an ongoing record of where we are at in relation to our various goals in the form of Planeswalker points.  These were introduced in September 2011 and replaced the old system of ranking.  The original announcement and information can be found here.  Wizards of the Coast have announced today on the mother ship that they are introducing a new gadget to go with your planeswalker points in the form of achievements.  Gamers like achievements, Microsoft realised this and have made it a key part of all games on the Xbox (including Duels of the Planewalkers, but I guess you knew that).  Now your planeswalker score card has a series of McDonald’s style slots for you to put your achievements into like this:

Initial details of this are available here, but the best bet is to go and view your own by inputting your DCI number here.

All of this brings me to M13 Games Day which will be taking place this weekend on Saturday and Sunday.  Firstly one of the achievements involves playing on more than one day/night at your local games store.  This weekend you have the chance to play Friday/Saturday/Sunday and kick-start your achievement rampage with a “quick hit”!  Patriot games have a pretty sweet games day format, we do both a standard tournament and a draft all for a mere £10 and there will be prize support for the draft.  As mentioned earlier in the week everyone gets a Mwonvuli Beast Tracker promo and top eight get a magmaquake promo which is both foil and very pretty.

The winner of games day will get a play mat with rather fetching Nicol Bolas art work and the fact you are game day champion emblazoned on it.

Games Day has a x2 multiplier for planeswalker points and tends to be pretty competitive but don’t let that put you off – always a good time to try that top tier deck out on people who will really appreciate it (delver anyone).  As a result I will not be putting my deck list up as I don’t want people to know what I am playing!  So here’s to a great weekend of Magic – I have already taken Monday off to recover.  Look forward to seeing you there.