Patriot Games

Monday, 27 October 2014

Written Invitation

I feel very lucky; I have got to play a lot of cards and clix in the last week.  I did my first Conspiracy draft – I loved the format and the interaction of the Conspiracies but felt that the cards in the set were a little lacklustre and I felt this was an opportunity to reprint a lot of good legacy and modern cards which has been missed.  The dethrone mechanic is great and causes some interesting decisions.

This guy did a lot of work for me in Conspiracy...


I've also had the chance to draft Modern Masters again and I have to admit for the first time not draft it for “value” as none of the cards were mine.  It is a great draft set and you wish that conspiracy was as good.  I drafted a Fairy/Dinosaur deck and ruled the skies with my abundance of fliers and ground based fatties.

...and this guy was great in Modern Masters.


But I am guessing you did not come here to hear about what I drafted in the last week right?  You want to know about the invitational don’t you?  Ok then let’s get this done then.  I can now confirm that the price will be £25 and this will be the only cost to you regardless of where you get to in the competition.  AT the end of day one anyone who has not made the top 16 will get 2 boosters in prize support and a promo of some description subject to availability.  The person who comes 17th will receive 3 boosters in prize support as well as a promo as they came “so close”.

The top 16 will come back for day 2 which will include 4 rounds of Modern followed by a Khans of Tarkir booster draft in 2 pods of 8.  The pods will be based on the standings at that point.  Players who come between 16 – 9 will receive an additional 3 boosters in prize support.  Players who come in the top 8 will receive a number of boosters which will scale dependent on the number of players who participate.

KHAN!!!!! Sorry had to do that.

The top 6 players will become the Steel City Patriots team for 2014 – 2015.  In the past the team’s entry to Pro Tour Qualifiers and Grand Prix has been covered by a sponsorship deal for the top 6.  However, as I am sure you are aware; from February 2015 there is a dramatic change to the PTQ system with shops being able to run 1 PPTQ each season with the winner in each case qualifying to play in a Regional PTQ (which will be free to enter).  I don’t think there is a Magic player in the country that has not crunched the numbers and knows that there could possibly be 5 PPTQs every Saturday and Sunday with a massive variance at the moment with regards to price.  It is not possible for Patriot Games to cover PPTQs in the same way as it did PTQs as the cost would be excessive (in the region of £6,000)!  We are looking at other alternatives for the team prize and will let you know what we have decided in this handy dandy blog thingy next week.

The regional PTQ promo.


There is one more piece of information I need to let you know before I go.  I had a number of messages through Face Book from people wanting to be a part of the invitational who had not got invites.  As we have not been able to run any qualifiers this year, as I mentioned this week, the players who have got invites have done so due to regularly turning up or because they have done something significant with regards to Magic in Sheffield; Mike Radford once gave us 2 funky boosters to use in a chaos draft and that pretty much got him invites for life.  This year 3 members of the auto invite top 16 from last year are unable to attend for various reasons and have graciously offered their spots up to others (thanks Lee Parker, James Brook and Quinton Lip).  As a result I am very pleased to announce the following players are now invited;

  • Lino Lurgold
  • James Platten
  • Michael Kelly



These are the only changes to the list published last week.  There may well be other deserving players out there but a line has to be drawn and this is where we draw it for this year.  I look forward to seeing you all in less than 2 weeks.  Final details with regards times etc. will be in next week’s blog.

No comments:

Post a Comment