The Trials and Confessions of a PWP Whore

 “She had learned some of the things that every woman must find out for herself, and she had found out about them as one has to find out--through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and her own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. - Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again (sorta)

So, umm, hello there your Honor.  My name is Nina Illingworth and I'm a delinquent parent; I created a beautiful Magic blog and just when it was becoming really special I abandoned it to leave more time for my addiction to Planeswalker Points.  I stand before this court and a jury of my peers in full admittance of my neglect and am prepared to account my crimes one by one before you today.  To be completely honest I wasn't even sure this blog would still be here when I tried to log in; it's been roughly 9 months since I've posted anything after all.  Naturally I never intended to confine my blog to the dustbin of outdated cyberspace; if I had know I wouldn't be posting for 9 months or so I'd like to believe I would have at least managed a half-assed goodbye.  Like most things in life, it just sort of happened and the next time I blinked it was January 2012 and I clearly wasn't a Magic writer anymore.  Oh sure, I thought about the blog from time to time; mostly with an ever increasing sense of guilt and longing.  The simple truth however is that I ran your Honor.  I ran from my blog, my responsibilities as a writer, even from my own need to continue putting words to digital paper and towards a life of grinding infinite meaningless rounds in the hope of earning a "Golden Ticket" to a Pro Tour I probably couldn't attend anyways.  There is no question whatsoever of my guilt and my only request is that you and the members of the Jury indulge me long enough to hear my side of the story before rendering final judgement.

First and foremost around about the time I stopped writing for this blog Wizards of the Coast introduced a radical update of it's Organized Play system, forever changing the very face of competitive Magic.  Amusingly enough this new system was entitled "Planeswalker Points" and worked sort of like character levels in role-playing games; as players won matches they would acquire points which in turn would progress them through a series of arbitrarily named levels to help quantify their progress as "Planeswalkers".  The picture on the left of this paragraph is actually my "player card" in graphic form, complete with both a meaningless title and an irrelevant "level".  The funny thing is that your actual lifetime level really didn't affect a whole lot; the number of Planeswalker Points you could accumulate over a given 4 month season however suddenly became extremely important. While initially this system was heralded by most of the Magic playing community as a massive improvement over the Elo ratings system two major problems quickly became apparent as tournament results started coming in; one I had predicted and one I had not. 

The predictable/obvious problem with that first version of Planeswalker Points revolved around Multiplier Points; I'll spare you the math but basically since all events were not ranked equally anyone who attended a significant number of Grand Prix events (with 8x multiplier in effect) was at a significant advantage over someone who merely attended their local Grand Prix and Pro Tour Qualifiers.  For the first time in Magic's history there was now a direct way to "buy" your way onto the Pro Tour; although you'd still have to be going 6-3 or so at these various Grand Prix to pay off.  This naturally offended sensibilities on both sides of the issue; the Pro Tour veterans were upset that the only way to stay on the tour involved grinding infinite GPs and the grinders were upset because most of them couldn't afford to fly to infinite GP level events.  Probably the most tragic problem of all however is that under the current rules it basically became impossible to maintain a job and still have a shot of qualifying for a Pro Tour on the back of Planeswalker Points. 

The second problem took a little while longer to surface and while I can't speak to the minds of the big-wigs at WotC or Organized Play I highly doubt anyone at the company anticipated this development.  For reasons that are not entirely clear the multiplier for Friday Night Magic events was set at 3x.  The idea was probably to keep attendance high at the "casual" weekly events and to entice new players to take their FNM points and try to improve on them at PTQ and GP level events.  WotC has naturally spent a great deal of money promoting these events and I'm sure nobody wanted to see FNM attendance suddenly decline as more players chased after Planeswalker Points in higher level events.  Unfortunately FNM events are held all over the world every Friday evening and are extremely hard to regulate; we're literally talking about how many players, judges, tournament organizers and shop owners here?  What's more the latitude for what types of events can be run at an FNM and under what format is extremely wide; it was basically only a matter of time before people started gaming the system.  I'm not here to level any accusations but near as I can tell a great number of Tournament Organizers worldwide began to run FNM events with the goal of providing as many rounds as possible during which their players could early 3x multiplier points.  100 point weeks amongst the ranks of non-established tournament grinders who had participated in only local FNMs or even smaller weekly events became somewhat commonplace.  I won't lie, I was one of these grinders; although in my defense I absolutely did play and win those matches.  Additionally I attended Grand Prix Montreal and at least 3 PTQs over the course of that first season, doing well but never quite enough to make the cut to top 8/Day 2.  Unfortunately once it became clear that grinding FNM events actually *was* a legitimate source of PWP the entire system came crashing down; hardcore Grand Prix/PTQ grinders began attending FNMs in droves and slowly they drove out the casual customers WotC was trying to protect with the 3x multiplier in the first place.  Probably the most obvious sign to me that something was wrong was the weekly Thursday ritual of various known Grand Prix grinders asking on Twitter where they could find a "large FNM" to grind the Friday before the GP; just to make sure they didn't miss out on a potential opportunity to bag some easy Planeswalker Points.

Despite the somewhat obvious nature of these problems it was impossible for WotC to change the PWP system mid-season; this left the whole glorious mess to play out until Christmas Day 2011.  Frankly I can't be bothered to look up the statistics but I found myself playing a tremendous amount of Magic over the course of those months; in addition to the aforementioned GP and PTQs I also found myself hitting up 2-3 weekly drafts (1x) and 2 FNM events a week, which I eventually increased to 3 because I just needed the PWP that badly.  My normal ritual on Friday became to travel for an hour to play in an FNM at 3PM, a second FNM at 7-8PM and finally a late night draft FNM that would start before midnight and usually end sometime around 2:30-3:30 in the morning.  I was literally playing a Grand Prix worth of events once a week and frankly I was doing it damn well; I won something ridiculous like 85% of my matches during this time.  Naturally I had some help along the way; on a few occasions a friend or teammate would scoop to me rather than play out the match because they knew I needed the points and was closing in on a Pro Tour invite.  I would like to be clear however that this probably only happened 8-10 times over the course of literally hundreds of matches and I never once asked my opponent to do this.  Typically I was left with the option of refusing their concession and forcing them to play a match I desperately needed to win or graciously accepting their gifts.  What would you do?  Regardless the heart is it's own judge and it was during these moments that I first started to feel "dirty".  Until now I had always played Magic to satisfy competitive urges that aren't acceptable in other societal interactions and yet here I was accepting even a single "win" without the joy of actually beating my opponent? 

As the season wore on and time to earn more PWP began to run out somehow every match became even more tense for me than normal; quite an accomplishment when those who know me will tell you that sometimes 8 man drafts will cause me to throw up if I have to wait around too long to start actually playing Magic.  Worse still I began a terrible habit of counting the 3, 9, 15 or 24 PWP I could earn each round depending on the event as "mine already"; which turned each loss into a horrifying moment of shock and introspection as I stumbled to understand how I could have given away a portion of "my" Pro Tour shot like that.   Every 3 days I was doing the math on how many PWP it would take to qualify for PT Dark Ascension fully aware that everyone else on the planet who was within even a sniff of the top 100 on either qualifying list was doing the exact same thing.  The really funny thing about all of this is that even if I did qualify for the Pro Tour I would need a passport to actually attend the event; I didn't notice at the time but sometime in November and then again in early December I missed important deadlines to file official documents and as it turns out I would *not* have a passport in time even if I did qualify.  My life had literally become about accumulating Planeswalker Points and qualifying for the Pro Tour; what happened during or after that was very much completely off my radar as I focused all of my efforts into this singular goal.

For ascetic reasons I would love to tell you that I finally burned out on the morning of Boxing Day when I discovered that I had fallen just short of a Pro Tour invitation but the truth is the breaking point actually came a couple of weeks before.   I was incredibly ill the morning of the last possible PTQ I could attend and after fighting furiously with my Boyfriend for an hour about whether or not it was okay to attend a Magic tournament with yellow skin while throwing up every 25 minutes I had finally relented and agreed to stay home.  What followed was perhaps the most sad, pathetic and worthless 3 days of my entire life.  I literally found myself laying around my apartment moping, eating horrible junk food and on several occasions openly crying... because I'd missed a Magic tournament.  I guess it's a good thing my boyfriend loves me because I was a depressed, petulant wreck that entire weekend and a less committed man probably would have shown me the door after the 3rd time I accused him of "sabotaging my dream".  No folks, I'd done the math and by the time the 26th of December rolled around I was completely prepared to discover that my name was not on either invite list for the event.  Probably the only thing that really shocked me is how close I'd ultimately come; as it turns out I was the 2nd last name left off the "Non-World Championship" invite list and I'd finished a ridiculous 13 or so points behind the final person who did get invited.  This triggered another disgraceful round of introspective self-loathing as I spent a week or so mentally reviewing every single loss I'd incurred over the course of the season with the full knowledge that I'd missed the cut by 2 FNM wins, 1 GP/PTQ win or 5 random weekly event wins in total.  Additionally by this time the nature of the upcoming changes to the PWP system had been revealed and in the end the more popular professional players had won; the system would change all right but this mostly revolved around closing FNM as a legitimate path to the Pro Tour and increasing the number players who'd qualify for the next PT event based on performance on the Pro Tour itself.  What's more any semblance of Nationals had been destroyed and replaced by something called The World Cup of Magic; an event that on the surface appeared extremely hard to actually qualify for in my opinion.  In short after mainlining the Pro Tour dream for 4 straight months and devoting every single spare moment to grinding sanctioned Magic tournaments I was essentially locked out of a ratings based invite permanently.  Fair or not this sudden change served only to further my feelings of depression; nobody likes to feel unwanted and with the changes to PWP it felt abundantly clear that neither WotC or the Professional Magic community wanted "people like me" to ever walk the hallowed halls of the Pro Tour after the singular mockery that was PT Dark Ascension. 

As you can see your Honor, over the course of this time I simply did not have time to write; I lost 4 months playing 25 some odd matches of Magic a week and then another month trying to recover from the realization that it had all been in vain.  Naturally there were benefits to this situation; for starters I became a significantly better Magic player than I had been before the PWP race began.  There's nothing like fighting for your metaphorical life over and over again to sharpen your skills as warrior, competitor, card player and yes even gambler.  I also managed to diversify my talents as a player, albeit through no choice of my own.  For most of my time in Magic I have always preferred Limited formats, with Booster Draft in particular ranking as my absolute favorite way to play this card game.  Unfortunately due to sheer availability of events where I could earn Planeswalker Points I was forced kicking and screaming to play an ever increasing number of Standard matches just to remain in contention for the Pro Tour invite. As time went buy I learned that constructed Magic was about more than topdecks, broken interactions and ridiculous first-pick type cards exploding across tables turn after turn.  Forced to compete on equal footing in terms of deck composition and card quality for the first time in years I became significantly better at the mental side of the game.  I learned to control my interactions with opponents, my ability to make correct reads based on known information increased and I quickly mastered predicting the ever changing meta-game that modern Standard provides.  I also became very good at selling my opponent a story that would ultimately lead him to make plays that caused me to win the game.  To be honest with you I learned these wonderful things almost entirely by accident; over the course of trying to find a way to earn as many PWP as possible losing was simply not an option and each of these skills were necessary to keep winning matches in the context of Constructed Magic.  There is absolutely no question in my mind folks that these 4 months improved me as a player tremendously; the problem is of course that they did nothing to improve me as a person and ultimately the experience left me feeling numb.  Magic had become utterly joyless and the loss of something as precious to me as my love for competition affected me on so many levels that I doubt I could have written anything relevant even if I had wanted to.

When the clouds finally broke and I stopped feeling sorry for myself, January had turned into early February and suddenly I was already out of the race for a season 2 PWP invite; this was of course entirely predictable but it helped clarify where my priorities should have been at the time and forced me to go about picking up the pieces of my neglected life.  I spent some time at work doing manager things, hanging out with Leon to do relationship things and diligently ensuring that my involvement with Magic didn't consume the rest of my life.  To be completely honest it was incredibly liberating when I willfully skipped that first FNM simply because I'd rather stay home and have dinner with my boyfriend.  However if I'm still being honest I can't say it was all gum drops and lollipops; the decision to partition my Magic life away from my "real" life was an active one and it was a constant struggle to bury my competitive urges and desire to battle with cards just below the surface of my thoughts.  I was playing the role of friend, store manager and dutiful girlfriend but deep inside I knew the monster I'd created during the PWP race hand never truly been defeated.  Slowly, almost subconsciously I began to let Magic creep back into my life; I began attending FNM regularly again, I helped to organize my friends/playgroup into a legitimate Magic team (Team Dickwolf) and I resumed reading every scrap of available information about competitive Magic on the internet.  Since Planeswalker Points were no longer a viable means of acquiring a Pro Tour invite I turned towards attempting to win a PTQ; drilling and training with my teammates so that we would grow stronger in preparation for these events.  Like all good teams each of us had joined the group for selfish reasons and we all knew it; winning a PTQ was the goal for everyone involved and if a teammate happened to be the one to break through first we would be happy for him but ultimately it would not change our personal objectives.  Naturally preparing for mental/cardboard warfare is a time consuming process; we began practicing together in person on Tuesday evenings, playing together at FNM on Fridays and slowly, gradually playing more and more games online until they became an almost nightly occurrence.  Throwing various Trials, Qualifiers, cash tournaments and the PTQ's themselves into the equation Magic had once again become both an obsession and a job for me; albeit a part-time job as opposed to the yeoman's hours I'd devoted during the PWP race.

Of course this isn't to say that during all of this time I didn't think about writing or the blog; quite the contrary to be honest.  I was haunted by the idea that deep down inside I literally *needed* to write just to maintain my sanity and that I sincerely missed blogging about Magic on a fundamental level.  I felt a profound sadness for the way I let my readers down with my sudden disappearance from the blogsphere and I knew I'd wronged those dear to me by not leaving so much as a goodbye note in doing so.  Roughly once a week or so I would get the sudden urge to "give writing another go" but there was always another article to read, another video to watch, another practice to attend and another PTQ to prepare for.  What's more, I knew that any sort of explanation for my behavior was going to be long, complicated and ultimately involve putting some truths about myself down to paper that I wasn't necessarily prepared to share with the world at large yet.  It was simply much easier to remain immersed in the world of Magic, constantly learning and improving myself as a player in preparation for the next PTQ, GP or even random Trial where I could fully unleash the monster my need to compete had grown to be.  To be perfectly honest ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm not sure that any of this would have changed at all if I had not broken my foot.  I am probably only writing this confession because I am literally unable to compete at PTQs, Trials or the other high level events I crave until such a time as my foot heals.  The simple truth is that I can't even attend FNM unless I can hitch a car ride too and from the event right now and I think I started writing this yesterday evening to stop thinking about the tournament I was missing at the same time.  In short your Honor, I've lost control.  I'm a competition junkie, a mainline cardboard addict, an unrepentant abuser of Magic the Gathering and if it pleases both you and the jury I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

I pray that you will judge me not for the creature I have become but instead remember kindly the person that I was and one day hope to be again.  You see folks, it's not me, it's the drug and though I am here writing to you now I cannot promise that once my foot heals I won't immediately run back to grinding tournament Magic as often as I possibly can.  Until such a time I promise to cooperate fully with the authority of this court and provide freelance content as ideas worth putting to paper strike me.  This is hereby my full confession and I'm prepared to accept whatever final judgment this court renders; may Richard Garfield have mercy on my soul.

-nina