SATURDAY AND SUNDAY IN RYE, NEW YORK -
A NON-PRO'S PRO-TOUR REPORT CARD

FIRST A WARNING:

This report card is not meant to be a description of any of the
tournaments held in Rye.  I will leave that to those that have
something interesting to say.  I did not take notes about the
tournaments I was in and unless I have a better knowledge of a new
set I can not do it off the top of my head.  Also, I am not going to
talk at all about the new set except to say that it looks like fun,
and this set will once again change Type 1, Type 2, and Limited.
The new Duelist (#18) has a COMPLETE spoiler list (with flavor text)
and you can look there for a description of the cards.

I will talk about the new set in future NG tournament reports. 

This post is only intended to talk about the New York Pro Tour '97
as it relates to non-Pro Tour players like me.  I went there to play
in the side tournaments.  These are my impressions, complaints, and
comments.

If this does not interest you, go read something else - I don't want
to be spamed because you were not interested in the topic.

NOW FOR THE REPORT CARD:

  TOPIC                    GRADE COMMENT SUMMARY
  Location....................F  It was in Rye!
  Cost........................F  See below.
  Presentation................C  Shrug. nothing amazing or ugly.
  Availability of Cards.......A- Well they did run out of
                                  Weatherlight Sunday morning.
  Cost of Cards...............D  Why not sell at cost or below?
  Fun factor..................A  Well, I did have fun.
  Tournament Administration...A  But wait - all the tournaments
                                  were run by Gray Matter.
  Other players...............A  Only one case of other players 
                                  acting like morons.

  Overall..................B-/C+

LOCATION:

New York City has an amazing transportation system.  You can get to
any part of the city (practically) from any other part of the city in
at most 45 mins. using only public transportation!  If you live in
the far parts of Long Island it may take longer, but this is true in
general.  This is the reason that NG can get as many players as it
does for its' daily tournaments.  This is also the reason that
residents of NYC don't own cars.  They are more expensive and in
general don't get you places faster.  This aspect of NYC is in sharp
contrast to other parts of country (e.g. CA, WA) where if you don't
have a car you can't go anywhere except to see your next door
neighbor.  
Now with that background I will get to the point...
WotC was having a Pro-Tour Qualifier in NY, but they held it in Rye,
New York.  For those of you don't know Rye, New York is about 40
miles north of NYC, what we in NYC like to call the boondocks.

So what does this mean for the average New Yorker (i.e. me)?  First I
had to take a subway ($1.50, 30-40mins) or a cab ($5.00 10min) to 
the train station, then I had to take the train ($5.00, 40mins) 
to Rye, then in Rye I had to take a cab to the hotel where the 
convention was being held ($3.00 15mins).  Thus to get to the start
of the Weatherlight premier tournament at 10:00am I had leave my 
apartment at 8am if I was going to take a cab or 7:30am if I took
the subway to the train.  I opted for the 8am choice (I left NG at
2:00am the night before.  This means that it took me 2 hours and
$8.00 just to get to the Pro-Tour location.  At the first Pro-Tour
where I was a judge, it was a 10 min. walk from my apartment.  It
would have been easy not to go.  And as an aside to any WotC people
who are reading this I know of at least 10 people at NG the night
before that did not bother to go because of the location.  I expect
that if they had had the tournament in the City they would have
gotten at least 200 more people.  The reason for this is simple, for
me it was relatively easy, I can hop in a cab and be at the train
station.  If I lived in Brooklyn or the Bronx I would have to take
the subway to the train station and add an additional 45mins to the
trip just to get to the train station.  As op. to taking the subway
to the tournament.

The other problem with having the tournament in Rye is that there is
nothing in Rye.  It is a small town.  For example, there is no food.
We had to pay the hotel $5 for a slice of pizza or $5 for a plate of
pasta. $1.50 for a soda (12oz) and this was THE CHEAP BUFFET.  There
was also in hotel restaurant that was more expensive!  There were no
nightclubs, no bars, NOTHING.  Now I live in the city - I don't
really mind - I came to play magic and that is what I did.  But I
felt bad for the foreigners - they came to NYC but ended up in Rye. 
If they lost on the first day (and 3/4 of the competitors did), it
was hard for them to enjoy the city.

THE ONLY REASON TO HAVE THE PRO-TOUR IN RYE WAS FOR WIZARDS TO SAVE
MONEY.  Why do they need to?  The whole point of the pro-tour is
that it is a form of advertising - they are spending money on it to
promote their product.  Spend the extra 10 or 30 grand for the NYC
location (if it was even that much) and make the pro-tour 500 times
better.

(As a side note, I have worked for companies that have conferences
and know the person who books the conference halls - the cost for a
conference hall in NYC is not much - if you know where to look.)

OK, I have vented enough about that subject - my point is simple
though - there is no good reason to have the conference in Rye and
there are a lot of reasons not to.  DON'T DO IT AGAIN WIZARDS!
I would be shocked if any other player disagrees with me.

COST

The costs were high at this conference and the rewards small.  Every
event cost money and the prizes were tiny.  Neutral Ground has no
problem making money with sealed deck tournaments where they are 
selling product at cost getting say 15-30 people entering and 
giving out a prize of $25-$50.  HOWEVER, Wizards manufactures these
products - that means when they sell them wholesale they sell them
for 30-50% of retail price.  They should be able to double the type
of prize that NG gives - the prizes were 1/2!  The most grotesque
example was the team tournament.  They had something like 15 teams
of 3 people who paid $20 each for a 3rd edition starter and some
foreign booster each.  That is $900 coming in.  The prize was
something on the order of 4-6 starts and 8 boosters distributed
among the top 3 finishers.  WHAT A RIP OFF!  Wizards was running
this tournament in a way that suggested all they were trying to do
was make lots of money - as I said before, the point of the pro-tour
and the pre-release should be to promote the product, not make the
participants feel like they are being cheated.

For example when I first got to the Hotel I had to pay a $5.00
admission fee.  I said, "I'm going to play in the Pre-Release
Tournament", thinking the fee was only for spectators (like it was
at the first Pro-Tour).  The guy behind the counter said I had to
pay the entrance anyway, I was surprised and said "I have to pay
the $5.00 and the $20.00 for the Pre-Release".  He said yes, "But it
is sanctioned".  I pointed out "This is New York remember, Neutral
Ground has sanctioned tournaments every day!"  

There is something seriously wrong when Wizards can't put on a
tournament which is cheaper than Neutral Ground and has better
prizes.  They failed on both these counts.  The tournaments were
more expensive (and NG has to pay NYC rents) and the prizes were
worse!  What is going on here?

PRESENTATION

Not much to say about the presentation.  It did not suck.  For the
finals they did not have enough TV screens and they were to small. 
At the first Pro-Tour they had a large screen, this was much better,
at this Pro-Tour you had to jockey for a spot to be able to see what
was going on and even then the resolution of the cards was kinda
lame.  The color commentary was a little silly too, it was funny at
times but it would have been good if they said intelligent things
about 20% more of the time.  (The true commentary was only about 5%
and you had to get the jokes.)  I fell asleep.  (I had been up for
about 30 hours playing magic at that point.)

AVAILABILITY OF CARDS/COST OF CARDS

Finally something they did right!  There were a lot of cards and you
could get them.  Weatherlight, foreign Mirage and Visions in sealed
deck play (sanctioned) of every flavor.  If you wanted Weatherlight
(and I did) you could play in sealed decks with it all night (and I
did).  The cost was once again high $20 for a sealed with Mirage
starter and two Weatherlight Boosters, or $10 for 2 Visions and 1
Weatherlight draft.  But they had tournaments all night and you
could get a lot of Weatherlight cards (I ended up with about 180 of
the new cards - cheer!).

FUN FACTOR/OTHER PLAYERS

I stayed up all night and played cards - I had a blast. The
atmosphere was nice, everyone was having a good time - it was nice. 
All the players and staff were pleasant - no real downers there at
all.

TOURNAMENT ADMINISTRATION

The tournament was run very smoothly considering the number of
people there - of course it was all Gray Matter staff running the
tournaments (not Wizards) and they did a great job.

THE END?

All in all I had a great time.  I probably would not even have
written this if it had not been for the location and the cost.  In
fact, the cost would not even bothered me if the prizes were more in
line with the money they were taking in.  It seemed to me that
Wizards was trying to give out the smallest possible prizes they
could to the side tournaments, while in the other room they are
giving out to much money.  It was kinda a tax the peons and pay the
royalty situation - maybe it is time for another Tea Party?

Play well and don't get mana screwed,
H.

If you want you can check out my web site at:
http://www.akula.com/~hogan