Here at Eternal Central we are huge fans of the great work Star City Games is putting together. We are bringing you the live coverages of their events thanks to GGslive.com and we’ll continue to do that next year. (Remember that next stop of 2010 SCG Open series is this weekend in Boston). Their tournaments define (somehow) what’s trendy in Legacy and what’s not. It inspires us to write about Legacy and we hope it inspires you guys to play better.
Anyways, we just wanted to share with you guys the official announcement of the 2011 Starcitygames.com Open Series. Get ready for some serious Draft/Standard/Legacy action coming up next year. Right after the break all the information that SCG has provided:
We’re proud to announce the StarCityGames.com 2011 Open Series! We are appreciative of all the support we received for our 2010 Open Series – from players, judges, and the community at large – and we’re making the 2011 Open Series even more awesome!
This year, the StarCityGames.com Open Series will be divided into two Invitational seasons! The first Invitational Season will culminate in Indianapolis, IN, on the weekend of June 3-5, 2011. The second Invitational Season will finish up in Charlotte, NC, on the weekend of December 9-11, 2011. Each StarCityGames.com Invitational tournament will award $50,000 in cash prizes!
You read that right! StarCityGames.com will award over $500,000 in cash prizes over the course of the entire 2011 Open Series year. As part of this expanded prize payout, we are raising the prize payouts for each Saturday Standard Open to $6,400 per event!
We recognize that playing 9+ rounds of Swiss makes for a long day of Magic, so starting with the 2011 Open Series events, we will be running the Quarterfinals of the Standard Event on Saturday night, and the Semifinals and Finals will be played on Sunday morning at 8 a.m..
StarCityGames.com remains committed to supporting the Legacy format, and we will continue this support in our 2011 Open Series! Each Sunday, we will run our Legacy Open event starting at 10 a.m. and featuring a total prize pool of $5,800!
We will be adding two new Open Events to our Sunday schedule! We are proud to announce the StarCityGames.com Draft Open events! We will run two limit-64 player Booster Draft events on Sunday – the first starting at 9 a.m., and the second starting at 1 p.m.! Each event will be run as follows: Eight pods of 8 players each will do a booster draft. After three rounds, players with the best records will play in a second booster Draft, with the following prizes:
Sign-ups for the Draft Opens will be taken starting at 8 a.m. on Sunday. We will provide a place where players can line up to sign-up for the event, and players will be registered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Last year, StarCityGames.com Open Points were only used to keep track of the Player of the Year. This year, we are rewarding you for attending and finishing well at StarCityGames.com Open Events! We’re proud to introduce the StarCityGames.com Open Player’s Club!
If you make Level 8 of the StarCityGames.com Player’s Club, you receive 4x copies of each new Standard Magic set, a $250 appearance fee at each StarCityGames.com Open, two byes at every Constructed StarCityGames.com Open tournament (not counting the Invitationals themselves), free entry into the StarCityGames.com Standard and Legacy Open tournaments each Open weekend, qualification for two StarCityGames.com Invitational tournaments that season, and a free pack of sleeves at each StarCityGames.com Open Weekend!
Points will reset at the beginning of each StarCityGames.com Open year. Once you have reached a level, you will be conferred the benefits of that level into the next Open year! For instance, if you earned 40 Points during the 2010 StarCityGames.com Open season, you will start 2011 at zero points, but will have all of the Level 4 benefits locked in for all of 2011 – 1 Bye per event, free attendance to the two constructed Open events each Weekend, automatic qualification for both Invitationals in 2011, and a free pack of sleeves at every Weekend you attend!
Player’s Club levels for the 2010 season will be locked upon the completion of the StarCityGames.com Open Weekend in Boston, MA, November 6-7, 2010. Points will be reset starting with the StarCityGames.com Open Weekend in Richmond, VA, December 3-5, 2010. Players will be able to take advantage of their Player’s Club benefits starting with the StarCityGames.com Open Events in Richmond, VA, December 3-5, 2010. Points earned during those events will count towards the 2011 standings.
We will be running nearly twice as many StarCityGames.com Open Weekends in 2011 as we did in 2010! That means more chances to play, more chances to win, and more chances that we’ll be coming to a location near you! Here is our schedule of events for the first half of 2011:
We are finalizing our second Invitational Season schedule, and we will be announcing the events leading up to the Charlotte StarCityGames.com Open Weekend featuring the Invitational towards the middle of the Indianapolis qualifier season! Currently, we plan to have between twelve (12) and fifteen (15) StarCityGames.com Open events for the second half of 2011, in case you were wondering!
Last year, qualification for the Invitational was based on Open Points. This year, we’ve simplified the system! Here’s how you can qualify for a StarCityGames.com Invitational tournament:
We’re really excited about our 2011 StarCityGames.com Open series! To recap: We’ve increased the prizes for the Standard Open event each Weekend, added the StarCityGames.com Open Player’s Club, added a second Invitational, added two Draft Open events per Weekend, and increased the number of Opens we’re running! A big thank you to everyone who has helped us to grow the StarCityGames.com Open Series over the past year, and we look forward to seeing you at a StarCityGames.com Open event in 2011!