The Magic 2011 Prerelease is just behind us and I had the pleasure to be invited as a gunslinger for the large regional Prelease in Rockville, MD. After I was invited our TO discovered that Scott Larabee, Program Manager for Magic: The Gathering Organized Play, was willing available and willing to gunsling.

While I will continue to hesitate and humbly insist I am not anywhere near the level of recognition of such a notable individual from Wizards I was pleased that we shared time gunslinging fairly evenly. I'm not 100% sure, so take this with a grain of salt, but it felt to me that I gave out fewer packs across the day than Scott. Perhaps players thought I was the easier pick to play against but my deck did its thing beautifully (check out yesterday's Serious Fun at DailyMTG.com for my pool and deck).

Also, I'm pretty biased as this was my first Sealed adventure in quite awhile that I would state was highly successful.It may have been my adamant belief that I could win every single game that brought about my favor. Perhaps there's something to the mental state of “I'm going to win. You're not.” after all.

More importantly, however, I had a chance to chat interview style at the end of the night after virtually all of the events had finished. Without the aid of a recording device most of this “interview” will be paraphrases of his statements. This means that these are not exact quotes and cannot be used as such. Nice try though.

And now onto the goods!

Scott Larabee is Cool. Seriously.

I asked Scott how things went since, despite being merely feet away all day, we were both very busy slinging the cards against all sorts of challengers. He shared the same experience I did playing about half EDH and Sealed, though he did encounter one guy testing “New Standard” with some M11 changes. Scott's Red Deck Wins (no, I don't have his list but it's likely similar to stock builds running around) still crushed.

I asked Scott to clarify, exactly, what it is he does for Organized Play. He stated he has three main responsibilities:

1. Providing content and business plans for Magic programs (i.e. FNM, GP, how Archenemy Release Events should be run, etc.)
2. Policies and procedures for competitive (Tournament) play (i.e. Floor Rules, Penalty Guide, the mechanics of tournament operations, etc.)
3. Manage the Pro Tour (not the venue/logistics but procedure, invitations, formats, Pro Club, etc.).

He also shared that recently he's been doing even more for Magic via being involved with R&D in creating three products: the already released Planechase and Archenemy products as well as a product for next year codenamed 'Bedlam.' He would neither confirm nor deny any idea I suggested of what Bedlam could be though he did remind me that you can't read into code names: Hopscotch and Butterscotch were the codes for Planechase and Archenemy respectively.

Double Standard: the New Extended

Since he resides in charge of the formats used for the Pro Tour I asked him something I'm sure many of you are still interested in learning more about: what brought about, and went into, the changes to Extended?

Scott is "part of the team that is constantly looking at all of the Constructed formats, which includes Aaron Forsythe and the B&R (Banned and Restricted) Team." They "had been looking at Extended for about 18 months, looking to see what they could do about it." They want "three Constructed formats for the Pro Tour: Standard, Block, and Extended." Each has its own quirks, like "Block feeling constrained within the normal Big-Small-Small set release schedule due to lack of card variety, but Extended was showing to be the most problematic."

They "want players to play Magic they enjoy and want to play." They found that while players played Extended during the season ("Qualifiers forced them into Extended") they would switch off and "play different formats, like the very popular Legacy, outside of matches." In looking at "Who is playing what formats?" they discovered that "Legacy was growing wildly but faced a much steeper barrier to entry than Extended and card availability that will only diminish as they will not reprint the Reserved List."

"Legacy isn't viable for a Pro Tour Constructed format" because of this barrier. Extended, too, was tough to get into and when players faced moving out of Standard (i.e. at rotation) the hurdle to move into Extended was over passed over with a jump to Legacy: "If you're going to invest into cards why not ones that will stick around?"

"Forcing players to decide between buying mostly new cards, buying lots of expensive older cards, or not playing at all wasn't an acceptable option." Making Extended more accessible was one of the options they tried (the "Double Standard" being thrown about) and found worked great.

I asked him what feedback he's gotten and he shared that "there's been a lot, but mostly positive. Of course there's always some that really hate that we took away some cards but there isn't a way to make everyone happy. Someone always stands to lose out on a decision." More importantly they "wanted to make the decision in time for PT Amsterdam which would allow the brightest stars to play with a relatively new format. It's exciting to watch and see what they come up with."

I followed up about the rumor of “Over-Extended” but he declined to respond. I also asked about a pet format for many: Cube. He sadly just shook his head (though I forgot to point out it was features at the last Invitational and ask if those events would ever come back – sorry guys!). However, he did clarify that "a lot of eyes look things over before any banned or restricted changes are made, including the ones that were part of the changes to Extended. Taking a look at what would be available within the sets eligible in Extended" it was clear that some recommendation was needed.

Casual is the new Competitive

While the jokes fly about the “Summer of Multiplayer” during a streak when competitive Magic seems its healthiest in awhile, it isn't a comical consideration for Wizards. I asked Scott about the view of “Casual” Magic, a hard-to-define beast of a broad swath of the players out there, and he said that it's his belief that “there are far more players who play at kitchen tables and in basements than will ever set foot in a sanctioned event.”

The reality of things are that casual players drive a lot of product sale but are often insular and don't connect up with other smaller groups in their area. Part of the solution are the changes that hit the Wizard's Play Network to encourage more organic, local growth of playing groups. The other part is much more nebulous but just as critical: local encouragement for players to step outside their safe zone to head to organized events.

As it's clear at any big event, there is a lot of Magic happening that doesn't require a DCI number. Wizards wants to get the smaller groups together which both helps stabilize groups so there is less turnover in players but also builds up newer players faster. The more the merrier and stores often benefit from additional revenue if they can host a group.

Closing the night out I asked him if there was anything that he wanted to share. He said that he had many players describe "Core Sets are cool (now)!" "Treating the Core Set as a regular expansion has done much more than freshen the game as it's both exciting and cool for established players" but reaches out to the classical fantasy feel that many new players enjoy. "It's been immensely successful."

Bonus: Overtime Deathmatch

No, I didn't get a chance to challenge Scott myself (though I was hoping for a Standard challenge so I could rock the red for a little bit) but I did want to share I had a chance to also discuss Magic, specifically M11, EDH, and "How not to be a douchebag, in general." with BHJ (BigHeadJoe) at Yo! MTG Taps! – I hope you take a moment to catch up on their podcasts as those guys are really sharp and entertaining.

I'll catch you next week!