TCGplayer.com has created a $250,000 tournament series with a $75,000 invitation only championship tournament (held at Wizard World Chicago in August 2011). Players can qualify for the championship by earning 20 points at TCGplayer.com Championship Qualifiers (TCQs) and TCGplayer.com 5Ks.

Brothers Grim will be hosting one of these qualifiers on September 4th, so come and play for your chance to qualify for the chance to play for big money!

When you attend a PTQ, there’s a full staff of highly-qualified judges to help you out with any rulings… but what about local events, where there’s often no judges present? With so many tournaments around the Island, it’s a shame I can’t be at all of them! Local tournaments don’t need a certified judge, but they do need someone appointed to be the judge. It could be a rules advisor, someone who’s knowledgeable about the rules, or in most cases, the tournament organizer or whoever is running the event for them.

I’ve judged many local tournaments at stores all over the Island, and I’ve noticed I’ve gotten many questions multiple times. Some things are common knowledge, others are things that are recent or semi-recent changes that players may not yet be aware of, and some are tournament procedure related things that players often ask.

I’m hoping this FAQ will help answer some of the questions you have about local events, as well as help the people who run those tournaments run them better for you. But if you still have any questions after reading this, feel free to ask!

While no longer a PTQ season, the Block format has always been a sort of crystal ball that we can look at to see the future of Standard. Shards block was dominated by Jund decks, Lorwyn by Faeries, and Time Spiral showcased a pretty good Mystical Teachings list. In fact, many decks that exist soon after a rotation in Standard are simply Block decks with some choice cards added from the new set. Now, with the new Extended format, we can apply a similar strategy but this time look at former or current Standard decks and see how they get better with the blocks following or preceding their own. Since Time Spiral block will be rotating out before most of us get a chance to play with it in this format, I’m just going to look at what will definitely be some of the main players come PTQ season as well as give some reasons why popular decks of yesterday and today won’t be making a splash.

Walk around the tables at your friendly local gaming shop between rounds and you might notice some really weird card interactions going on. Big, hundred card decks, huge legendary creatures hanging out on the side of the table seemingly ignored by all players, strange cards from every format – some of which most players have long since forgotten existed – it’s not a casual player’s collection, it’s EDH!

Rise of the Eldrazi Prerelease Format: Sealed Deck & Booster Draft Entry Fee: See below Date: See below Time: See below Please call the store for information. Location: Games & Gifts Galore 3937 Merrick Road Seaford, NY 11783 Phone: 516-804-0411 Web: www.gamesandgiftsgalore.com

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tower’s Game Room. Now, this will shock you a bit, but I consider April 3, 2010 my greatest achievement in my history of playing Magic. Yes, even more than getting my fifteen minutes of fame at the 2008 Nationals and everything that led up to it. For on this day, I won my first Mox, traveling all the way to Blue Bell, Pennsylvania to accomplish the feat.

Islandhome 1K Format: Standard Entry Fee: $25 Date:Saturday, June 19th Start Time: 11:00 AM Registration, 12:00 First Round Location: Brothers Grim 1244 Middle Country Road Selden, NY 11784 Phone: 631-698-2805 1st: $400 2nd: $200 3rd/4th: $100 5th/8th: $50 Prizes guaranteed at 50 players. Drafts will be available throughout the day.

For starters, I’d like to thank everybody who came out to Brothers Grim to compete in N.Y.S.E. VII. We had 39 players for the main event and an additional 12 for the side event. It was another awesome day for Vintage in New York, with a dedicated core, some new faces, and great times had by all.