If you play MTGO and you join a 6-2-2-2 pod, it is a SWISS draft. That means losing the first round doesn't eliminate you from the tournament, nor from winning prizes. Every pod I've joined has had a drop or 3 after the first round, which tells me that people just DON'T KNOW.

So, ya, there you go.

Yeah, I didn't realize that the first time I joined one, but my round was the last round to finish, so I immediately got thrown back into a game.

I just figured that people had something come up, or didn't want to continue with their deck, or the person beat them so soundly they lost the will to play magic again. When these queues first went up the people who were 0-2 would drop. Now more and more those people hang on just to get a game in. I've also seen where the person who beat me round 1 drops and I sit there wondering why they didn't drop before beating me. I guess there is a small population of people who think its an elimination.

The thing is, Swiss was always labeled as just "Swiss". Since MTGO has been around (that I can recall), single elimination queues were advertised by their prize payout. So seeing 6-2-2-2 immediately conjures the idea that they're related to 8-4s and 4-3-2-2s, when they're really not.

On a related note, the 6-2-2-2 queues are a great idea. I like that the winner gets a big reward. The idea of winning a Swiss always felt so lackluster.

Sorry, not an MTGO player, so I'm unclear. Is that the prize distribution, 6 packs to 1st place, 2 to 2nd, 2 to 3rd, 2 to 4th? Other than minor number tweaking how is that handled differently from 4-3-2-2s?


Could be a time economy thing - if you lose the first round of a 3 round swiss you would definitely have to win the last two matches to get into top-4... some people with more money than time might rather forego 2 more rounds of play and a 25% chance of a piddly prize to get an early start at another event where the top prize is attainable?

You can start an event while playing in one so that isn't an issue.

Some people drop for those reasons regardless. Probably QP grinders who don't like double queuing (or are already grinding and don't want to triple queue).

In 4-3-2-2, if you lose in round one, you're eliminated. In a 6-2-2-2, if you lose your first (or second) round match, you can still win prizes by winning the other two matches.

I think it is just that playing 2 or 3 more rounds just isn't worth it for a lot of people, when the end result is only 2 packs. Especially when only 1 loss is the difference between 0 and 2.

Then shouldn't they play 8-4s?

This is my point as well. If you're gonna quit after a loss, might as well play one of the systems that rewards you most for not losing.

Yikes, just had all 4 first round losers drop...

Hmmm, actually, it seems to be back to the original. I just got auto-booted after losing Match 2...

Wrong queue? It works like expected for me.

They think that only bad people play Swiss, and want to go for easy wins.

These are things I have actually heard people say.

to be fair, only bad people play swiss.