Just curious: I've been rank 40 in Duels, legend in Hearthstone, 4250+ in Gwent, but I've not played competitive Magic ever.

Am I good enough to win a PTQ? Make GP day 2s? Make GP top 8s?

No, you’re not. Digital game performance doesn’t translate well into the thrill and high adrenaline of top competitive play. If you want to dip your feet in that pool to test the waters, start with local competitive events, starting with Friday night Magic maybe and work your way up from there.

I have a feeling Arena will have some actual real competitive tournaments so be sure to take those seriously. Hearthstone has some as well.

Back in the day when I used to compete in top level CCG tournaments, I got this great player from Norway on my sponsored team. He was a flawless online player and ranked number one in the world for online events, money and everything. But he could never outperform in real life and I was always surprised when I’d make Day Three of a major event and he didn’t. Same with another friend from Austria. You need to cut your teeth in local, regional live events to get the feel for top level live play. It takes a budget too

Hope this helps

Let me answer a bit differently: as a Duels player, your experience is lacking in the most important aspect of mtg - building and then using a sideboard. If you can shore that up, you might be reasonably competitive. Regarding how you’d do, everything takes practice.

I think Gem was attempting to get to the PT once duels imploded, maybe you could contact him and ask him how it's going?

Good answer.

I was actually trying to get some idea of how difficult it is. E.g. for a tournament like the Magic world championships, there're only 24 players, so it's about top 24 legend in Hearthstone. That's probably out of my league even if I tried, although I never have. Similarly Pro Tours have several hundred players so if we assume that all the best players try to play there, that's around top 500 in Hearthstone, which should be achievable (although again I never tried). Gauging the skill level of GPs, PTQs etc is harder, and I genuinely have no idea. Comparison to Gwent is harder since the player population is smaller, comparison to Duels is irrelevant since getting to rank 40 in Duels isn't hard at all.

I probably won't be attempting to qualify for the Pro Tour. It's likely to be time-consuming, expensive, and I've already played other games competitively so I know what it's like.

grinding ELO in a ladder setting is also pretty different from placing high on a tournament, which is necessarily a lot more random and also tests a somewhat different skillset.

I mean no offense here, and this is coming from someone who used to play quite a bit of Sealed and Draft here in Los Angeles. I've played in Pre-release, FNMs and Grand Prix tournaments with guys who have played on the ProTour before.

Based solely on how many questions you ask in the "Magic for dummies" forum, no, you are not ready for high level competitive M:tG. You ask questions that nobody at the ProTour would ask. In Rules Enforcement Level (REL) "Professional" events you're not allowed to take back moves or go back to a phase if you forgot to do something, you're just stuck with whatever the results were.

I would suggest finding a local gaming store (LGS) that does Friday Night Magic. Introduce yourself to the regulars and let them know where you're at now and where you want to be and start playing some games. Do some small tournaments. Try some Pre-releases. You need to learn draft and sealed too. Find out if anyone at your LGS has been on a ProTour or Grand Prix. See if they will mentor you or if they know of a "Team" or a group of guys who will strategize with you.

Once you can win local tournaments and you're getting through REL Regular and REL Competitive events without asking questions akin to the ones you're asking now, then you're ready to try out the more competitive events.

You’re not being mean, you’re telling what he needs to hear. We’re not his girlfriend or parents, we don’t have to be his cheerleaders. We are his geek buddies

I'm going to repeat this because evidently I didn't express it clearly enough: of course I am not ready to play high-level Magic. I've not played competitive Magic ever! What I wanted to know is exactly how good the players at these events are, after they've been given time to adapt. For example, suppose Alice has been regularly making Day 2s in GPs. Given enough time to learn Hearthstone, how high up the ladder will she get? I'm not interested in whether I'm good enough to play on the Pro Tour right now, because the answer is obviously "no". What I am interested in is whether I'm good enough to play on the Pro Tour if I try.

It's apparent that there is some level of talent when it comes to card games. Also apparent is that a lot of the concepts are shared between card games, which is why a player like Jon Finkel can and should be expected to excel at Hearthstone / Gwent / Poker etc if he elects to take up those games. He may not know how to play those games right now, but given time, he should have no trouble reaching the top of the ladder if he were to try. On the other hand, he may be terrible at a game like League of Legends no matter how much he practices, because LoL uses a different skill set from card games.

Do you understand what I'm asking?

Yeah I would say if you try you could do it for sure

I think all of us here think that you COULD or else we wouldn't have given you the constructive answers we gave you and pointed out areas that you should focus on when trying to get there.

Non-skill wise, do you have the ability to do this? Do you have the funds to travel to and from GPs and PTQs? Do you have to funds to keep up with the Constructed Decks? Do you have the free time to test things out in the weeks/days leading up to the tournaments? Basically, do you have to time and money to make this kind of commitment? And do you have the desire to see it through to the end?

Thanks. "Could" is a big word and different people interpret it differently ("my mother could win the pro tour too if every opponent mulligans to 3 and mana screws") so I'm checking. I'm not going to actively attempt to qualify however, for the same reason I'm not actively attempting to play Gwent competitively - it takes up more time and resources than I'm willing to invest.

Is there some kind of rough illustration of how competitive the various Magic events are? For example, basing off my memory in Hearthstone, the lowest rank of the ladder is 25 while the highest is legend #1. Somewhere from rank 25 to rank 15, opponents will not be playing optimal decks and / or optimal cards. In fact they'll often have clearly subpar cards, the equivalent of playing Gray Ogre when Simian Spirit Guide is strictly better. By rank 14, people will likely be using meta decks, and they won't make obvious mistakes. They can still be smoothly outplayed, but a good player can still expect to lose some games around this rank. By rank 5, one needs to have some familiarity with their deck to do well. I remember climbing to rank 2 with Majordomo Mage, then switched to playing Handlock for a bit. It was literally my first time playing Handlock, and I promptly dropped to rank 4 with a terrible win rate.

I don't have as clear a picture of the Gwent ladder, but at my current MMR (< 2000) it's quite common for opponents to not have optimal decks and they'll still be playing starter golds like Triss Merigold. Decks get optimized quickly as one goes up the ladder, but because of the skill factor a good player can still expect to win up to 3600+ MMR without losing a game. By 4000 MMR one can expect to drop some games, although the last time I climbed the ladder I remember climbing smoothly to 4269 MMR with ~70% win rate, which is where I stopped.

Is there a similar comparison of Magic events? At what point will opponents start using optimal decks (no clearly-suboptimal cards), when will they do things like cast spells after combat and not before, and so on?

Almost immediately

I brought a casual deck to FNM and got demolished

At your very first Friday Night Magic tournament. You can thank Net Decking for that. Everyone at the LGS here in LA thinks they're playing for a spot on the Pro Tour. They are such Try Hards it's not even funny.

You cannot have a casual, fun experience at an FNM. However; there's usually a cheap agro deck that "can win games" at FNMs though so you can start with that. You won't win the day without quite a bit of bad draws and muligans from your opponents but you will get your feet wet and learn the speed and ins-and-outs of the game. You'll be able to get a feel for the level of skill of your LGS, as they are all different unless you have multiple people that go to multiple different LGSes.

Sometimes, you will meet people at the LGS that are willing to loan you the deck they are not using for the night. My first night at a LGS in Korea Town I was there to Draft and one of the Constructed guys was trying to convince me to use his deck so they could have a certain number of players.

O_o and I remember reading that most players, including those at the Pro Tour, have trouble finding all the cards they want.

Shouldn't be a problem. Try finding a LGS that has the singles you need to finish out your deck. If you can't find what you need at a LGS then shop online. Online retailers usually have a large stock of anything you would need. I like to use tcgplayer.com. It's like a travelocity for trading cards. It'll give you a high and low price and it'll give you the prices you can find from multiple different retail sites.

Be real careful using ebay. Read the description really carefully to make sure that they are selling what they have in the picture and that they guarantee a certain quality like Mint or Near Mint. Never buy packs or boxes off of ebay, only singles or playsets (4-of).

Edit: Make sure you check the different Sets that they came in. Sometimes you can find a card for cheaper because it came in a newer set or an older set, or sometimes it's undesirable because it has bad art, or sometimes it came out in a set like Modern Masters. Example: Tarmogoyf from Future Sight is about $100. Tarmogoyf from Modern Masters 2015 is about $57.


edit: damn, I should have kept my Tarmogyfs. They're above $100 now.

Also, Modern is the only format worth playing, ever. j/k

Honestly, competitive mtg is pretty niche, give it a test before you spend a lot to get into it. I'd suggest some very cheap draft night against solid players as an easy, low cost, way to gauge your real interest. If you're like me, you'll be running out of the building as fast as possible, no matter how competitive you actually are compared to the other players.

That’s exactly what I did

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough

I did a run a few years ago. I'm not good enough.I like to smoke weed too much. I do still enjoy getting in a game of Sealed or Draft every once in a while though.

Draft will always be great. Split a box with friends, draft then sell the cards to recoup, repeat

I hope Arena has draft