Good thread. Brings up alot of valid issues with why, as one TO put it to me bluntly in a recent PM, 'New England is no longer the epicenter of Vintage.'
Vintage is really the only popular format of Magic that still is a whole lot like the Wild West.
What I mean by that is it has a different set of rules that really no other format abides by and you basically have to structure your tournaments around those rules or face various forms of retribution.
For years New England Vintage was extremely cliquey. Players and even TO's had their own little clubs and you either played ball with them and their set of rules, or you were not considered a legitimate part of the community. Travis, for all his outspoken-ness, is a perfect example of a good guy just wanting to hold good events but historically faced opposition from other area TO's for his lack of willing to play politics.
I had my own share of political struggle with other area TO's a couple years back. Before I had a store and just ran events out of other peoples stores, I decided to let a player into my events who was banned from other area vintage tournaments. This was uncomfortable for me as it forced me to pick a side and either ban this player as they did, or allow him into my events. I chose the latter since he was not on the DCI's suspended player list.
In fairness it's nearly impossible to get anyone banned in vintage if it's not assault or theft since the tournaments are almost all universally un-sanctioned, and said player had a reputation for shenanigans, but having a reputation and actually being caught cheating are two entirely different things. So I chose the latter and allowed him into my tournaments several years back since he was not actually suspended officially by the DCI.
It was not a fun period of time for me because it forced me to pick a side. The whole vintage scene back then was very political and the climate for a new TO was hostile since you either played ball with a certain set of TO's or chose to do your own thing.
Anyway, I bring up the clique-ness that New England Vintage had in the past because I personally feel it greatly hurt the longevity of tournaments in the region. The last thing you want to do is alienate players, nevermind large groups of them. It's my belief that the political aspect of running/attending tournaments in New England hurt the scene more than anything.
Flashforward to present day and there is no political vintage scene in New England. There's no vintage scene period. That prompted me to hold a few vintage events when I became a store owner this past year since there literally were none in New England and I just wanted players to have a couple quality events.
Of course now I have new sets of rules that I'm presented with only in Vintage and that comes with a changing of the times.
There are other areas in the Northeast that now have great vintage scenes and I'm happy for them, but it does however make it hard for me to run events without running afoul of their group of TO's, since they literally book up entire months of vintage and expect others to work around them. I booked my first tournament in what was a barren New England vintage scene, and people from this other group not in New England just came out of the woodwork giving me grief since it happened to fall on the same day as another tournament in the Northeast.
Despite my first Vintage event being the same day as another event several hours away and both of us having good turnouts, I tried to maneuver around booking future events the same day as those TO's since they were vocal about it and I consider myself to be a reasonable person. So I did my part and did not book any tournaments in recent months on the same days as those TO's, which left me with very few actual days to run on since I run a host of other events and have to worry about not colliding with actual local stuff like PTQ's.
I originally booked a vintage tournament on my birthday weekend and had announced it here several months ago:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=39725.msg554652#msg554652...But another TO several hours away who had reached out to me in an effort to work together and avoid conflicting dates had decided to book one of his own vintage events on that day. This was after I had spent the last 2-3 months delicately not booking anything on those dates as a courtesy to this person.
It was here where I realized Vintage is still a very hard climate to run and maintain quality tournaments in because there's still alot of politics involved, just this time it's not strictly limited to New England.
The other giant obstacle I had to overcome this year when running vintage tournaments was acquiring pieces of power consistently. This directly ties into the only thing that disappointed me in the Vintage events I ran this year:
They were the only events I've run out of the hundreds I've had where some players completely disregarded one of the few rules my store has... No buying/selling amongst players (trading is fine).
One instance in particular distressed me greatly in that players in one of my vintage events top 4 split for cash... except they weren't selling to me. They decided to sell to another TO/dealer who was present in my store and had made top 4. I could've basically put the kibosh on the entire situation, but I just didn't want to put a sour note on what had been a great day... so I let this player buyout my top 4 prizes for what was nearly identical to the price I had offered.
That incident made me rethink wanting to run Vintage regularly, because that's the only format where something like that happened in my store. It affected my ability to run Vintage events consistently because I found myself forced to compete with other individuals who decided to literally setup shop in my store.
Most can probably figure out where I'm headed with this, but I decided to stop running vintage for the time being.
I'll probably do vintage again down the road, but for now I just wish others good luck.
- Dave Feinstein
