Anyone watching this inaugural event (which is taking place at Gen Con) over the weekend? As a person who has enjoyed playing some Magic here and there over the years, and followed various peoples and events connected to this great game, it's great to see Wizards doing such a good job with the online coverage this time around. I'll update this thread with what's going down, and what's up with this brilliant new international tournament. I'll try and break down some of the terminology (hopefully from aspects of both the card game itself as well as tournament lingo) for you newbies out there, but on the whole the online coverage should get you up to speed with the basics.

Standings as of Day 3

CHINESE TAIPEI WINS!

World Magic Cup 2012 YouTube playlist

Wizards of the Coast Twitch.tv

The World Magic Cup is a modified national team event featuring four-player teams. The four players will be three winners of Magic World Cup qualifiers and the National Champion, the player with the most pro points for the season from that country.

Friday - Day One (Individual Play)

Seven rounds of Swiss including three rounds of Magic 2013 Booster Draft and four rounds of Standard. Players gain points for the team (Win = 3, Draw = 1, Loss = 0) and the best three scores in each team are added together to make a combined team score. The Top 32 teams with the highest combined team score will advance to the next day. Day 2 involves only teams of three players, with the lowest scoring player in each team being eliminated from active play during Day 2.

Saturday - Day Two (Team Play)

Team play begins with teams being sorted, according to seeding, into eight pools of four teams. The teams will play in three rounds with the format being Magic 2013 Team Sealed Deck. After these rounds, the top two teams from each pool advance to the second stage, leaving sixteen teams. The teams will then be sorted into four pools of four teams and will play three rounds of Team Constructed, with a player from each team playing Standard, Modern and Innistrad Block Constructed.

Team Sealed works like this: Three of the four members of each national team (32 teams have made it to Day Two) face off against each other in one on one matches, with the fourth team member acting as a coach to advise each of their three actively playing teammates. Thus, there can be up to three games going on at once for any two opposing teams.

Team Chinese Taipei - Tzu-Ching Kuo, Tung-Yi Cheng, Yu Min Yang with Paul Renie as coach

Team Uruguay - Nicolas Righetti, Federico Bigalli, Martin Castillo with Mauro Betschart as coach

Team Canada - Lucas Siow, Alexander Hayne, Jamie Blanchette with Marc Anderson as coach

Team France - Yohan Dudognon, Raphael Levy, Stephane Soubrier with Damien Mace as coach

Team USA - Alex Binek, Brian Kibler, Joe Pennachio with Luis Scott-Vargas as coach

Team Brazil - Juliano Souza, Paulo Vitor da Rosa, Leonardo Siqueira with Elton Carneiro as coach

Super Sunday - Day Three

The top eight teams from Day 2 compete in seeded single-elimination rounds, in the Team Constructed format, to determine the winner of the World Magic Cup. Teams must use their previously constructed decks, but are allowed to change who pilots them.

FINALS

Puerto Rico vs Chinese TaipeiCHINESE TAIPEI WINS THE WORLD MAGIC CUP 2012

SEMIFINALS 2

Hungary vs Chinese TaipeiCHINESE TAIPEI WINS

SEMIFINALS 1

Puerto Rico vs PolandPUERTO RICO WINS

QUARTERFINALS

Puerto Rico vs CroatiaPUERTO RICO WINS

Philippines vs PolandPOLAND WINS

Hungary vs ScotlandHUNGARY WINS

Slovak Republic vs Chinese TaipeiCHINESE TAIPEI WINS

Webcast start times

Los Angeles - Friday 7:45 AM | Saturday 6:45 AM | Sunday 5:45 AM

London - Friday 3:45 PM | Saturday 2:45 PM | Sunday 1:45 PM

Tokyo - Friday 11:45 PM | Saturday 10:45 PM | Sunday 9:45 PM

People in the Booth

Brian David-Marshall, Pro Tour Historian

Rich Hagon, Pro Tour Statistician

Rashad Miller, GGslive.com Founder

Sheldon Menery, Judge Emeritus

Zac Hill, Magic R&D

Marshall Sutcliffe, Limited Resources Podcaster

I recently got back into playing/collecting magic cards and even started listening to The Eh Team regularly, but haven't watched any coverage yet.

Is there a place where this sort of stuff gets archived?

@StarvingGamer said:

I recently got back into playing/collecting magic cards and even started listening to The Eh Team regularly, but haven't watched any coverage yet.

Is there a place where this sort of stuff gets archived?

It goes up on YouTube later and it's all streamed through Twitch.tv (which will get archived, just like Giant Bomb). Here is the full YouTube playlist that will get updated automatically as the tournament rages on.

@Fattony12000: Thanks, I will be sure to take a look when I get home from work.

They broadcast the tournament live? wow

@CheapPoison said:

They broadcast the tournament live? wow

They certainly do! They've been doing that kinda thing for a few years now. But it gets better each year!

@Fattony12000 said:

@CheapPoison said:

They broadcast the tournament live? wow

They certainly do! They've been doing that kinda thing for a few years now. But it gets better each year!

I knew magic was pretty big. Had no idea how big it seems.

This is the craziest thing, not going to make fun of it or anything. It's just so incomprehensible to me.

Also go Team Norway I guess.

I had no idea that this was a thing.

My favorite part of this is the Garvas Elscott appearance.

Also, they didn't start doing full live streams of pro tour/gp events until this past year at some point (can't remember when)

@CheapPoison said:

@Fattony12000 said:

@CheapPoison said:

They broadcast the tournament live? wow

They certainly do! They've been doing that kinda thing for a few years now. But it gets better each year!

I knew magic was pretty big. Had no idea how big it seems.

Big in the game, fo sure!

The first ever Grand Prix (a type of event open to anyone) was held in 1997 and was host to 330 players.

Grand Prix Madrid was held in 2010 and had 2,228 competitors taking part. That's a lot of people all playing Magic at the same time.

Right now there are 8757 people watching the live online broadcast, for a bunch of people sat in chairs laying down pieces of cardboard, that's pretty good going!

I guess Team USA is eliminated. Bummersville, LSV and Kibler are probably my favorite pros.

@Simplexity said:

This is the craziest thing, not going to make fun of it or anything. It's just so incomprehensible to me.

Also go Team Norway I guess.

Crazy Things!

@BraveToaster said:

I had no idea that this was a thing.

It's a thing! A video thing!

@Foil1212 said:

My favorite part of this is the Garvas Elscott appearance.

Also, they didn't start doing full live streams of pro tour/gp events until this past year at some point (can't remember when)

Oh I know, I did say that they had previously done this 'kinda thing' before, complete video streaming of the entire thing is new, yes. They have been filming and archiving the most important matches for a few years now, though.

@Foil1212 said:

I guess Team USA is eliminated. Bummersville, LSV and Kibler are probably my favorite pros.

Yeah! An event that Channel Fireball won't win, for a change!

I'm not a huge fan of the new format - I don't know any of the players in the top 8. Probably won't watch it live this time.

Individual events are much more interesting.

@FTomato said:

I'm not a huge fan of the new format - I don't know any of the players in the top 8. Probably won't watch it live this time.

Individual events are much more interesting.

As someone who has watched hundreds of top level competitive individual events, I'm really digging this focus on a different kind of tournament play. Do I want to see it take over? No. Will it? No. But it does break things up a bit and it gives the viewer a really unique experience of top level tournament Magic.

Any cool new deck tech?

@StarvingGamer said:

Any cool new deck tech?

@Fattony12000: If only i could watch videos at work. ALAS!

DIGIMONSSS!

@StarvingGamer said:

@Fattony12000: If only i could watch videos at work. ALAS!

Working on a Sunday? You Monster. We thank you for your service to this country.

@Hizang said:

DIGIMONSSS!

I wish they would do something this nice for the Heroclix World Championships. = (

It's been a fun watch so far, though!

@Fattony12000: Interesting, I was running a UG Wild Defiance Infect Deck for a while but haven't touched it since M13. I didn't think of the effect Rancor coming back would have on the tempo of that deck. Cathedral of War is a cute pick too.

Of course this deck is going to die once Phyrexian mana rotates out.

Cedric Phillips has been playing it on his twitch a lot in between matches on MTGO, and he's been winning a lot with it. Rancor makes that deck legitimate. Having a pump spell that is basically infinite except for unsummons, and makes it so your dude can't be chumped? That's insane.

By the way, did anyone catch the twitter controversy? Apparently in the finals, one of the guys from Puerto Rico, the one playing affinity in modern, looked VERY suspicious. Tom Martell livestreamed it and detailed how he was cheating and why he thinks he was cheating.

WHO THE FUCK CHEATS LIVE ON THE INTERNET? IN THE FINALS OF A LARGE EVENT?

@Foil1212 said:

By the way, did anyone catch the twitter controversy? Apparently in the finals, one of the guys from Puerto Rico, the one playing affinity in modern, looked VERY suspicious. Tom Martell livestreamed it and detailed how he was cheating and why he thinks he was cheating.

WHO THE FUCK CHEATS LIVE ON THE INTERNET? IN THE FINALS OF A LARGE EVENT?

It's totally completely shifty, he did cheat (twice) by stacking his deck when shuffling, you are not allowed to do that. Of course, his opponent shuffles and cuts the deck afterwards, but it doesn't change the fact that he cheated by not performing a randomised shuffle. Eric Froehlich, Tom Martell and Patrick Chapin all say that it looked utterly sketchy and I'm inclined to agree with them, even when watching it live I thought that kind of shuffling looked weird. I wasn't looking out for it at all, which as a cheater, is exactly what you want.

Right. Tom Martell went through it slowly, and clearly labeled how he was cheating. I hope Wizards does something about this (which they probably will, considering what happened with Alex Bertoncini)