Oct 6, 2012 -- 10:12AM, green_girl wrote:

Any news on planeswalker points and how they actually work? 

Planeswalker points have nothing to do with the old Elo rating system--it's a completely different idea. Elo ratings were, roughly, supposed to be a measure of skill--someone with a higher rating was supposedly a better player than someone with a lower rating. Planeswalker points are cross between a measure of your level of activity and your level of success--the tagline is "Playing is good. Winning is better."

Players get points for participating in events, and get more points when they win matches. Points are cumulative over the course of a season/year; players who achieve specific point thresholds get certain benefits, like byes at GPs, and can qualify for some events. There's also a lifetime points record, which acts as a measure of your involvement with the game since you started playing in sanctioned events, and an achievements system.


All the changes to the rules since you last played can be found in The Returning Player Rules Primer.

Oct 8, 2012 -- 10:56PM, green_girl wrote:

So are my old matches from 5 years ago in sanctioned events disregarded? I've gotten Top 8/16 in a lot of big events, so you can see why I'm concerned if that will go to waste.

All sanctioned events you've ever played should be included in the total.

Oct 8, 2012 -- 10:56PM, green_girl wrote:

I would also like to enter the Nationals next year if I can so does that mean I need to join and consistently win in several sanctioned tournaments the whole year if I want a chance of catching up? How hard would it be to catch up?

Nationals no longer exists in quite the same form it did, so entering Nationals is a no-go. However, the World Magic Cup Qualifiers serve basically the same purpose, so that's probably the closest current equivalent. They're invitation-only events, and invitation details can be found here.

Basically, you need to reach a certain threshold of yearly points (the exact number differs depending on your country) in order to be invited to WMCQ events for your country. How you do that is irrelevant--you could potentially do it by entering a ton of events and bombing out of every single one of them. (Though it'd be really, really hard--winning a lot of matches would do it much easier.) For the Phillipines it looks like the threshold is 300 points; starting now (technically last April, but it's hard to start retroactively), simply accumulate 300 points before the end of the qualifying period (March 17th) and you're invited to the qualifiers, which start in April.