Whether it’s your local card shop, a Pro Circuit Qualifier or a $250,000 Pro Circuit event, winning has you holding all the cards. And prizes. But there are even some less tangible benefits that winning bestows upon you . . .


1. You Control The Metagame

When a winning deck hits the Internet, people take notice. Some people will inevitably copy the deck, usually with mediocre results as they don’t have a clear picture of how it works or what strategy to employ against other archetypes. Others will try to find the deck’s foil. They’ll try to find a silver bullet that can wreck the deck and hope that a lot of people copy your winning deck. However, these decks tend to lose against decks they aren’t set up to defeat.

Your deck’s foil isn’t always that obvious anyway. You’re the only one who really knows what your deck is all about. No one saw your third round match against a well–put together X-Men Discard deck. Perhaps you were soundly trounced in game 1 with no hope of beating your opponent on the horizon, but then he or she made a couple of bad tactical decisions and gave away games 2 and 3. You came away from the matchup seemingly scott-free to the rest of the world, but you know the truth. Your deck has a glaring weakness that only you know about.

Also, the next time you take a new deck to a local tournament or even to a casual play gathering, players will study it intently, sometimes deciding that it must be your future tournament deck. You don’t have to tell them that it was just a fun deck you threw together last night.


2. Everyone Wants to Be Your Friend

After you make it to the Top 8, you’ll attract a lot of attention from the rest of the field. Your former opponents will now cheer you on, as it’s great to see the deck that beat you, beat everyone else. It’s like when your girlfriend dumps you for another guy and they end up getting married. You don’t feel so bad, because, hey, they were obviously meant to be together.

You designed and successfully played a great deck, so you have an obvious insight into the game, the rules, and the metagame. That makes you a hot commodity. Other players are going to want to build decks with you and playtest with you to learn from the best. Don’t be surprised if you get a few offers from other serious players to join a deckbuilding and playtesting team.

The top-ranked player on a team is the defacto leader of the team. It’s good to be the king. If you need a fourth Savage Beatdown, your teammates will get it for you.


3. Your Reputation Precedes You

At future events, players will see their names on the pairings board next to yours and their hearts will sink. Some players figure they’ve got no hope of beating a former champion. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those players’ friends will tell them, "Good luck. You’ll need it." They’re going into their matches scared and doubtful that they’ll come away with a victory. They also knows that their friends aren’t expecting them to win, so they’ve already virtually decided that they’re going to lose.

When an opponent isn’t expecting to win, he or she tends to play very defensively and is likely to miss opportunities to go for the win. You have great power when you sense fear in an opponent. Any bluff you make is likely to work like a charm, as your opponent is expecting you to have the perfect card to thwart whatever strategy he or she is employing.


4. Been There, Done That

The first time a player makes the Top 8 and the first time he or she is in the finals can be nerve-wracking experiences. But you’ve been under the hot lights before. You’ve already played matches with a judge watching your every move. And you’ve already experienced the peer pressure of having your play watched by a couple dozen spectators. This is doubly relevant at a Pro Circuit event, when past winners usually get to play at the prestigious "Feature Match" table that attracts a lot of spectators. When players get nervous, they tend to make mistakes. They know you’re a good player, so they tend to second guess a lot of decisions they make, as they don’t want to look dumb playing against you.


5. Upper Deck Knows Your Name

Pro Circuit winners might be asked to write articles for the official website or be asked to appear in a magazine ad for the Pro Circuit. And they’ll get paid for it! Also, if you show a true mastery for the game and have other game design or development experience, that sure would look good on a resumé sent to UDE. A couple of the UDE R&D members are well-known pro TCG players, so you never know—you could have a future in gaming.


6. You’re a Part of History

The first person to win a PCQ in your area and the person who wins the first Pro Circuit event at GenCon will forever be a part of the history of the game. Even if you don’t continue to post tourney wins, you’ll still be the answer to a trivia question.


If an opponent has ever given you any great advice during the course of a match, or if you made a new friend after losing to him or her, I’d like to hear about it. You can write me at mhyra@metagame.com.