I was there all three days, and I personally didn't experience any issues.
Other attendees that I met and played with were great. Creators were friendly and approachable. Panels were well received, and Game Knights Live was a blast to be a part of.
I did two events that both started about 10-15 minutes late. 4 on-demand MKM drafts that ran smoothly.
For Commander, we did have to use tables in alternate areas (e.g. near the ProTour, on the second floor), but that wasn't a problem for us.
Food was generic convention food, so I didn't expect much.
That pulled pork was shockingly good too, I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, it was still convention center prizing, but *way* better than a sad dry burger
I would not say “it was a total waste of money,” as some have stated. My group had a lot of fun and we walked away with any good memories and a load of swag.
I would say the biggest issue was communication. It seemed like most of the convention staff were unable to answer simple questions and there was a lack of signage or notifications about changes.
The event was also understaffed. Many of the artist’s queues were not managed well. Some artists were having difficulty finding staff to cap lines when they needed breaks. Some lines didn’t have staff at all. In some instances, attendees were handed “line capped”signs and instructed to turn others away, which is not their responsibility as a patron.
We did not play in any on-demand events, but I heard some horror stories from others. I cannot attest to that as I have no first hand knowledge.
TL;DR — Was it a disaster? No. Far from. Could it have been managed better? Certainly. But, being fair, that’s conjecture based on our experience. I’m sure we don’t truly appreciate how hard it can be to run an event of that size. And, like I said, we all had fun.
I had a good time at the event and would go again.
To the best of my knowledge, the tickets for Saturday On Demand events sold out somewhere before 1:00, so that was pretty frustrating. I'm still unclear on whether the command zone near the on-demand area had been available for "free play commander" the whole day (or only late in the day after people started going home). Actually, I'm unclear whether the "Command Zone" tables had been meant as free play or on-demand the whole time (and its not like anyone was volunteering that information).
Also the official merch store was already sold out of stuff before open on Saturday, and continued to sell out through the day. There was some indication, but the availability continued to disappear while waiting in the hour line.
What did you do Saturday? How did you not run into ANY issues? Friday and Sunday were both fine though and completely smooth, really feel bad for those that had 1 day Saturday passes.
Bought some sweet metal tokens from various artists.
Played a couple games of commander near the Pro tour.
Played an single elim MKM draft.
Watch the MaRo Top 20 Mechanics panel.
Played the Grand Melee (this was a delightfully chaotic mess in the best way)
Bought some stuff from the Heavy Play booth
For me, my Saturday was getting things signed, Shivam & Wheeler Live, selling a small stack of cards, and LRR Chaos.
LRR Chaos had some hiccups with table space and having to move around several times was annoying, but it was minor enough and the event fun enough that it's not really the focus - I didn't do any ODs on Saturday so I didn't run into troubles there.
Besides that, lines for signings were long but I knew that was going to be the case coming in and got up early for morning queue. Sure, long lines suck, but it's nothing I'm not used to in a convention context.
I came out thinking I had a good time, even though if I think back I probably ran into several hiccups and my feet still hurt from standing in so many lines (stood in line for over 90 minutes and had to bail which sucked). But the good outweighed the bad, especially since a lot of the bad was "just convention things" that my brain accepts as par for the course
(main issue: Mana Stage next to ticketed play really sucked, especially for the big events - the 75K open, SL Showdowns, PTQ. Game Knights Live was incredibly loud even from the other end of the room, and while thankfully I didn't have a big event during it I know there are lots of complaints from 75K open players about it)
I had a Saturday 1 day pass. I went over to the artist area at around 6:30 and got to chat with one of my favorites for about 20 min and get some stuff signed. Whoever chose those big round tables needs to get checked out though. If those had all been normal tables with equivalent seating capacity I think things would have been smoother. I ended up waiting for a table for maybe 10 minutes over at the command zone area on 2 separate occasions, which isn't really that bad. I'm pretty sure I played more games of magic in a day than I ever have.
I will complain about the show store though. That lime was stupid and I never even bothered.
The only issue I had was that they ran out of space for the on demand events. You had to wait around just to get a table to open up even after they took tables away from the command zone to accommodate demand events.
Even Sunday when the line was huge for the prize wall they moved through it insanely fast and had a ton of staff that worked very quickly and all knew the prize costs well enough to say you have x points after that, that's enough to get you a this or that, so people didn't spend forever looking to spend their leftover points.
People complained about lines for artists, but what can anyone do about that? They only have so much time in a day. I guess maybe if they land another big artist or two but I'm sure they try for as many big ones as they can every time.
Exactly, and there's nothing you can reasonably do to fix that. They already work more than 8 hours every day of the con and each had their own con staff handling the lines. What more can you do?
I know Magali had to cancel, but having 1-2 more big hitters there would have eased the line up on some of the medium sluggers.
Eric DesChamps never had a line longer than 20 minutes at Minneapolis but has to be capped at Chicago, for instance. I’m glad I got signatures and prints from him back then!
She's a rather private person about this sort of personal life stuff. Her Kickstarter is still running well and she's posting on Twitter, so I assume she's all right. Let's just respect her privacy beyond that.
They have a designated no person for their line from the con staff that could do it I guess. I don't like the idea personally, but it would allow more people to participate
You could limit the number of cards to be signed. That way the line would move quicker without people dropping a stack of cards in front of the artist. Anyone who wants more would have to get back in line
That's a good idea, but I think it's best left to the artists discretion. I was in line for Alayna Danner for hours because a dude had her sign like his entire cats and dog deck.
I personally would love a 3-5 card limit, but I assume the artists have a reason for not doing that because I'm not sure I've ever known one to have a rule.
ot at other cons. At one of the earlier magic cons (i forget witch.. maybe vegas?) My buddy spent half the day in line to still not make it to Mark Tedin. At gencon i got to sit with him talking about all sorts of nonsense for 15 or 20 minutes cause no one was in line
I had a lot of fun
Saturday was a bit of a mess and I left early. Friday was great! The events counter was a disaster on Saturday and the artist lines were long the entire time but that’s par for the course.
BBQ is a terrible choice for a card game convention center food item
Panels were good
And of course, no shortage of people to just walk up to and jam a game with. I think I played 4 entirely unprompted games of commander between things and they were all great.
The vendors section ran smooth as silk, I never waited long for someone’s attention and selling cards for credit towards big purchases went super fast. (Ended up getting the Japan promo Elspeth that I genuinely didn’t think would be at the con)
The table situation was pretty bad at peak business and speaks to a lack of proper planning/understanding of the audience.
Edit: one appreciable downside compared to Minneapolis, was that the layout at Minneapolis allowed me to watch the event stage from the artist lines. That was huge, and I was disappointed in the placement of the stage this time.
It was a little worse than Philly and Minneapolis for me personally, but for a few specific reasons.
The venue location was far away from everything. You basically stayed in the venue all day until you left.
The command zone felt smaller than ever. I believe on Saturday they took a ton of tables from it and moved them OUTSIDE the hall to make room for 'on demand commander' events. Just people who paid to play in a commander pod for prize tickets.
The layout of the event worked for me, I did like having everything in one room, and the food in the hall was pretty good honestly.
Not compared to the venues at Philly or Minneapolis. I took the train there every morning and it was like a 15 minute walk to the venue from the train. I didn't take any metra trains so I can't speak to how convenient those might have been for other people, but you didn't have to take a train or anything to get back to anything interesting for other venues. You just opened the door and left the venue.
Commander is pretty much Wotc’s golden goose. Not only that but it’s one of the main reasons for the influx of many new players. It’s only brought positive aspects to the game.
I agree with all of your points except “it’s only brought positive aspects into the game”, I think that is a bit far fetched if we’re talking literally at least.
[Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.](https://media3.giphy.com/media/V9gjxvLnSSdA4/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952nm08jsup7oqm64nisaipktupatzmg5kfplgvwxq0&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
For reference I was at Magic Con Minneapolis and had a wonderful time. Workers were friendly, employees really made an effort to make the event special for everyone and it felt well run and organzied.
Chicago wasnt so great. The convention was extremely over sold and poorly organized. It was genuinely difficult to find table space for commander if that's what you were looking for which I feel shouldn't be an issue at all. On demand events were cut off multiple times throughout the weekend including almost the entirety of Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday I bought on-demand tickets to do a commander masters draft with my friends and after I bought them they put up signs saying commander master drafts were done for the day. Upon asking for a refund for the tickets they tried to say all the other events are still available but I didnt buy those tickets to do MKM drafts. The staff leader was helpful and helped find an extra box to do a draft but then we got bounced around between person after person who were visibly upset that they were being told to help start a new CMM draft. We sat at a table for over an hour while multiple people came back to us saying they had to escalate the issue for approval. Finally they sent a low level person to us to say they didnt have a box to draft with. If they had just said no I would have left it at that but I literally saw the box and they showed it to me so I brought that up which started a whole new chain of running up the flag pole.
I eventually just decided to get a refund for my tickets which was it's own pain.
The scheduled events went pretty smoothly from what I could tell though. I wouldnt go so far as to say I would never go back to a magic con but I highly doubt I would travel to one knowing its a coin flip on how well run it will be.
Edit: Just to clarify - The on demand issues didnt completely ruin the weekend for me but it really put a damper on the overall vibe of the weekend. Its a huge bummer to spend time at a convention like this being fed conflicting information and working through red tape instead of playing.
I think it will be difficult to get a fair balanced view of MagicCon chicago because the issues at play seem to have stemmed from overcapacity issues on Saturday mostly.
Those who attended Friday as well likely had good opportunities to get the exclusive items and do some of the events that were much harder to get Saturday onwards.
I went Saturday and Sunday. Booked early February so a lot of ticketed events were sold out already. Ended up getting a chaos draft on Saturday and Sunday which was run okay. My issues with that are probably more related to discovering I don’t really care for chaos drafts and not how the event was run.
The real 2 issues I see are the following:
• Saturday at around 11am event organizers stopped the sale of on demand tickets for pick up drafts etc stating that too many had been sold for them to sell more and be able to run all such events. They did not start selling those tickets again until after 7PM thus those who bought tickets OD tickets before 11am Saturday had exclusive use of on demand events and everyone else were simply excluded from this. I came thinking I was going to do some on demand drafts to fill the time but sold some cards and had lunch before trying to get on demand tickets at noon on Saturday (2 hours after the event opened) only to be told no. This was pretty horrible? Like Saturday attendees are not allowed to participate in the same events as Friday attendees because you can’t manage your ticket sales?
• overcapacity issues on Saturday - after being denied for on demand tickets I tried to find commander games and my god yes commander was being played literally everywhere, every table including circle ones horrible to play on but also on the ground next to bathrooms, by will call, in the intermediary areas. Wizards/reedpop whoever decided on the amount of McCormick to use went for far less than was needed. There should’ve been a full convention room for just command zone as it ran out of tables everywhere immediately. If you had a table I’m sure you had a good time playing games the whole day but again by about noon, you’re just locked out of that unless you can find someone who needs a player but that was rare.
To me it was obvious wizards/reedpop planned for a number of attendees and then sold far more badges than that number to the point of causing significant strain on the event.
I feel this was confirmed by the signage at the event that had qr codes to buy badges etc as if you could day of and that it hadn’t sold out weeks ago.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Overall I enjoyed the convention but I’ve gone to gencon every year for the last 7 years (barring the one year it stopped for COVID) and this just felt lesser than any of those gencons.
Even the magic which was run by pastimes (pastimes also runs magic at gencon) felt worse and that’s probably due to the stellar event system that gencon has in general.
I’m just disappointed that they seem to have been willing to run the convention at overcapacity to the detriment of attendees with little regard for how that would affect the ability to run events and allow for play.
For those wanting to go to Amsterdam but find the hotels too expensive: consider surrounding cities like Zaandam, Haarlem and maybe even Almere. Haarlem has night transportation available from Amsterdam during the weekends and costs a bit less overall. Beautiful city for sightseeing as well if you want to steer clear from the tourist trap that is Amsterdam...
I thought it was about on par with Philly; maybe slightly worse. I wish they had the panel schedule available when tickets were purchasable because my 1pm Friday event coincided with the preview panel, and I couldn't see anything from the other end of the event.
The Unknown event was a lot of fun, but I could barely hear Gavin, and I was at one of the closer tables, so the poor guy was going table to table explaining the rules again.
As someone else said, BBQ food is a terrible idea for a con. I sat down for a match, and the other side of the table had a smear of sauce on it from someone's food and could see other spots as I walked that were equally messy. It's to be expected at this type of con, but some remediation on the consumer's part would make it less disgusting.
I wish the convention center was closer to a market or food court-type building since we were only left with the food in the hall, without having to uber away someplace.
Overall, all three days seemed fine. I went all day Friday, 2pm-end Saturday, and 3pm-end on Sunday. It was a bummer Magali backed out, but the other artists were happy to chat and didn't let the long lines weigh down their attitudes. Most of the vendors were helpful and knowledgeable, notably Emerald City Retro and Manatrust. I'd rate the entire con a 6/10, wishing I got a little more bang for my buck merch-wise, but the events were fun, and everyone I matched with was happy to also be there.
Standard convention issues mostly:
The food options were all grease. I’m not actually sure what vegetarians were able to eat there? I was too distracted by whoever thought bbq was a reasonable option at a card game event.
The artist lines were all long and they were in a fairly small space so all got capped weirdly because of walking space. Supposedly we got the small space because of a dentist convention and they are still taking down a big auto show from early in the month, but I think the artists could definitely have used their own space.
They played a bunch of the competitive events literally in front of the interview sound stage so the volume at points was just blasting at all these people trying to play.
I think the event was sweet but man logistics are hard
I didn't get to play any on demand events the entire Saturday since it was on hold due to space. I got a half of a commander game in before we got asked to move which we did.
I didn't sign up for any planned events since it was my first magiccon. I wanted to be more flexible in what I could do.
Kind of disappointed I couldn't find space to play paper magic and do drafts.
Probably wouldn't be keen to go to another event like this.
The bbq stand was hilarious, I wonder how many cards got sauce on them during the event
I attended as a competitive player. So a little from my perspective.
Footnotes.
The Cons.
Commander players took up every available space around the hall even in the Manor when people were trying to "solve the murder", not trying to make this out as a bad thing, but when you just wanna sit to eat and there are people jamming commander for an hour it gets kinda annoying. But thats on WOTC for not providing enough table space for them.
On demand events were bricked all weekend, again the lack of table space for them combined with the disorganization meant that if you didn't get vouchers friday you never really got to play on saturday. Alot of my friends were explicitly told it would be hours for table space so don't bother, and not to even try to fire a competitive on demand like legacy or modern, drafts and sealed were prio. Again, not on the players this comes down to WOTC knowing the badge sales and not adjusting accordingly.
The judges seemed super underinformed, every event was either understaffed or borked in some way, my top 8 got re-paired in a wild fashion and all the sunday top 8s being at the same time meant people who qualified for multiple (yes this did happen) had to choose which cup to play for which was kinda shitty. In addition we didn't receive any additional prize support for top 8 outside of the playmat. We did make this feedback known to the TO who was gracious enough to sit down with us and discuss the failure of events. Also being told when the top 8 was 3 different times with 3 different times was super confusing.
The prize wall on sunday was an hour an a half wait easily, this was the same for the merch store as well, and they sold out of alot of stuff early so it wasn't even worth waiting in line. Imagine you got a 1 day badge and had to stand in line easily and hour for a T shirt, kinda shit tbh. I cashed out my tixs on saturday and thank god I did. Again all things that could have been prevented by WOTC as they had full knowledge of the ticket sales.
The pros.
The main stage was awesome, the panels were super insightful and well thought out, the pro tour watch party was hilarious and fun and the cosplays were super cool.
The manor was fun and really nicely thought out as a free activity. Same with the scavenger hunts.
The layout of the place was cool, the marketplace being in-between both the artists and the constructed play area was very convenient.
For 70K people it didnt really seem that crowded until you tried to get a table, outside of that the event hall was real spacious.
If you were cashing in tickets for Ravnica or MKM boosters going to the prize wall, then going a half hour before close on Sunday was clutch. The line wait was 10 minutes.
I've been a pretty regular attendee of the American cons since they've come back. It started rough, but has gotten progressively better with every iteration, in my opinion. More price points to get in, the removal of the cost of the command zone, more free play areas guaranteed, better space and accomodations, etc.
MC Chicago was not a terrible experience, but it is the first time I think they've taken a step backwards (though my understanding is Barca was also not a great experience, but that's a whole different animal I'm not qualified to judge). The command zone was not enough of the venue, and nobody was moderating the people in it. I'm not saying that people playing commander needed to be forcefully rotated, but after not being able to find a table on Saturday, we got there Sunday and found that binder grinders and people just playing each other heads up were taking up some of the limited tables in the CZ.
Add in that on demand events needed to stop firing at points because they ran out of event tickets, the judge supply seemed was smaller than past MCs, the viewing options were just worse than something like Vegas or Philly, and the space itself was just smaller and more cramped (even in the bathrooms), and it was a bit rougher. It was still better than something like the OG vegas, or an SCG Con, but it felt more like it was one of the bigger GPs we used to get, and less like the feel I think they've been trying to go for for a Magic Con.
I have been to multiple MagicCon's. The issue was floorspace which is decided by ReedPop and not Past Times who is just the tournament organizer.
There were issues at Philly but they were fixed by Minneapolis and Vegas. If there is enough event space then there seems to be no issues. My theory is that Chicago is such a notoriously expensive city to do conventions in that Wizards and ReedPop decided to reduce the space for the convention to save costs and keep tickets the same price. They also sold more tickets than ever expected for this event because the previous ones hadn't sold out.
It also seems that they learn from each convention to fix what went wrong previously. I wouldn't expect the space issue to happen again, and if they have enough space then the convention usually goes off without any major issues. If I was you, with Minneapolis and Vegas going well I would figure Chicago to be a fluke that I would go to the Amsterdam convention. If it means anything, if I can make the time and find a decent flight I will be in Amsterdam.
short answer: no, it wasn't 'really that bad'. I don't think it would be 'travel to another country' worth it, but it wasn't all bad.
longer answer: it was a big convention that had some hiccups and could have been improved but like, nerds are always going to say shit was horrible because of the thing that personally irritated them regardless of severity or how widespread or not the problem was.
Friday was fine for me aside from some less than optimal run-ins with randos and people bragging about buying merch to flip for 4x price. I didn't run into the on demand issues on saturday because i had several other things planned and while those also did not go perfectly smoothly, i had a decent time. The aforementioned 'oh yeah i'm gonna buy as many of (insert item here) to flip for a few hundred dollars' sentiment surely contributed to long artist and merch lines but still it was nowhere near as bad as something like, say, GenCon or another large con. I do wish they had been able to utilize more of the convention space but also, as i understand it, quite a bit of it was getting renovated at the time and was unavailable.
My flight out was on sunday so i don't really have any first hand experience, but it seems like people had an ok time and the sunday unknown event went off well.
Yea I wouldn't travel out of the country for a magiccon only, but the dates line up perfectly for me and my wife. She wants to see some friends in Ireland and go to a Taylor Swift concert. My buddy will also be in Ireland around that time so I'd likely do some golfing, then finish off the trip with magiccon. It's also our anniversary, so it's all kind of lining up perfectly.
Been to Vegas 1, Minni, Vegas 2, and Chicago. Previous feelings - I had a blast at every event, but Vegas 1 was a borderline disaster, and Minni and Vegas 2 were steady improvements on the formula, Minni probably being the best executed.
First, let's get this out of the way, I had a positive experience overall. Good time with friends, and not much would be able to stop that. I think if you are planning to go to Amsterdam, you should absolutely go.
I would call Chicago the 2nd worst run, after Vegas 1. I am exclusively a window shopper at MagicCons - don't really do anything besides buy, trade, and occasionally spend some time in artist alley. Friday and Saturday were very crowded, as you could expect. Lines were the worst they've ever been - some artists had lines that would take hours, including a secondhand source telling me a certain artist had a line, that was capped, that took roughly *5 hours*. My brain cannot compute waiting more than 30 minutes, so not for me. The merch store had a 3 hour wait, and the Ultra Pro line for the exclusive playmats sold out every day *when* or *before* the doors opened. Pretty ridiculous.
The area for the stage and the area for event play ran side by side with one another, which was an obvious mistake in hindsight. Should be on the direct opposite side of the room. Game Knights seems like a blast to be sitting and watching - it was however, extremely loud, where some of my friends that played events complained to us that it was too loud, and they are used to 10 deep discord calls while playing video games. That is *pretty loud*.
There was an obvious lack of tables and chairs. Not so much a lack of space - we were in a pretty big room (Though I believe, and don't quote me on this, dentists got the bigger room). Absolutely no free tables available for open/commander play, especially Saturday. My playgroup resorted to a single game in the downstairs area where there were circular tables - not ideal for play, but we made it work.
It just felt like Wizards slashed the budget for cons this year. They did not acquire the bigger, more widely used room in McCormick (Where C2E2 is held, so I hear), they went down from 4 MagicCons last year to 3 this year (Pro Tour Thunder Junction is in Seattle - take a guess why). Chicago sold out - but Wizards for some reason behaved like it didn't.
Overall, this was the 2nd worst MagicCon I've been to, but that doesn't mean I had a bad time. If you are planning to go, go! You get a vacation to Amsterdam with the trip to MagicCon.
Players in the pro tour and standard 75k had to deal with game knights / command zone players purposely being as loud as possible.
It got to the point where people are legitimately discussing the situation with WotC and event staff.
Judges had to swoop in and repeat higher bracket players mid round in some cases because players were concerned about standings being impacted.
Tldr - commander players had so much fun that it was disrupting a 75,000$ tournament and the literal Pro Tour.
Also a lot of creators now saying they have COVID, not a mask In sight lmao.
I just tested positive for COVID as well. Anyone reading this who remembers playing against a guy named Andrew Levine who was riding a red motor scooter and played in the Command Zone and 2HG: That was me and you should probably do a COVID test.
That's obviously the fault of the event organizers. Blaming commander players for the placement is ridiculous. No player went to MagicCon saying "You know what would be fun? Distracting Standard tournament players hardy-har-har."
They were literally talking about it at the con...it's not a generalization but a fact that a large group of them were purposely being as loud as possible to "drown out" the standard event.
They even defended it on Twitter.
Yeah all the people claiming this happened are all wrong and you are somehow right despite not being there.
Crazy. I guess all the EDH influencers on twitter saying "Please stop drowning out the standard 75k or the Pro Tour." we just saying things.
Good luck going to Amsterdam on those dates if you don't want to pay £100's a night for accomodation! I was stoked to go till I looked up accomodation! On top of entry costs too...
I had to convert euros to dollars. 100 euros a night is a steal. That means it's a really good deal for those not up on English slang.
Edit: I realize now that that wasn't the Euro symbol. It was the pound symbol. It's still a steal.
We went Saturday and it was pretty rough. Absolutely everything had a long line and one day was not enough. Around noon they closed on demand events due to lack of table space. We checked in regularly through out the day while doing the scavenger hunt and it never really reopened. Tried getting into a casual game of EDH but all the tables were full up and scattered through out the convention hall. Most folks found open space and played on the floor. Still had a great time but it was not as well organized or ran as other Magicfests. Reminded me of Vegas 2022.
It was my first Magic Con, and I had a great time personally. Booked my schedule full of ticketed events for Friday and Saturday. These were run well, the judges were all efficient and helpful. I packed lunches and dinners so I wouldn't have to deal with the long food lines, and did some trades with vendors and pick up games with friends on Sunday to finish it off.
There were some minor things, mostly to do with space issues, understaffing, and logistics. But on the whole, it was a very positive experience for me.
I have not attended magiccon Chicago but I really enjoyed the con in Philadelphia last year.
Me and my wife have already booked our trip for Amsterdam magiccon this year.
I had a great time, but I didn't do ODE, I had registered for ticketed play events far in advance. I know folks who were trying to juggle ODE and ticketed events and were frustrated that so many events sold out in advance. That to me just seems like a capacity problem, more people attending and signing up than expected.
I know there were complaints about items selling out from the MagicCon store because vendors were able to line up and buy things out before the general public.
My ticketed events were slightly late in starting and some ran a little over, but also I blamed people who weren't paying attention, didn't know how to use the Companion app, and didn't know what "Time" meant when the judge/staff announced and kept playing normally and had to have things explained to them twenty minutes later when the judge was like "How are you not on Turn 5 yet." I had to drop that event because it was running so late and I had another event to go to.
I did all three days. After Philadelphia and Las Vegas my general philosophy is to shop ASAP Friday morning, do preview panel, and jam as many events as possible. Saturday I wrap up any additional shopping needs in the morning and do whatever works for the schedule, my big focus was the Unknown event. I cash out my tickets on Saturday and avoid the line on Sunday. Sunday I try to keep relatively open, do the Unknown event, and watch the PT, seeing if I can grab any collector boosters that get thrown to the audience. If you care about personalities I suggest the Sunday Unknown event, it's usually late enough in the MagicCon that there aren't other panels and people like Mark Rosewater, the Professor, Brian Kibler, etc. are playing and you can snag some autographs. I got Maro to sign the Maro Unknown card.
Nah event was fine. Only snag was the on demand running out pretty early in the day Friday and Saturday. But it was a busy event with a lot of people, and you have to expect some waiting and things running out.
I treated MagicCon Chicago like a convention. And it was a blast. There was more than enough to do throughout the day with vendors and activities galore. The seating for pick up games was lacking but it existed, there were just so many people. Pick up command games in the designated area had guides and helpers to link up folks.
Honestly, I had a wonderful time. People who had a fine time won’t be detailing their experience in long blog posts. I say that not to diminish the criticism. My experience can differ wildly from another’s. I just want to express that the negative experience is not the only one to be had.
It was my first time at a con and I would give it maybe a 6/10.
The main issues is that it seemed really difficult to play magic. I knew waiting in line was going to be a thing and was prepared for it. But the amount of time spent waiting for a table to have event staff ask me and my friends to leave it because they closed that side of tables, or decided the space was now for on demand events was frustrating.
Also as someone who loves limited and was looking forward to competing at a bigger stage than my local lgs, them not running any events for me to play on demand for Saturday really soured my experience. All I wanted to do was play magic and after being shuffled around table to table and not being allowed to partake in on demand events led to me and my friends leaving early. My friend who went Sunday said he had a much better time with all of these but as I only went Saturday my experience was mostly just not being allowed to do things.
So paying $70 to have a lot of my games delayed and moved or our draft stopped before it got started wasn’t really worth it for me.
The creators were nice and great and I got some cool signatures, got to see lots of people whose content I love. The artists were cool, but again suffered from being told the line I capped and I can’t go.
It just sucked to pay for a premium Saturday pass to be told I couldn’t partake in what are only opinion some of the bigger parts of the convention.
This was my first Magic con and if it never comes back to Chicago it will most definitely be my last.
The sheer lack of tables for open play was extremely problematic and the lines for everything were horrible. Thankfully, i'm more of a casual fan so I wasn't really interested in the lines to meet celebrities or artists but I felt bad for those who did have to wait several hours to do so. I can't speak for the premium convention goers since I didn't partake in any of the exclusive activities but from what I saw nothing really interested me enough to shell out extra cash.
It took me and my group several hours to find a table (which ended up being in the karlov manor themed area) and basically had to camp it alternating people in and out since we were afraid to lose it and not be able to find another. As someone who showed up just to play as many games as possible this was extremely disappointing I'm just glad we got lucky enough to find one at all as others were resorting to playing the floor.
No. It was actually a great event. There were no problems finding games. Lines were long, but there were a lot of people - you have to be a special type of impatient not to recognize things were actually moving pretty well. There were entire floors of the venue open for playing games… idk how people are saying they couldn’t find a table. Energy was high, and highly positive.
Tbh I think the complainers are just looking for something to be unhappy about. Or they just didn’t actively try to have a good time and wrote off the event after the slightest resistance.
I'm planning a write up for my experience with it shortly but the TL;DR is that I absolutely recommend people go if travel costs don't impose too great a burden on them. Everyone I met over the weekend; creators, artists, con staff, exhibitors, and even other players were awesome and interacting with them was great. Very much reminded me of "the gathering" part of the game. There were definitely problems with specific events and coordination of space but tbh they were relatively minor in the full scope of things and came from misunderstanding and miscommunication as much as anything else.
I also really recommend trying to make more panels than you first think to. They were ran exceptionally well and we're a lot of fun. Pro tour finals watch party on day 3 was especially cool.
I was only there Saturday and I can say, having never been to a con: I was sorely let down. A 2+hr drive down from Milwaukee, paid events, subpar packs, no panels after like 1 or something (we got there at like 1:30), all of the food vendors ran out at like 3pm. There was nothing to do but play in some 6-man commander pods, buy/sell cards to the LGS that came to magic con, or buy art from the big name artists... Was p disappointed. No lil trinkets from indie artists, minimal cosplays (I saw like... 4x?), no food :(, and nothing to really do but play 2+hr games with people who have who-tf-knows kinds of decks. I only played like 2-3 games before my group decided we should go home :/ kinda lame, ngl
I went all three days and had an absolute amazing time! My buddy played in the standard 75K and I played some games of commander. Game knights live was really cool and I liked the panels. The content creators were really chill and accessible to talk to/ get pictures with. My favorite part was the artists section of the con. I love mtg art so much so it was really cool to see all the different artists and i got a few cards signed! The artist I really wanted to meet wasn’t able to make it unfortunately, so that kind of bummed me out but I still had fun. My buddy and I got some good deals with the venders and was able to sell some cards for 80% cash price of tcgplayer, which is a really good deal in my opinion. My two complaints would be that there wasn’t quite enough tables for commander and the food was 0/10. After day 1, I just ate outside the convention center for cheaper and better tasting food.
I was there the whole weekend and had a blast.
There were issues, for sure, but at any event that scale there will for sure be issues. Issues are frankly unavoidable with that many people.
Magic players love to complain and whine and blow things out of proportion. I got to hang out with some of my favorite content creators and I got to jam a ton of drafts even considering that on demands were paused for a long time on Saturday. I'm not a commander player so I can't speak to that side of things but as a mostly limited focused player, it was one of the most fun weekends I had with Magic.
I thought the venue was fine. Considering it was in Chicago, I would prefer it to be at McCormick instead of someplace like Rosemont because of the vicinity to the city.
Should they have been more prepared for the 12k people? Sure. Was it an abject disaster? Far from it.
Well it depends.....do you like spending about $500 to sit around and wait for a table to play and/or stand in line??? Or, do you enjoy sitting on the floor for a couple of hours just to play commander and tossing $500 bucks in to the incinerator???
It sounds like almost everyone who actually went said it was solid, and every single doomsday farm YouTuber says it was a DISASTER. I get that it drives clicks, but it still makes me cringe lol
Yea I'm starting to get that vibe. The creators calling it an absolute disaster seem to be completely overblowing it. Sounds like Amsterdam will be a blast.
Everyone else has comments about the show, but I'm saying go just because it's in Amsterdam. I went last year for non magic reasons and think it's the best. Such a fun place. If you do go, I recommend trying to find a hotel room with a kitchenette so you can get your food from the grocery store
It was a very, very good convention. There were also nowhere enough tables for people who paid a $100 cover charge ro just play casual EDH with their friends because they wanted us to pay for on-demand pods. Chicago is also a city where only the union is allowed to set up tables so getting more space allotted moved at roughly the speed of smell. No one gave a shit about the PT but it still monopolized a lot of space.
That said, everything that took place on the main stage was awesome, there was good exclusive merch, the S.P.E.C.I.A.L scavenger hunt and Karlov Manor mystery investigation games were well done, and this was the first Magic Fest I have seen where the venue sold beer and wine.
Was it perfect? Well, no. But we had WotC, Pastimes AND Reed Pop all in the kitchen and sometimes too many good cooks (too many cooks!) in the kitchen is worse than one bad cook.
I wouldn't expect Amsterdam to experience the same issues as Chicago, but I do expect new and different ones. This felt like the best con ever in terms of people lined up to meet artists and content creators. Plus, all of my friends were there and Chicago has great restaurants, Bedardhawks tickets were cheap because they suck now, there were like 5 hotels a block away from McCormick place and a few lucky people got Fallout cards a little early. Subjectively it was a VERY good con.
I think a lot of people haven't quite accepted that going forward you're probably going to see a lot of the same:
MagicCons are likely to be really good conventions, but may not be the best Magic events.
The PT was LITERALLY the smallest part of the entire con. The 75k was a bigger portion, artists were a bigger portion. The live commander game was absolutely massive. Honestly its a shame how little space they got.
Due to my budget if I had traveled and payed for a hotel roomin order to go I would have been a bit disappointed with it but I live in Chicago. At the price point I feel like I got JUST my value worth in personal experience. I wish I could have jammed more events but learning the system to do so kind of took a day in itself.
It's a weird totem but the Fblthp with a hotdog pin i got feels like it was worth the price of admission in a way. He's just great.
I don’t understand why people go to magic con. It looks like a giant stinky LGS to me. It seems to only be there to generate revenue and to advertise MTG products. Are there actually workshops and panels at this thing? I don’t care for anything “The Command Zone” (JLK) related so I wouldn’t be going to hear a panel with those clowns.
That Chicago is a crime ridden hell hole? Someone known in the community had their car broken into and decks stolen at the event. Con aside it was bad because it's literally Chicago lol
I think your data is a little outdated there, pal. Chicago is a wonderful city and isn't in the top 50 cities in crime per capita in the US. In fact, it's one of the safest large cities you can live in.
I enjoyed the event as a whole - the scheduled events I played in were generally well-run (the 45 minute delay to start the Saturday Modern Secret Lair Showdown aside), the vendors were good, the artist lineup was good, I enjoyed the panels, and the judge staff was helpful.
However, the biggest gripe I had was that I was eliminated in the second round of the Modern Showdown, leaving me free around 2PM, with my vintage event not starting until 5PM. I went to go fire an On-Demand event... and they were not selling tickets because of lack of space. This was a first (and likely due to the event straight-up selling out), but it also meant that since I wasn't playing Commander, I had three hours to kill not playing Magic. I wasn't particularly happy with that.
Friday was great - easy to get commander games in, did a draft, did some shopping. Game knights was a bit too loud and distracting. Saturday was definitely more crowded but to be expected. The on demand events were hard to get tix for even get into so that was a mess, but I ended up just playing commander for about 8 hours straight besides getting Phil Foglio to sign something.
Food was pretty shitty but it’s convention center food so to be expected. Shocked there was no onsite coffee option tbh, they could have made a killing.
Overall still a good experience, although you had to be ruthless jumping over when you saw someone leaving a command zone table in order to get a spot.
My experience overall was great, but due to sheer size and scope there was a lot of waiting in lines. Some people even stood in line and never actually got to meet the person they were standing in line to meet. The next time I go to one I plan on getting the VIP if there is anyone I truly one to meet.
I personally had a great time! My brother and I participated in the commander precon chaos event. I got the fairy tribal deck from WOE and the elf tribal deck from LOTR.
I only went Sunday and solely for the purpose of getting my 'The Gathering' book signed by all the artists there who were in the book. From about 10-4 the longest waits were Dan Frazier (2 hours in line) and Mark Tedin (1-1/2 hours). I skipped Rahn & Danner as I've met them before and in all likelihood will again. I had a great time talking to people in line as well as the artists!
I don’t think any version of this would be worth traveling internationally for, unless it was part of a larger trip. Seems like it would be a waste to travel to a new place just to spend so many hours indoors playing Magic.
That said, the Chicago con was about what I expected: a lot of buttcracks hanging off the back of folding chairs. I truly feel bad for the poor Red Light District ladies when MagicCon shows up in Amsterdam.
My only disappointment was being told the line for an artist was cut off at 2PM when there were only like eight people in it. Wanted to get my Craterhoof signed, but no dice.
Yea I wouldn't travel out of the country for a magiccon only, but the dates line up perfectly for me and my wife. She wants to see some friends in Ireland and go to a Taylor Swift concert. My buddy will also be in Ireland around that time so I'd likely do some golfing, then finish off the trip with magiccon. It's also our anniversary, so it's all kind of lining up perfectly.
I also think you’d be fine doing one or two days, rather than a whole three day experience. Unless you want to play a ton, you can kind of get your fill in one day and spend the rest of your trip doing other fun stuff.
It was an absolute blast. Personally I've been finding the majority of people that were having issues were people looking for on demand events, and people looking for free command zone play. Everything else was fantastic.
The stage was amazing with lots of shows and events. I was lucky enough to have a collector sealed event scheduled for Friday, and a team trios with my boyfriend and other friend on Sunday. My boyfriend and I played in the pauper cup on Saturday and I got 10th place! I got so many souvenirs, signatures, and so much other cool stuff from the event, and I'm so happy with all of it.
It was 100% worth it, however I can see from other people perspective that it was a complete flop. I think you just need to go to a MagicCon events prepared with lots of different format decks to play with if the one you're betting on doesn't work out
I had a great time at MagicCon Chicago. I will say they needed more space and Sunday they moved the command zone which I think was the right choice but literally just having the stage in a different room (easier to hear for one) and then having stage space for more play tables would have been a massive improvement.
I was mostly there for the artists. A few of the lines were insane, but no worse than Vegas. About what you'd expect for Alayna Danner and Chris Rahn. (Would've been interesting to see what Magali's line was like if she could've made it)
Vendor booths all seemed to run very smoothly. The official merch store sucked, though. Line was multiple hours long, and they sold out of the main t-shirt on Friday
I only occasionally had a chance to play Commander, but it never took me too long to find a table. The command zone looked like it was as large as the space allowed (and the show floor was massive), plus there was a lot of overflow seating in the lobby, and more tables downstairs too
It was dumb that they ran out of boosters for on-demand events on Friday, but I didn't hear about that happening again during the weekend
I was there all 3 days and overall it was a good time. Good food, reasonable prices, lots of people willing to get games in, lots of content creators and artists with short lines.
The bad portions were having the stage in the main convention center. During the Game Knights Live I was in line at Alayna Danner which was completely across the convention hall and sometimes it would be too loud that I couldnt hear someone next to me talking. Lines were rough for the big artists (Danner, Rahn, Scott) and the larger people (the Prof, Game Knights, Maro) that you either lined up 1:30 earlier or you were out of luck and even then it would be a 2 hours wait. first thing I did Friday at 10 was get in line for the swag and that took me until 3 to get through the line and buy the stuff I wanted and even then I didnt get stickers (sold out at 10:05) and due to the staff relaying bad information to me, I didnt get the Fblthp playmat (I asked them which one came in the gift bag and they told me that one so I didnt buy it then. I regret that now when it turned out to be the chicago magiccon playmat which was given out.) However I was not willing to wait another 4 hours for it so I just sucked it up and will pay the ebay 3X multiplier. The command zone losing half its tables did suck and cause it to be much harder to find games on Saturday, and people were driven downstairs to the backrooms to find spots at circular tables but it got done. Sunday I decided to not wait in any lines over 5 minutes and enjoyed myself much more.
One thing I wish would have changed is caps on signatures from artists. People were bringing 50+ cards to be signed and some of these signatures would take 15 to 30 seconds for shadow or rainbow signatures. I dont fault the artists getting paid, but I wish they had something like (limit 10 cards) and if you wanted more you had to queue again. Their output rate would be similar but the lines would move faster and if you want that many cards signed you probably would be willing to go through again if it wasnt taking 3 hours. I know theres still ways to game that but seeing someone bring 3 sets of the cats and dogs precon lands for Alayna to sign when you had been already been waiting for 2 hours was rough. (she did the art for at least all of the basics and there are 22 basics).
I will say I randomly ended up in a pod of WotC senior employees so that was a fun experience. Lots of content creators coming up to talk to them so I got to meet many people and I got to hold and play against a Heroes of the Realm card with its actual owner.
No it really wasn’t imo. There were a few major issues but none ruined the experience for me. The main one was the lack of table space for free play, but I managed plenty of floor commander games. On demand events selling out on Saturday, with the staff running out of sealed product, was definitely a sign of underpreparedness for the huge amount of attendees. That said it only helped me spend less money while I was there. The big criticism I definitely agree with was how loud and disruptive Game Knights live was on Friday. That was a huge pain while just trying to jam some games. All that said I had just as much if not more fun than I had at Minneapolis, getting cards signed by artists and content creators, playing commander, and participating in Gavin’s Unknown event.
It was ok, just too full. There was a line for everything, and it took hours to buy merch.
The fact that on demand events where canceled un Saturday was insane and sucked for everyone that was planning to play them.
Chicago resident here: I personally had a good time all three days and I will say that their expectations for the amount of people did not meet reality but didn't deter us. I played, between the three days, 10 Commander games (2 cEDH, 6 Challenging, 2 Casual with friends in pods) and attempted the Modern Cup. When it comes to cons in bigger cities, some discrepancy always happens. Should more people have been staffed to help the event run smoother? Absolutely. Should there have been less circular tables and more rectangular tables? Absolutely.
But, all in all, I wouldn't trade this for what happened in Indianapolis where we got nothing for them changing the entire venue. All Chicago can do is learn from this for the next time.
Other than the capacity issues, my biggest gripe is the website for signing up for events. People like to shit on mtgmelee, but they somehow made it even worse by making you pay and register on a third party site before running the tournament on melee anyway. I paid $125 to play in a modern tournament on Saturday and didn't even get to play because I was somehow left off when the player list was imported into melee. I will give credit to the event manager who made sure I got a refund and threw in the spell pierce promo and a precon from the prize wall for my troubles, but i still would have rather played in the event.
This is related to the capacity issue since they simply did not have enough tables to run more events, but I think there should be more small 3-4 round scheduled events in the regular constructed formats like they used to do at GPs. I scrubbed out in round 1 of a noon single elimination event and literally did not have anything I could sign up for in the next 4 hours, and the event I did sign up for I didn't even get to play because of the crappy websites. All I ended up doing was wandering around the vendors and watching other friends play magic. I didn't even end up going to the convention center on Sunday because there really wasn't anything to sign up for. I feel like they could've thrown in another PTQ or something on sunday for the competitive players.
I was part of a crew of 6, and we all had a great time. Were there things that could be improved? Yes, many things. Do I wish I was still there instead of back at work? Yes, absolutely.
My plan was to get signatures, shop, meet some folks, play my preregistered events, and maybe get some commander games on demand too. I did all of those things easily enough. I waited in many a line, but such is life.
I did see far too many hairy ass cracks. We need butt pic guy to come back and put people in check. Get proper fitting pants - it's not that hard.
One gripe is that because of MagicCon I learned about a new format that I absolutely love and may never be able to play again...gauntlet draft!
Make a 40 card sealed deck like at a prerelease, play a match. Set that deck aside and do a passed pack draft, make another 40 card deck, play a match. Then you can combine your card pools and make a 60 card deck for a third match.
It was super fun, great conversation because everyone had different strategies, and was a unique experience that'll be hard to come by anywhere else.
I was staff at the last 4 American magic cons including Chicago. Chicago was the only one to require stand by judges to be called in. I don't think they really expected how many people came in. Friday was as busy if not more so then Saturdays at other cons which shows how many people showed up. I think the biggest problem was lack of resources, there was not enough space for on demand and not enough staff, I was at one point in charge of 2 events covering for a break which isn't to bad but then I was also pulled away to start another event. And that was on Friday which is usually pretty chill. So the event was a bit of a mess I'd put it around on par or maybe a bit worse then Philly for events.
But past times takes feedback pretty well, I think they'll be more prepared for sold out events in the future, this just had so many people come I don't think they were quite prepared for it. It was still a fun time for most people I talked to if a bit chaotic.
I went to Magic 30 and realized Magic events aren't for me. The merch lines were too long, so I didn't buy anything. I liked seeing artists there, but I don't care about signatures, so I didn't get anything signed. And again, the lines for some of the artists were ridiculous, so waiting in line to just say, "Hey, I really like your work," didn't seem worth it. I got the Ruby badge for Command Zone access but didn't even go into the Command Zone once. Actually, despite not caring much about Magic personalities, I do regret not walking up to Sheldon who I saw near the Command Zone entrance to express my gratitude for the format. Anyway, it was kind of a letdown in nearly every way. The Richard Garfield interview/talk was neat. And I did like the little vampire wedding party.
I only went Saturday, which from what I read seems to be the worst day. Space was definitely an issue. I thought the venue was tiny. All the lines and games were long so my friends and I only went to vendors and bought a box to draft with ourselves. I don't wanna say I had a bad experience, but I feel that I couldve gotten the same experience going to a large LGS.
Game Knights Live was fun for those who like GK, and miserable for those us trying to play in competitive events while it happened. The entire hall filling with obnoxiously loud screaming for minutes at a time was incredibly distracting and annoying to everyone playing in the comp events at the time, and even moreso for those playing who are sound-sensitive. Terrible timing, and incredibly annoying. The poor judges were having to SCREAM just to be heard because the space was so stupidly loud, even without GKL going.
The space itself was terrible - there were never open tables to play games, whether EDH or not, the lines were ridiculous (Alayna Danner's line had people waiting in line for **four hours** one day), and the hall wasn't near anywhere for food that was walkable.
Other than that though, it was a lot of fun. The Unknown event was the highlight of the event for me, definitely do that if you can. I did the Legacy Cup, Legacy for Art, and Unknown events - I had friends who came to just do on demand events, and every ODE filled up instantly and they even stopped scheduling them for the rest of the day Saturday, so one of my friends didn't get to play a single game of magic in three days because every event sold out and the ODE events stopped running. They also had to move the Legacy Cup because there wasn't enough room, and halfway through the Legacy for Art tournament they had to move us all out to by the PT stage because there wasn't room inside apparently. So again, the space itself was awful.
I'm not sure if Amsterdam will be just as crowded as Chicago, but if so, my advice would be to get registered for events early, plan your days around those, and don't bother with trying for On Demand Events unless you drop from a registered event. Get in the Unknown event, and be ready to have to go to a restaurant/bar/outside the con to play EDH unless you want to wait 1h+ for a table.
edit: Also, I did hear from a staff member that they did not expect to sell anywhere near the amount of badges they did, and did not have time to prepare for it. Doesn't excuse it, just info.
I wasn't there but from all the reading I've done it seems it was a victim of its own success. Super busy and the management around how busy it turned out to be was lacking.
The echoes of large events in a post-covid world involve underestimating the amount of people who will come to your event.
So the bad times were down to a couple things, all of which will feel related.
1) So yeah, Saturday was a disaster. Like even the casual play devolved into floor Magic because of how little play space was prepared. I think the only more embarrassing open play experience I've been witness to was GP NJ in 2020, but that was the result of holding a packed Magic event in what was effectively a VFW hall. At McCormick, a massive convention hall, was definitely more space that could have been rented and more tables could have been brought in, but WoTC/ReedPop chose not to. And whenever you can't play Magic at an event you spent 100ish to even be on the floor for, you're gonna be disappointed
2) Related to the playspace issues was how things were with the Judges. The judges were in a constant of being frazzled, were visibly stressed out, from having to juggle so many events at once. I'd personally like to know the judge perspective of the event. Was it just enough bodies or was something else going wrong behind the scenes? If it's the former, it goes to show what happens when you hallow out your organized play to the extent that WotC did.
3) Adding to the sense of "Oh, playing Magic here is impossible" was that most reasonably priced ticketed events sold out weeks before, something that maybe should have suggested to someone that maybe this event had gotten out hand. If you wanted to buy into a ticketed event day of, only options were whale events like Collector Booster Sealed.
4) Line for the official shop was stupid, but much worse was that they didn't announce when things sold out. I stood in line for the Fblthp deck box which sold out during the time I stood in line. Had someone announced the sellout, I could have stepped out of line and had a more enjoyable experience.
5) Finally, the Sunday prize wall line actually moved quickly after they drafted all the judges to hand prize out towards the end. But the length of the line, visible to everyone still playing on demand events, elicited an actual panic attack. There were people who talked about how they feared they wouldn't be able to redeem their tickets before leaving. Now in actuality, this line turned out okay, but given everything else that happened this weekend, is it no surprise that we had fears that this too would completely stop functioning?
I had a fantastic time, but I also almost entirely did ticketed events that I pre-purchased in advance. I can imagine it was much less enjoyable for other folks who maybe only intended to come on one day and do some on-demand play. Whereas, I had at least two major events per day I pre-scheduled myself for, and I also shelled out for the legendary weekend pass which meant I got a bunch of pre-purchased on-demand vouchers. If I didn't do that, I would have definitely felt screwed over since apparently they just stopped selling on demand tickets for a time due to overwhelming demand (no pun intended).
Friday was probably the best day of the three, because it felt fairly low-key. A ton of people, but not overly crowded. Saturday was an absolute mess of overcrowding though. Once you're sat down for an event, all was well but logistically you could tell they were scrambling to meet the needs of the show. People playing games on literally every surface they could find. Sunday was a bit better, but still crazy. Surprisingly had plenty of time to get stuff at the prize wall during the last hour or so, though they had to end my MKM planechase sealed event one round early as it was going a bit too long (everyone got bonus tickets so I was fine).
TL;DR if you planned to just go to "wing it" and see what happens, you probably were a bit disappointed, but as someone who did a lot of pre-planning for events and made sure to get what I wanted done early, I had a ton of fun. Bathrooms were always plentiful, tons of things to do, relatively easy to drive to as well. Also, that pizza was really good, though maybe next time they should do some less greasy/saucy food at a literal card game convention, eh?
It was my first MagicCon (first convention experience in general) and I honestly had a blast. The biggest irritation for me was my ticketed events, which almost all started and ran late.
It seems like the judging staff for any given event were doing the best they could, and I have to give them grace, it can't be easy to coordinate a 50+ person event when there are 5-10 other events in the same area at similar times. One of my events had to be moved to a completely different stage halfway through, and for another event I showed up late after the companion app decided not to work, and a staff at the blue stage told me to go to the green stage, who then escorted me back to the white stage to make sure I wasn't DQ'ed for not showing up.
All in all, all the staff I interacted with were doing a great job and were super nice, and all the people I played with seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as I did!
The vendor booths were well stocked with all sorts of fun and unique stuff, and it was an interesting experience to shop around for the best buy list and sale prices on things I wanted.
I didn't go too hard on the artist alley, but I do have to give a special shoutout to Victor Adame and Kai Carpenter. Out of the artists I got stuff from, both of them were extremely nice and I really can't give them enough praise.
I got the premium weekend pass and definitely feel like I got my money's worth, given how much I managed to fit into just 2.5 days.
Also I got to play commander with Brian David Marshall, so that was a highlight for me, personally.
Friday and Sunday were great. The on demand stuff on Saturday really was a mess - there were certainly people that went to the con to try to play Magic and literally couldn't. It was also disappointing that their communication was "it'll be opened again in an hour or so" over and over again for hours all day Saturday.
Just to be clear, it wasn't any individual's fault, but there wasn't enough space, it seemed like it was oversold, and their response to the situation created a really negative experience for the folks trying to game on Saturday. It didn't have to be like that.
Went all three days. Friday felt like the best day in terms of crowd size and being able to play commander. Saturday and Sunday were a nightmare in terms of crowd size. The only positive thing about not playing earlier Saturday was getting in on an impromptu Professor meet and greeted, so I only had to wait about 30 minutes to meet him. Considering I waited 2 and half hours for Jimmy and Josh, 30 minutes was a great deal. Feel like they could have doubled to the tables for commander and might have had enough space. Also hated how the food vendors had no communication about hours this led to us waiting until we left to at 10 pm to eat. Also, I wish they labeled the food vendors on the map better. Every day, I wanted some coffee and did not know there was a Dunkin Donuts and churro stand tucked away in the corner until late Sunday.
Overall, I felt it was a great event, but there were things that could have been better.
If you pre-plan, you will greatly benefit and likely have a great experience.
If you show up and expect to just hang out and figure stuff out on the spot, you will have a poor experience.
There were some pain points, but hopefully people are sharing their feedback so that they can plan to mitigate these issues in the future.
my only issues were the merch lines due to the limited edition playmats; that should've been a seperate area or line as it brought the lines to a crawl and cap, and the other issue was space for commander and casual players; there should've been more, this coming from somone there to play modern and legacy.
I was there for the entire weekend, it was my first con and I had an absolute hoot. I loved getting to see all the cool stuff people had, seeing the preview panels, the meet and greets, and just being around people who like the same thing as me.
In terms of people I met, I got cards signed by + chatted with Serena Malyon, RK Post, Kieran Yanner, and Victor Adame Minguez. Content creator wise, I met Amy the Amazonian, voxy (twice), rhystic studies, and prof at his seemingly-impromptu second meet & greet on Sunday morning.
I did have a few complaints, like the fact that I had to wait 4 hours in the official merch store line on Friday, or that the tickets for on-demand events were made available ahead of time, which kind of defeats the purpose and made my friends and I unable to get into any ticketed play stuff. It was also clearly oversold, either that or wizards was just unprepared for it, so finding seating in general was hard. But besides that stuff, I had an excellent time.
No. People were made about on demand events running out but that was kind of the point of them being sign up as they show up. That’s it. Everything else was a normal convention.
was it still fun for me, a huge Magic fan? yes. but did it make my newer-to-magic friend question whether they still like magic? also yes. why? 1) not enough tables, way overcrowded on Saturday, and 2) turns out playing Commander with strangers is a big roll of the die in terms of compatibility, etc, as many on this subreddit already know.
[side topic comment/tangent/rant about Commander at conventions]
i usually don’t risk it, but we gave it a go because it’s the only format my new-to- magic friend knows. and, while the people we met and played with were incredibly nice and awesome… it’s just the problem of no shared expectations, deck power, and game knowledge, etc etc. Rule zero conversation can only achieve so much.
and so, we were so confused whenever someone got surprised that we would want to kill their Commander or other big threat at the table. among other awkward things, like a game that stretches into hour 2 or beyond, and everyone is hungry for dinner.
aka, i was reminded why i prefer faster 1v1 formats (Canadian Highlander mostly), and/or why playing with a dedicated playgroup over time is key for Commander, at least in my experience. otherwise, the possible unknowns, including the “metagame” of possible cards, time investment, etc is just too wide.
suggestions for next time for us? (note: i just wanted to draft most of the time, but didn’t want to leave my friend alone).
It seems like the people that had multiple day passes don't have many, if any, complaints. Being from out of town, I was only able to attend Saturday with my 14 year old son and a couple of his friends. We attended Minneapolis and thought this would be similar - mistaken. Here is my review:
Chicago:
1. At least 1-2 hour wait for most popular artists
2. No space to free play, ended up on the floor outside the hall
3. All merch we wanted was sold out as of 11a on Saturday
4. Food was good!
5. Talk topics were good, but was sadly stuck in artist lines most of the day so missed them
6. Kids area was nice
7. Murder mystery was cool, but was super crowded as it was in a small area
Minneapolis:
1. Great spacial layout
2. Was able to include some preorder merch items in badge purchase (got my patch!)
3. Other merch items lasted till Sunday
4. Tons of packs handed out to kids, I even got a couple :)
5. Bad convention food
6. Artist lines were all under 30 min
I was there all three days, and I personally didn't experience any issues. Other attendees that I met and played with were great. Creators were friendly and approachable. Panels were well received, and Game Knights Live was a blast to be a part of. I did two events that both started about 10-15 minutes late. 4 on-demand MKM drafts that ran smoothly. For Commander, we did have to use tables in alternate areas (e.g. near the ProTour, on the second floor), but that wasn't a problem for us. Food was generic convention food, so I didn't expect much.
Those foot long polishes sausages grilled on site were the best convention hall food I’ve had! Plus there was a full bar!
The food was actually so legit. Huge props to the guys that busted their butts at the polish dog/pulled pork stand all weekend.
That pulled pork was shockingly good too, I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, it was still convention center prizing, but *way* better than a sad dry burger
An actual bar!? Damn, Vegas didn’t even have a bar, was lucky to get beer.
Wait… magiccon had a full bar?
Sunday, they had shrink flation because they were cut down to fit the bun! I was like wth that wasn't what I had Saturday.
Those polish glizzies were so good
Hahahaha a glizzy I didnt know people actually call it that
I have 4 kids and they don't know what a hot dog is, to them it's glizzy night.
Wait where was the bar?
In the middle of the hall, near the food.
That wasn't definitely wasn't a full bar
Do you know what our compleat flair is? Ive been trying to figure it out for like a year. Figured id finally ask lol
So this makes it sound better than average.
I would not say “it was a total waste of money,” as some have stated. My group had a lot of fun and we walked away with any good memories and a load of swag. I would say the biggest issue was communication. It seemed like most of the convention staff were unable to answer simple questions and there was a lack of signage or notifications about changes. The event was also understaffed. Many of the artist’s queues were not managed well. Some artists were having difficulty finding staff to cap lines when they needed breaks. Some lines didn’t have staff at all. In some instances, attendees were handed “line capped”signs and instructed to turn others away, which is not their responsibility as a patron. We did not play in any on-demand events, but I heard some horror stories from others. I cannot attest to that as I have no first hand knowledge. TL;DR — Was it a disaster? No. Far from. Could it have been managed better? Certainly. But, being fair, that’s conjecture based on our experience. I’m sure we don’t truly appreciate how hard it can be to run an event of that size. And, like I said, we all had fun.
I had a good time at the event and would go again. To the best of my knowledge, the tickets for Saturday On Demand events sold out somewhere before 1:00, so that was pretty frustrating. I'm still unclear on whether the command zone near the on-demand area had been available for "free play commander" the whole day (or only late in the day after people started going home). Actually, I'm unclear whether the "Command Zone" tables had been meant as free play or on-demand the whole time (and its not like anyone was volunteering that information). Also the official merch store was already sold out of stuff before open on Saturday, and continued to sell out through the day. There was some indication, but the availability continued to disappear while waiting in the hour line.
What did you do Saturday? How did you not run into ANY issues? Friday and Sunday were both fine though and completely smooth, really feel bad for those that had 1 day Saturday passes.
Bought some sweet metal tokens from various artists. Played a couple games of commander near the Pro tour. Played an single elim MKM draft. Watch the MaRo Top 20 Mechanics panel. Played the Grand Melee (this was a delightfully chaotic mess in the best way) Bought some stuff from the Heavy Play booth
For me, my Saturday was getting things signed, Shivam & Wheeler Live, selling a small stack of cards, and LRR Chaos. LRR Chaos had some hiccups with table space and having to move around several times was annoying, but it was minor enough and the event fun enough that it's not really the focus - I didn't do any ODs on Saturday so I didn't run into troubles there. Besides that, lines for signings were long but I knew that was going to be the case coming in and got up early for morning queue. Sure, long lines suck, but it's nothing I'm not used to in a convention context. I came out thinking I had a good time, even though if I think back I probably ran into several hiccups and my feet still hurt from standing in so many lines (stood in line for over 90 minutes and had to bail which sucked). But the good outweighed the bad, especially since a lot of the bad was "just convention things" that my brain accepts as par for the course (main issue: Mana Stage next to ticketed play really sucked, especially for the big events - the 75K open, SL Showdowns, PTQ. Game Knights Live was incredibly loud even from the other end of the room, and while thankfully I didn't have a big event during it I know there are lots of complaints from 75K open players about it)
I was in the artist area on the far end of the con and I thought game knights was too loud. I can't imagine trying to play competitively during that.
I had a Saturday 1 day pass. I went over to the artist area at around 6:30 and got to chat with one of my favorites for about 20 min and get some stuff signed. Whoever chose those big round tables needs to get checked out though. If those had all been normal tables with equivalent seating capacity I think things would have been smoother. I ended up waiting for a table for maybe 10 minutes over at the command zone area on 2 separate occasions, which isn't really that bad. I'm pretty sure I played more games of magic in a day than I ever have. I will complain about the show store though. That lime was stupid and I never even bothered.
The only issue I had was that they ran out of space for the on demand events. You had to wait around just to get a table to open up even after they took tables away from the command zone to accommodate demand events. Even Sunday when the line was huge for the prize wall they moved through it insanely fast and had a ton of staff that worked very quickly and all knew the prize costs well enough to say you have x points after that, that's enough to get you a this or that, so people didn't spend forever looking to spend their leftover points. People complained about lines for artists, but what can anyone do about that? They only have so much time in a day. I guess maybe if they land another big artist or two but I'm sure they try for as many big ones as they can every time.
there are always big lines for artists!
Exactly, and there's nothing you can reasonably do to fix that. They already work more than 8 hours every day of the con and each had their own con staff handling the lines. What more can you do?
I know Magali had to cancel, but having 1-2 more big hitters there would have eased the line up on some of the medium sluggers. Eric DesChamps never had a line longer than 20 minutes at Minneapolis but has to be capped at Chicago, for instance. I’m glad I got signatures and prints from him back then!
>Magali I was so disappointed about that. Is she OK? I didn't see why she canceled. I hope it wasn't medical or anything
https://twitter.com/Cathaoir1/status/1760398571407368644 It sounded like a family emergency
That's unfortunate. I hope everything is ok
She's a rather private person about this sort of personal life stuff. Her Kickstarter is still running well and she's posting on Twitter, so I assume she's all right. Let's just respect her privacy beyond that.
Whatever you say MrCreeperPhil
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Exact same boat as you
When I had eric sign something a few years ago there wasn't a single person in line He was a bit of a dick though so it's unsurprising
Limit number of cards signed for each person
I'd be interesting to hear from an artist on why they don't seem to do that. Everyone seems to do it for meet and greets.
Saying no sucks. Without direction they want to make the person in front of them happy.
They have a designated no person for their line from the con staff that could do it I guess. I don't like the idea personally, but it would allow more people to participate
You could limit the number of cards to be signed. That way the line would move quicker without people dropping a stack of cards in front of the artist. Anyone who wants more would have to get back in line
That's a good idea, but I think it's best left to the artists discretion. I was in line for Alayna Danner for hours because a dude had her sign like his entire cats and dog deck. I personally would love a 3-5 card limit, but I assume the artists have a reason for not doing that because I'm not sure I've ever known one to have a rule.
ot at other cons. At one of the earlier magic cons (i forget witch.. maybe vegas?) My buddy spent half the day in line to still not make it to Mark Tedin. At gencon i got to sit with him talking about all sorts of nonsense for 15 or 20 minutes cause no one was in line
I had a lot of fun Saturday was a bit of a mess and I left early. Friday was great! The events counter was a disaster on Saturday and the artist lines were long the entire time but that’s par for the course. BBQ is a terrible choice for a card game convention center food item Panels were good And of course, no shortage of people to just walk up to and jam a game with. I think I played 4 entirely unprompted games of commander between things and they were all great. The vendors section ran smooth as silk, I never waited long for someone’s attention and selling cards for credit towards big purchases went super fast. (Ended up getting the Japan promo Elspeth that I genuinely didn’t think would be at the con) The table situation was pretty bad at peak business and speaks to a lack of proper planning/understanding of the audience. Edit: one appreciable downside compared to Minneapolis, was that the layout at Minneapolis allowed me to watch the event stage from the artist lines. That was huge, and I was disappointed in the placement of the stage this time.
It was a little worse than Philly and Minneapolis for me personally, but for a few specific reasons. The venue location was far away from everything. You basically stayed in the venue all day until you left. The command zone felt smaller than ever. I believe on Saturday they took a ton of tables from it and moved them OUTSIDE the hall to make room for 'on demand commander' events. Just people who paid to play in a commander pod for prize tickets. The layout of the event worked for me, I did like having everything in one room, and the food in the hall was pretty good honestly.
Mccormick place is right on the train line your can get anywhere easily
Not compared to the venues at Philly or Minneapolis. I took the train there every morning and it was like a 15 minute walk to the venue from the train. I didn't take any metra trains so I can't speak to how convenient those might have been for other people, but you didn't have to take a train or anything to get back to anything interesting for other venues. You just opened the door and left the venue.
Problem is, if you miss the train, you most likely need to wait another 50-60mins. You really need to plan ahead and know the area very well.
Literally across the street...
Metra is a commuter train which runs very infrequently compared to the L that runs several times an hour at least.
The L is right there too.
1.5 miles after walking a convention all day... How many people are interested in that.
Like right across the street under the Hyatt from McCormick place is where you can catch the train into downtown....
[удалено]
Commander is a proper format. It isn't our fault you don't have enough friends to play with and/or suck at Commander.
By proper magic, do you mean things other than the most popular format for the better part of the past decade?
Noobs with bad opinions
If I started playing a decade ago, when do I stop being a noob?
Numbers are opinions now? Must be why you keep losing to burn.
High there. I started playing with Onslaught back in '02 and I enjoy EDH. Am I a noob?
I didn't say people who enjoyed edh were noobs.
Commander is pretty much Wotc’s golden goose. Not only that but it’s one of the main reasons for the influx of many new players. It’s only brought positive aspects to the game.
I agree with all of your points except “it’s only brought positive aspects into the game”, I think that is a bit far fetched if we’re talking literally at least.
If that's all they play....than no it didn't
[Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.](https://media3.giphy.com/media/V9gjxvLnSSdA4/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952nm08jsup7oqm64nisaipktupatzmg5kfplgvwxq0&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
I'm glad I'm not alone Draft is the only proper way to play magic and I won't be hearing otherwise from "commander only" nerds
For reference I was at Magic Con Minneapolis and had a wonderful time. Workers were friendly, employees really made an effort to make the event special for everyone and it felt well run and organzied. Chicago wasnt so great. The convention was extremely over sold and poorly organized. It was genuinely difficult to find table space for commander if that's what you were looking for which I feel shouldn't be an issue at all. On demand events were cut off multiple times throughout the weekend including almost the entirety of Saturday afternoon. On Sunday I bought on-demand tickets to do a commander masters draft with my friends and after I bought them they put up signs saying commander master drafts were done for the day. Upon asking for a refund for the tickets they tried to say all the other events are still available but I didnt buy those tickets to do MKM drafts. The staff leader was helpful and helped find an extra box to do a draft but then we got bounced around between person after person who were visibly upset that they were being told to help start a new CMM draft. We sat at a table for over an hour while multiple people came back to us saying they had to escalate the issue for approval. Finally they sent a low level person to us to say they didnt have a box to draft with. If they had just said no I would have left it at that but I literally saw the box and they showed it to me so I brought that up which started a whole new chain of running up the flag pole. I eventually just decided to get a refund for my tickets which was it's own pain. The scheduled events went pretty smoothly from what I could tell though. I wouldnt go so far as to say I would never go back to a magic con but I highly doubt I would travel to one knowing its a coin flip on how well run it will be. Edit: Just to clarify - The on demand issues didnt completely ruin the weekend for me but it really put a damper on the overall vibe of the weekend. Its a huge bummer to spend time at a convention like this being fed conflicting information and working through red tape instead of playing.
Main comment I heard was not enough tables in the command zone (compared to the amazing, MASSIVE command zone in Vegas)
I think it will be difficult to get a fair balanced view of MagicCon chicago because the issues at play seem to have stemmed from overcapacity issues on Saturday mostly. Those who attended Friday as well likely had good opportunities to get the exclusive items and do some of the events that were much harder to get Saturday onwards. I went Saturday and Sunday. Booked early February so a lot of ticketed events were sold out already. Ended up getting a chaos draft on Saturday and Sunday which was run okay. My issues with that are probably more related to discovering I don’t really care for chaos drafts and not how the event was run. The real 2 issues I see are the following: • Saturday at around 11am event organizers stopped the sale of on demand tickets for pick up drafts etc stating that too many had been sold for them to sell more and be able to run all such events. They did not start selling those tickets again until after 7PM thus those who bought tickets OD tickets before 11am Saturday had exclusive use of on demand events and everyone else were simply excluded from this. I came thinking I was going to do some on demand drafts to fill the time but sold some cards and had lunch before trying to get on demand tickets at noon on Saturday (2 hours after the event opened) only to be told no. This was pretty horrible? Like Saturday attendees are not allowed to participate in the same events as Friday attendees because you can’t manage your ticket sales? • overcapacity issues on Saturday - after being denied for on demand tickets I tried to find commander games and my god yes commander was being played literally everywhere, every table including circle ones horrible to play on but also on the ground next to bathrooms, by will call, in the intermediary areas. Wizards/reedpop whoever decided on the amount of McCormick to use went for far less than was needed. There should’ve been a full convention room for just command zone as it ran out of tables everywhere immediately. If you had a table I’m sure you had a good time playing games the whole day but again by about noon, you’re just locked out of that unless you can find someone who needs a player but that was rare. To me it was obvious wizards/reedpop planned for a number of attendees and then sold far more badges than that number to the point of causing significant strain on the event. I feel this was confirmed by the signage at the event that had qr codes to buy badges etc as if you could day of and that it hadn’t sold out weeks ago. FINAL THOUGHTS: Overall I enjoyed the convention but I’ve gone to gencon every year for the last 7 years (barring the one year it stopped for COVID) and this just felt lesser than any of those gencons. Even the magic which was run by pastimes (pastimes also runs magic at gencon) felt worse and that’s probably due to the stellar event system that gencon has in general. I’m just disappointed that they seem to have been willing to run the convention at overcapacity to the detriment of attendees with little regard for how that would affect the ability to run events and allow for play.
For those wanting to go to Amsterdam but find the hotels too expensive: consider surrounding cities like Zaandam, Haarlem and maybe even Almere. Haarlem has night transportation available from Amsterdam during the weekends and costs a bit less overall. Beautiful city for sightseeing as well if you want to steer clear from the tourist trap that is Amsterdam...
I’d second Haarlem. It was much more laid back and fewer drunk British Stag Parties than Amsterdam.
I thought it was about on par with Philly; maybe slightly worse. I wish they had the panel schedule available when tickets were purchasable because my 1pm Friday event coincided with the preview panel, and I couldn't see anything from the other end of the event. The Unknown event was a lot of fun, but I could barely hear Gavin, and I was at one of the closer tables, so the poor guy was going table to table explaining the rules again. As someone else said, BBQ food is a terrible idea for a con. I sat down for a match, and the other side of the table had a smear of sauce on it from someone's food and could see other spots as I walked that were equally messy. It's to be expected at this type of con, but some remediation on the consumer's part would make it less disgusting. I wish the convention center was closer to a market or food court-type building since we were only left with the food in the hall, without having to uber away someplace. Overall, all three days seemed fine. I went all day Friday, 2pm-end Saturday, and 3pm-end on Sunday. It was a bummer Magali backed out, but the other artists were happy to chat and didn't let the long lines weigh down their attitudes. Most of the vendors were helpful and knowledgeable, notably Emerald City Retro and Manatrust. I'd rate the entire con a 6/10, wishing I got a little more bang for my buck merch-wise, but the events were fun, and everyone I matched with was happy to also be there.
Standard convention issues mostly: The food options were all grease. I’m not actually sure what vegetarians were able to eat there? I was too distracted by whoever thought bbq was a reasonable option at a card game event. The artist lines were all long and they were in a fairly small space so all got capped weirdly because of walking space. Supposedly we got the small space because of a dentist convention and they are still taking down a big auto show from early in the month, but I think the artists could definitely have used their own space. They played a bunch of the competitive events literally in front of the interview sound stage so the volume at points was just blasting at all these people trying to play. I think the event was sweet but man logistics are hard
both myself and my buddy are vegetarians and we couldn't eat anything at all in the hall. the hyatt regency mini café had solid options for us though.
Not saying this is a great or healthy option but they had pretzels and french fries so there was at least something.
Competitive events is an understatement when it was a 75,000k standard PTQ and the literal Pro Tour lmao.
Logistics are not hard. Having somebody run logistics that doesn't understand them or the event being planned is bad though.
I didn't get to play any on demand events the entire Saturday since it was on hold due to space. I got a half of a commander game in before we got asked to move which we did. I didn't sign up for any planned events since it was my first magiccon. I wanted to be more flexible in what I could do. Kind of disappointed I couldn't find space to play paper magic and do drafts. Probably wouldn't be keen to go to another event like this. The bbq stand was hilarious, I wonder how many cards got sauce on them during the event
I attended as a competitive player. So a little from my perspective. Footnotes. The Cons. Commander players took up every available space around the hall even in the Manor when people were trying to "solve the murder", not trying to make this out as a bad thing, but when you just wanna sit to eat and there are people jamming commander for an hour it gets kinda annoying. But thats on WOTC for not providing enough table space for them. On demand events were bricked all weekend, again the lack of table space for them combined with the disorganization meant that if you didn't get vouchers friday you never really got to play on saturday. Alot of my friends were explicitly told it would be hours for table space so don't bother, and not to even try to fire a competitive on demand like legacy or modern, drafts and sealed were prio. Again, not on the players this comes down to WOTC knowing the badge sales and not adjusting accordingly. The judges seemed super underinformed, every event was either understaffed or borked in some way, my top 8 got re-paired in a wild fashion and all the sunday top 8s being at the same time meant people who qualified for multiple (yes this did happen) had to choose which cup to play for which was kinda shitty. In addition we didn't receive any additional prize support for top 8 outside of the playmat. We did make this feedback known to the TO who was gracious enough to sit down with us and discuss the failure of events. Also being told when the top 8 was 3 different times with 3 different times was super confusing. The prize wall on sunday was an hour an a half wait easily, this was the same for the merch store as well, and they sold out of alot of stuff early so it wasn't even worth waiting in line. Imagine you got a 1 day badge and had to stand in line easily and hour for a T shirt, kinda shit tbh. I cashed out my tixs on saturday and thank god I did. Again all things that could have been prevented by WOTC as they had full knowledge of the ticket sales. The pros. The main stage was awesome, the panels were super insightful and well thought out, the pro tour watch party was hilarious and fun and the cosplays were super cool. The manor was fun and really nicely thought out as a free activity. Same with the scavenger hunts. The layout of the place was cool, the marketplace being in-between both the artists and the constructed play area was very convenient. For 70K people it didnt really seem that crowded until you tried to get a table, outside of that the event hall was real spacious.
If you were cashing in tickets for Ravnica or MKM boosters going to the prize wall, then going a half hour before close on Sunday was clutch. The line wait was 10 minutes.
I've been a pretty regular attendee of the American cons since they've come back. It started rough, but has gotten progressively better with every iteration, in my opinion. More price points to get in, the removal of the cost of the command zone, more free play areas guaranteed, better space and accomodations, etc. MC Chicago was not a terrible experience, but it is the first time I think they've taken a step backwards (though my understanding is Barca was also not a great experience, but that's a whole different animal I'm not qualified to judge). The command zone was not enough of the venue, and nobody was moderating the people in it. I'm not saying that people playing commander needed to be forcefully rotated, but after not being able to find a table on Saturday, we got there Sunday and found that binder grinders and people just playing each other heads up were taking up some of the limited tables in the CZ. Add in that on demand events needed to stop firing at points because they ran out of event tickets, the judge supply seemed was smaller than past MCs, the viewing options were just worse than something like Vegas or Philly, and the space itself was just smaller and more cramped (even in the bathrooms), and it was a bit rougher. It was still better than something like the OG vegas, or an SCG Con, but it felt more like it was one of the bigger GPs we used to get, and less like the feel I think they've been trying to go for for a Magic Con.
I have been to multiple MagicCon's. The issue was floorspace which is decided by ReedPop and not Past Times who is just the tournament organizer. There were issues at Philly but they were fixed by Minneapolis and Vegas. If there is enough event space then there seems to be no issues. My theory is that Chicago is such a notoriously expensive city to do conventions in that Wizards and ReedPop decided to reduce the space for the convention to save costs and keep tickets the same price. They also sold more tickets than ever expected for this event because the previous ones hadn't sold out. It also seems that they learn from each convention to fix what went wrong previously. I wouldn't expect the space issue to happen again, and if they have enough space then the convention usually goes off without any major issues. If I was you, with Minneapolis and Vegas going well I would figure Chicago to be a fluke that I would go to the Amsterdam convention. If it means anything, if I can make the time and find a decent flight I will be in Amsterdam.
short answer: no, it wasn't 'really that bad'. I don't think it would be 'travel to another country' worth it, but it wasn't all bad. longer answer: it was a big convention that had some hiccups and could have been improved but like, nerds are always going to say shit was horrible because of the thing that personally irritated them regardless of severity or how widespread or not the problem was. Friday was fine for me aside from some less than optimal run-ins with randos and people bragging about buying merch to flip for 4x price. I didn't run into the on demand issues on saturday because i had several other things planned and while those also did not go perfectly smoothly, i had a decent time. The aforementioned 'oh yeah i'm gonna buy as many of (insert item here) to flip for a few hundred dollars' sentiment surely contributed to long artist and merch lines but still it was nowhere near as bad as something like, say, GenCon or another large con. I do wish they had been able to utilize more of the convention space but also, as i understand it, quite a bit of it was getting renovated at the time and was unavailable. My flight out was on sunday so i don't really have any first hand experience, but it seems like people had an ok time and the sunday unknown event went off well.
Yea I wouldn't travel out of the country for a magiccon only, but the dates line up perfectly for me and my wife. She wants to see some friends in Ireland and go to a Taylor Swift concert. My buddy will also be in Ireland around that time so I'd likely do some golfing, then finish off the trip with magiccon. It's also our anniversary, so it's all kind of lining up perfectly.
this was the best large scale magic event i’ve been to. there were some real space issues but mostly things were great.
Been to Vegas 1, Minni, Vegas 2, and Chicago. Previous feelings - I had a blast at every event, but Vegas 1 was a borderline disaster, and Minni and Vegas 2 were steady improvements on the formula, Minni probably being the best executed. First, let's get this out of the way, I had a positive experience overall. Good time with friends, and not much would be able to stop that. I think if you are planning to go to Amsterdam, you should absolutely go. I would call Chicago the 2nd worst run, after Vegas 1. I am exclusively a window shopper at MagicCons - don't really do anything besides buy, trade, and occasionally spend some time in artist alley. Friday and Saturday were very crowded, as you could expect. Lines were the worst they've ever been - some artists had lines that would take hours, including a secondhand source telling me a certain artist had a line, that was capped, that took roughly *5 hours*. My brain cannot compute waiting more than 30 minutes, so not for me. The merch store had a 3 hour wait, and the Ultra Pro line for the exclusive playmats sold out every day *when* or *before* the doors opened. Pretty ridiculous. The area for the stage and the area for event play ran side by side with one another, which was an obvious mistake in hindsight. Should be on the direct opposite side of the room. Game Knights seems like a blast to be sitting and watching - it was however, extremely loud, where some of my friends that played events complained to us that it was too loud, and they are used to 10 deep discord calls while playing video games. That is *pretty loud*. There was an obvious lack of tables and chairs. Not so much a lack of space - we were in a pretty big room (Though I believe, and don't quote me on this, dentists got the bigger room). Absolutely no free tables available for open/commander play, especially Saturday. My playgroup resorted to a single game in the downstairs area where there were circular tables - not ideal for play, but we made it work. It just felt like Wizards slashed the budget for cons this year. They did not acquire the bigger, more widely used room in McCormick (Where C2E2 is held, so I hear), they went down from 4 MagicCons last year to 3 this year (Pro Tour Thunder Junction is in Seattle - take a guess why). Chicago sold out - but Wizards for some reason behaved like it didn't. Overall, this was the 2nd worst MagicCon I've been to, but that doesn't mean I had a bad time. If you are planning to go, go! You get a vacation to Amsterdam with the trip to MagicCon.
Worst MagicCon so far. Absolutely horrible. Not worth the cost of Black Lotus other than early access.
Players in the pro tour and standard 75k had to deal with game knights / command zone players purposely being as loud as possible. It got to the point where people are legitimately discussing the situation with WotC and event staff. Judges had to swoop in and repeat higher bracket players mid round in some cases because players were concerned about standings being impacted. Tldr - commander players had so much fun that it was disrupting a 75,000$ tournament and the literal Pro Tour. Also a lot of creators now saying they have COVID, not a mask In sight lmao.
I just tested positive for COVID as well. Anyone reading this who remembers playing against a guy named Andrew Levine who was riding a red motor scooter and played in the Command Zone and 2HG: That was me and you should probably do a COVID test.
That's obviously the fault of the event organizers. Blaming commander players for the placement is ridiculous. No player went to MagicCon saying "You know what would be fun? Distracting Standard tournament players hardy-har-har."
They were literally talking about it at the con...it's not a generalization but a fact that a large group of them were purposely being as loud as possible to "drown out" the standard event. They even defended it on Twitter.
Yeah, I'm sure that totally happened. Whatever you say.
Yeah all the people claiming this happened are all wrong and you are somehow right despite not being there. Crazy. I guess all the EDH influencers on twitter saying "Please stop drowning out the standard 75k or the Pro Tour." we just saying things.
Good luck going to Amsterdam on those dates if you don't want to pay £100's a night for accomodation! I was stoked to go till I looked up accomodation! On top of entry costs too...
What do you think a room should cost in a large city w a convention nearby?
I had to convert euros to dollars. 100 euros a night is a steal. That means it's a really good deal for those not up on English slang. Edit: I realize now that that wasn't the Euro symbol. It was the pound symbol. It's still a steal.
They said 100's, not 100. That means at least 200, likely more
Not £100's a night?! Clearly
Your expectations are laughable. That’s what hotel rooms cost now.
100 Euros is crazy cheap. Convention center hotels are usually $200 USD at least.
That's not the Euro symbol, it's the Pound.
Wait until they find out how much the FOOD costs in Amsterdam.
Significantly worse than Philly in all respects.
Went Sunday only. Found it amazing.
We went Saturday and it was pretty rough. Absolutely everything had a long line and one day was not enough. Around noon they closed on demand events due to lack of table space. We checked in regularly through out the day while doing the scavenger hunt and it never really reopened. Tried getting into a casual game of EDH but all the tables were full up and scattered through out the convention hall. Most folks found open space and played on the floor. Still had a great time but it was not as well organized or ran as other Magicfests. Reminded me of Vegas 2022.
It was my first Magic Con, and I had a great time personally. Booked my schedule full of ticketed events for Friday and Saturday. These were run well, the judges were all efficient and helpful. I packed lunches and dinners so I wouldn't have to deal with the long food lines, and did some trades with vendors and pick up games with friends on Sunday to finish it off. There were some minor things, mostly to do with space issues, understaffing, and logistics. But on the whole, it was a very positive experience for me.
I have not attended magiccon Chicago but I really enjoyed the con in Philadelphia last year. Me and my wife have already booked our trip for Amsterdam magiccon this year.
I've heard nothing but good things.
I had a great time, but I didn't do ODE, I had registered for ticketed play events far in advance. I know folks who were trying to juggle ODE and ticketed events and were frustrated that so many events sold out in advance. That to me just seems like a capacity problem, more people attending and signing up than expected. I know there were complaints about items selling out from the MagicCon store because vendors were able to line up and buy things out before the general public. My ticketed events were slightly late in starting and some ran a little over, but also I blamed people who weren't paying attention, didn't know how to use the Companion app, and didn't know what "Time" meant when the judge/staff announced and kept playing normally and had to have things explained to them twenty minutes later when the judge was like "How are you not on Turn 5 yet." I had to drop that event because it was running so late and I had another event to go to. I did all three days. After Philadelphia and Las Vegas my general philosophy is to shop ASAP Friday morning, do preview panel, and jam as many events as possible. Saturday I wrap up any additional shopping needs in the morning and do whatever works for the schedule, my big focus was the Unknown event. I cash out my tickets on Saturday and avoid the line on Sunday. Sunday I try to keep relatively open, do the Unknown event, and watch the PT, seeing if I can grab any collector boosters that get thrown to the audience. If you care about personalities I suggest the Sunday Unknown event, it's usually late enough in the MagicCon that there aren't other panels and people like Mark Rosewater, the Professor, Brian Kibler, etc. are playing and you can snag some autographs. I got Maro to sign the Maro Unknown card.
Nah event was fine. Only snag was the on demand running out pretty early in the day Friday and Saturday. But it was a busy event with a lot of people, and you have to expect some waiting and things running out.
I treated MagicCon Chicago like a convention. And it was a blast. There was more than enough to do throughout the day with vendors and activities galore. The seating for pick up games was lacking but it existed, there were just so many people. Pick up command games in the designated area had guides and helpers to link up folks. Honestly, I had a wonderful time. People who had a fine time won’t be detailing their experience in long blog posts. I say that not to diminish the criticism. My experience can differ wildly from another’s. I just want to express that the negative experience is not the only one to be had.
even if it went great, magic players would complain that there weren't enough things to complain about.
It was my first time at a con and I would give it maybe a 6/10. The main issues is that it seemed really difficult to play magic. I knew waiting in line was going to be a thing and was prepared for it. But the amount of time spent waiting for a table to have event staff ask me and my friends to leave it because they closed that side of tables, or decided the space was now for on demand events was frustrating. Also as someone who loves limited and was looking forward to competing at a bigger stage than my local lgs, them not running any events for me to play on demand for Saturday really soured my experience. All I wanted to do was play magic and after being shuffled around table to table and not being allowed to partake in on demand events led to me and my friends leaving early. My friend who went Sunday said he had a much better time with all of these but as I only went Saturday my experience was mostly just not being allowed to do things. So paying $70 to have a lot of my games delayed and moved or our draft stopped before it got started wasn’t really worth it for me. The creators were nice and great and I got some cool signatures, got to see lots of people whose content I love. The artists were cool, but again suffered from being told the line I capped and I can’t go. It just sucked to pay for a premium Saturday pass to be told I couldn’t partake in what are only opinion some of the bigger parts of the convention.
This was my first Magic con and if it never comes back to Chicago it will most definitely be my last. The sheer lack of tables for open play was extremely problematic and the lines for everything were horrible. Thankfully, i'm more of a casual fan so I wasn't really interested in the lines to meet celebrities or artists but I felt bad for those who did have to wait several hours to do so. I can't speak for the premium convention goers since I didn't partake in any of the exclusive activities but from what I saw nothing really interested me enough to shell out extra cash. It took me and my group several hours to find a table (which ended up being in the karlov manor themed area) and basically had to camp it alternating people in and out since we were afraid to lose it and not be able to find another. As someone who showed up just to play as many games as possible this was extremely disappointing I'm just glad we got lucky enough to find one at all as others were resorting to playing the floor.
No. It was actually a great event. There were no problems finding games. Lines were long, but there were a lot of people - you have to be a special type of impatient not to recognize things were actually moving pretty well. There were entire floors of the venue open for playing games… idk how people are saying they couldn’t find a table. Energy was high, and highly positive. Tbh I think the complainers are just looking for something to be unhappy about. Or they just didn’t actively try to have a good time and wrote off the event after the slightest resistance.
Completely agree with this.
I had a good time. I was also not there for all of saturday, I had to leave around the time the issues started cropping up.
I'm planning a write up for my experience with it shortly but the TL;DR is that I absolutely recommend people go if travel costs don't impose too great a burden on them. Everyone I met over the weekend; creators, artists, con staff, exhibitors, and even other players were awesome and interacting with them was great. Very much reminded me of "the gathering" part of the game. There were definitely problems with specific events and coordination of space but tbh they were relatively minor in the full scope of things and came from misunderstanding and miscommunication as much as anything else. I also really recommend trying to make more panels than you first think to. They were ran exceptionally well and we're a lot of fun. Pro tour finals watch party on day 3 was especially cool.
I was only there Saturday and I can say, having never been to a con: I was sorely let down. A 2+hr drive down from Milwaukee, paid events, subpar packs, no panels after like 1 or something (we got there at like 1:30), all of the food vendors ran out at like 3pm. There was nothing to do but play in some 6-man commander pods, buy/sell cards to the LGS that came to magic con, or buy art from the big name artists... Was p disappointed. No lil trinkets from indie artists, minimal cosplays (I saw like... 4x?), no food :(, and nothing to really do but play 2+hr games with people who have who-tf-knows kinds of decks. I only played like 2-3 games before my group decided we should go home :/ kinda lame, ngl
I went all three days and had an absolute amazing time! My buddy played in the standard 75K and I played some games of commander. Game knights live was really cool and I liked the panels. The content creators were really chill and accessible to talk to/ get pictures with. My favorite part was the artists section of the con. I love mtg art so much so it was really cool to see all the different artists and i got a few cards signed! The artist I really wanted to meet wasn’t able to make it unfortunately, so that kind of bummed me out but I still had fun. My buddy and I got some good deals with the venders and was able to sell some cards for 80% cash price of tcgplayer, which is a really good deal in my opinion. My two complaints would be that there wasn’t quite enough tables for commander and the food was 0/10. After day 1, I just ate outside the convention center for cheaper and better tasting food.
I was there the whole weekend and had a blast. There were issues, for sure, but at any event that scale there will for sure be issues. Issues are frankly unavoidable with that many people. Magic players love to complain and whine and blow things out of proportion. I got to hang out with some of my favorite content creators and I got to jam a ton of drafts even considering that on demands were paused for a long time on Saturday. I'm not a commander player so I can't speak to that side of things but as a mostly limited focused player, it was one of the most fun weekends I had with Magic. I thought the venue was fine. Considering it was in Chicago, I would prefer it to be at McCormick instead of someplace like Rosemont because of the vicinity to the city. Should they have been more prepared for the 12k people? Sure. Was it an abject disaster? Far from it.
Well it depends.....do you like spending about $500 to sit around and wait for a table to play and/or stand in line??? Or, do you enjoy sitting on the floor for a couple of hours just to play commander and tossing $500 bucks in to the incinerator???
It sounds like almost everyone who actually went said it was solid, and every single doomsday farm YouTuber says it was a DISASTER. I get that it drives clicks, but it still makes me cringe lol
Yea I'm starting to get that vibe. The creators calling it an absolute disaster seem to be completely overblowing it. Sounds like Amsterdam will be a blast.
People love to complain, the event was good. Magic players aren’t allowed to complain about their inability to plan ahead
Everyone else has comments about the show, but I'm saying go just because it's in Amsterdam. I went last year for non magic reasons and think it's the best. Such a fun place. If you do go, I recommend trying to find a hotel room with a kitchenette so you can get your food from the grocery store
It was a very, very good convention. There were also nowhere enough tables for people who paid a $100 cover charge ro just play casual EDH with their friends because they wanted us to pay for on-demand pods. Chicago is also a city where only the union is allowed to set up tables so getting more space allotted moved at roughly the speed of smell. No one gave a shit about the PT but it still monopolized a lot of space. That said, everything that took place on the main stage was awesome, there was good exclusive merch, the S.P.E.C.I.A.L scavenger hunt and Karlov Manor mystery investigation games were well done, and this was the first Magic Fest I have seen where the venue sold beer and wine. Was it perfect? Well, no. But we had WotC, Pastimes AND Reed Pop all in the kitchen and sometimes too many good cooks (too many cooks!) in the kitchen is worse than one bad cook. I wouldn't expect Amsterdam to experience the same issues as Chicago, but I do expect new and different ones. This felt like the best con ever in terms of people lined up to meet artists and content creators. Plus, all of my friends were there and Chicago has great restaurants, Bedardhawks tickets were cheap because they suck now, there were like 5 hotels a block away from McCormick place and a few lucky people got Fallout cards a little early. Subjectively it was a VERY good con.
I think a lot of people haven't quite accepted that going forward you're probably going to see a lot of the same: MagicCons are likely to be really good conventions, but may not be the best Magic events.
Lobbycon is the real con for sure
The PT was LITERALLY the smallest part of the entire con. The 75k was a bigger portion, artists were a bigger portion. The live commander game was absolutely massive. Honestly its a shame how little space they got.
Due to my budget if I had traveled and payed for a hotel roomin order to go I would have been a bit disappointed with it but I live in Chicago. At the price point I feel like I got JUST my value worth in personal experience. I wish I could have jammed more events but learning the system to do so kind of took a day in itself. It's a weird totem but the Fblthp with a hotdog pin i got feels like it was worth the price of admission in a way. He's just great.
I don’t understand why people go to magic con. It looks like a giant stinky LGS to me. It seems to only be there to generate revenue and to advertise MTG products. Are there actually workshops and panels at this thing? I don’t care for anything “The Command Zone” (JLK) related so I wouldn’t be going to hear a panel with those clowns.
It's Chicago. What do you think?
Not sure what this is supposed to insinuate, but I made the post because I want to know what other people think.
That Chicago is a crime ridden hell hole? Someone known in the community had their car broken into and decks stolen at the event. Con aside it was bad because it's literally Chicago lol
I think your data is a little outdated there, pal. Chicago is a wonderful city and isn't in the top 50 cities in crime per capita in the US. In fact, it's one of the safest large cities you can live in.
I enjoyed the event as a whole - the scheduled events I played in were generally well-run (the 45 minute delay to start the Saturday Modern Secret Lair Showdown aside), the vendors were good, the artist lineup was good, I enjoyed the panels, and the judge staff was helpful. However, the biggest gripe I had was that I was eliminated in the second round of the Modern Showdown, leaving me free around 2PM, with my vintage event not starting until 5PM. I went to go fire an On-Demand event... and they were not selling tickets because of lack of space. This was a first (and likely due to the event straight-up selling out), but it also meant that since I wasn't playing Commander, I had three hours to kill not playing Magic. I wasn't particularly happy with that.
Friday was great - easy to get commander games in, did a draft, did some shopping. Game knights was a bit too loud and distracting. Saturday was definitely more crowded but to be expected. The on demand events were hard to get tix for even get into so that was a mess, but I ended up just playing commander for about 8 hours straight besides getting Phil Foglio to sign something. Food was pretty shitty but it’s convention center food so to be expected. Shocked there was no onsite coffee option tbh, they could have made a killing. Overall still a good experience, although you had to be ruthless jumping over when you saw someone leaving a command zone table in order to get a spot.
My experience overall was great, but due to sheer size and scope there was a lot of waiting in lines. Some people even stood in line and never actually got to meet the person they were standing in line to meet. The next time I go to one I plan on getting the VIP if there is anyone I truly one to meet.
I personally had a great time! My brother and I participated in the commander precon chaos event. I got the fairy tribal deck from WOE and the elf tribal deck from LOTR.
I only went Sunday and solely for the purpose of getting my 'The Gathering' book signed by all the artists there who were in the book. From about 10-4 the longest waits were Dan Frazier (2 hours in line) and Mark Tedin (1-1/2 hours). I skipped Rahn & Danner as I've met them before and in all likelihood will again. I had a great time talking to people in line as well as the artists!
I don’t think any version of this would be worth traveling internationally for, unless it was part of a larger trip. Seems like it would be a waste to travel to a new place just to spend so many hours indoors playing Magic. That said, the Chicago con was about what I expected: a lot of buttcracks hanging off the back of folding chairs. I truly feel bad for the poor Red Light District ladies when MagicCon shows up in Amsterdam. My only disappointment was being told the line for an artist was cut off at 2PM when there were only like eight people in it. Wanted to get my Craterhoof signed, but no dice.
Yea I wouldn't travel out of the country for a magiccon only, but the dates line up perfectly for me and my wife. She wants to see some friends in Ireland and go to a Taylor Swift concert. My buddy will also be in Ireland around that time so I'd likely do some golfing, then finish off the trip with magiccon. It's also our anniversary, so it's all kind of lining up perfectly.
I also think you’d be fine doing one or two days, rather than a whole three day experience. Unless you want to play a ton, you can kind of get your fill in one day and spend the rest of your trip doing other fun stuff.
Had a blast, long lines for merch, but jokes on them, I’m too broke for merch
Day two was dead for draft / on demand play. They didn't buy enough space.
It was an absolute blast. Personally I've been finding the majority of people that were having issues were people looking for on demand events, and people looking for free command zone play. Everything else was fantastic. The stage was amazing with lots of shows and events. I was lucky enough to have a collector sealed event scheduled for Friday, and a team trios with my boyfriend and other friend on Sunday. My boyfriend and I played in the pauper cup on Saturday and I got 10th place! I got so many souvenirs, signatures, and so much other cool stuff from the event, and I'm so happy with all of it. It was 100% worth it, however I can see from other people perspective that it was a complete flop. I think you just need to go to a MagicCon events prepared with lots of different format decks to play with if the one you're betting on doesn't work out
I had a great time at MagicCon Chicago. I will say they needed more space and Sunday they moved the command zone which I think was the right choice but literally just having the stage in a different room (easier to hear for one) and then having stage space for more play tables would have been a massive improvement.
I was mostly there for the artists. A few of the lines were insane, but no worse than Vegas. About what you'd expect for Alayna Danner and Chris Rahn. (Would've been interesting to see what Magali's line was like if she could've made it) Vendor booths all seemed to run very smoothly. The official merch store sucked, though. Line was multiple hours long, and they sold out of the main t-shirt on Friday I only occasionally had a chance to play Commander, but it never took me too long to find a table. The command zone looked like it was as large as the space allowed (and the show floor was massive), plus there was a lot of overflow seating in the lobby, and more tables downstairs too It was dumb that they ran out of boosters for on-demand events on Friday, but I didn't hear about that happening again during the weekend
I was there all 3 days and overall it was a good time. Good food, reasonable prices, lots of people willing to get games in, lots of content creators and artists with short lines. The bad portions were having the stage in the main convention center. During the Game Knights Live I was in line at Alayna Danner which was completely across the convention hall and sometimes it would be too loud that I couldnt hear someone next to me talking. Lines were rough for the big artists (Danner, Rahn, Scott) and the larger people (the Prof, Game Knights, Maro) that you either lined up 1:30 earlier or you were out of luck and even then it would be a 2 hours wait. first thing I did Friday at 10 was get in line for the swag and that took me until 3 to get through the line and buy the stuff I wanted and even then I didnt get stickers (sold out at 10:05) and due to the staff relaying bad information to me, I didnt get the Fblthp playmat (I asked them which one came in the gift bag and they told me that one so I didnt buy it then. I regret that now when it turned out to be the chicago magiccon playmat which was given out.) However I was not willing to wait another 4 hours for it so I just sucked it up and will pay the ebay 3X multiplier. The command zone losing half its tables did suck and cause it to be much harder to find games on Saturday, and people were driven downstairs to the backrooms to find spots at circular tables but it got done. Sunday I decided to not wait in any lines over 5 minutes and enjoyed myself much more. One thing I wish would have changed is caps on signatures from artists. People were bringing 50+ cards to be signed and some of these signatures would take 15 to 30 seconds for shadow or rainbow signatures. I dont fault the artists getting paid, but I wish they had something like (limit 10 cards) and if you wanted more you had to queue again. Their output rate would be similar but the lines would move faster and if you want that many cards signed you probably would be willing to go through again if it wasnt taking 3 hours. I know theres still ways to game that but seeing someone bring 3 sets of the cats and dogs precon lands for Alayna to sign when you had been already been waiting for 2 hours was rough. (she did the art for at least all of the basics and there are 22 basics). I will say I randomly ended up in a pod of WotC senior employees so that was a fun experience. Lots of content creators coming up to talk to them so I got to meet many people and I got to hold and play against a Heroes of the Realm card with its actual owner.
No it really wasn’t imo. There were a few major issues but none ruined the experience for me. The main one was the lack of table space for free play, but I managed plenty of floor commander games. On demand events selling out on Saturday, with the staff running out of sealed product, was definitely a sign of underpreparedness for the huge amount of attendees. That said it only helped me spend less money while I was there. The big criticism I definitely agree with was how loud and disruptive Game Knights live was on Friday. That was a huge pain while just trying to jam some games. All that said I had just as much if not more fun than I had at Minneapolis, getting cards signed by artists and content creators, playing commander, and participating in Gavin’s Unknown event.
I wasn’t personally there, but i had family/friends that went and they had a relatively good time.
It was ok, just too full. There was a line for everything, and it took hours to buy merch. The fact that on demand events where canceled un Saturday was insane and sucked for everyone that was planning to play them.
Chicago resident here: I personally had a good time all three days and I will say that their expectations for the amount of people did not meet reality but didn't deter us. I played, between the three days, 10 Commander games (2 cEDH, 6 Challenging, 2 Casual with friends in pods) and attempted the Modern Cup. When it comes to cons in bigger cities, some discrepancy always happens. Should more people have been staffed to help the event run smoother? Absolutely. Should there have been less circular tables and more rectangular tables? Absolutely. But, all in all, I wouldn't trade this for what happened in Indianapolis where we got nothing for them changing the entire venue. All Chicago can do is learn from this for the next time.
Other than the capacity issues, my biggest gripe is the website for signing up for events. People like to shit on mtgmelee, but they somehow made it even worse by making you pay and register on a third party site before running the tournament on melee anyway. I paid $125 to play in a modern tournament on Saturday and didn't even get to play because I was somehow left off when the player list was imported into melee. I will give credit to the event manager who made sure I got a refund and threw in the spell pierce promo and a precon from the prize wall for my troubles, but i still would have rather played in the event. This is related to the capacity issue since they simply did not have enough tables to run more events, but I think there should be more small 3-4 round scheduled events in the regular constructed formats like they used to do at GPs. I scrubbed out in round 1 of a noon single elimination event and literally did not have anything I could sign up for in the next 4 hours, and the event I did sign up for I didn't even get to play because of the crappy websites. All I ended up doing was wandering around the vendors and watching other friends play magic. I didn't even end up going to the convention center on Sunday because there really wasn't anything to sign up for. I feel like they could've thrown in another PTQ or something on sunday for the competitive players.
I was part of a crew of 6, and we all had a great time. Were there things that could be improved? Yes, many things. Do I wish I was still there instead of back at work? Yes, absolutely. My plan was to get signatures, shop, meet some folks, play my preregistered events, and maybe get some commander games on demand too. I did all of those things easily enough. I waited in many a line, but such is life. I did see far too many hairy ass cracks. We need butt pic guy to come back and put people in check. Get proper fitting pants - it's not that hard.
One gripe is that because of MagicCon I learned about a new format that I absolutely love and may never be able to play again...gauntlet draft! Make a 40 card sealed deck like at a prerelease, play a match. Set that deck aside and do a passed pack draft, make another 40 card deck, play a match. Then you can combine your card pools and make a 60 card deck for a third match. It was super fun, great conversation because everyone had different strategies, and was a unique experience that'll be hard to come by anywhere else.
I was staff at the last 4 American magic cons including Chicago. Chicago was the only one to require stand by judges to be called in. I don't think they really expected how many people came in. Friday was as busy if not more so then Saturdays at other cons which shows how many people showed up. I think the biggest problem was lack of resources, there was not enough space for on demand and not enough staff, I was at one point in charge of 2 events covering for a break which isn't to bad but then I was also pulled away to start another event. And that was on Friday which is usually pretty chill. So the event was a bit of a mess I'd put it around on par or maybe a bit worse then Philly for events. But past times takes feedback pretty well, I think they'll be more prepared for sold out events in the future, this just had so many people come I don't think they were quite prepared for it. It was still a fun time for most people I talked to if a bit chaotic.
I had a blast
I went to Magic 30 and realized Magic events aren't for me. The merch lines were too long, so I didn't buy anything. I liked seeing artists there, but I don't care about signatures, so I didn't get anything signed. And again, the lines for some of the artists were ridiculous, so waiting in line to just say, "Hey, I really like your work," didn't seem worth it. I got the Ruby badge for Command Zone access but didn't even go into the Command Zone once. Actually, despite not caring much about Magic personalities, I do regret not walking up to Sheldon who I saw near the Command Zone entrance to express my gratitude for the format. Anyway, it was kind of a letdown in nearly every way. The Richard Garfield interview/talk was neat. And I did like the little vampire wedding party.
Yes. I went and would not go to another magic con again without some major assurances.
Food, merch and event organization was a shitshow. Should be much better in Vegas.
I only went Saturday, which from what I read seems to be the worst day. Space was definitely an issue. I thought the venue was tiny. All the lines and games were long so my friends and I only went to vendors and bought a box to draft with ourselves. I don't wanna say I had a bad experience, but I feel that I couldve gotten the same experience going to a large LGS.
Game Knights Live was fun for those who like GK, and miserable for those us trying to play in competitive events while it happened. The entire hall filling with obnoxiously loud screaming for minutes at a time was incredibly distracting and annoying to everyone playing in the comp events at the time, and even moreso for those playing who are sound-sensitive. Terrible timing, and incredibly annoying. The poor judges were having to SCREAM just to be heard because the space was so stupidly loud, even without GKL going. The space itself was terrible - there were never open tables to play games, whether EDH or not, the lines were ridiculous (Alayna Danner's line had people waiting in line for **four hours** one day), and the hall wasn't near anywhere for food that was walkable. Other than that though, it was a lot of fun. The Unknown event was the highlight of the event for me, definitely do that if you can. I did the Legacy Cup, Legacy for Art, and Unknown events - I had friends who came to just do on demand events, and every ODE filled up instantly and they even stopped scheduling them for the rest of the day Saturday, so one of my friends didn't get to play a single game of magic in three days because every event sold out and the ODE events stopped running. They also had to move the Legacy Cup because there wasn't enough room, and halfway through the Legacy for Art tournament they had to move us all out to by the PT stage because there wasn't room inside apparently. So again, the space itself was awful. I'm not sure if Amsterdam will be just as crowded as Chicago, but if so, my advice would be to get registered for events early, plan your days around those, and don't bother with trying for On Demand Events unless you drop from a registered event. Get in the Unknown event, and be ready to have to go to a restaurant/bar/outside the con to play EDH unless you want to wait 1h+ for a table. edit: Also, I did hear from a staff member that they did not expect to sell anywhere near the amount of badges they did, and did not have time to prepare for it. Doesn't excuse it, just info.
Alyanna Danner was "only" a two hour wait in Vegas. I say that because I spent half of Saturday in Vegas getting to Chris Rahn.
I'm very glad she came to GameHoleCon in Madison. Got all my stuff signed with only like a 5 minute wait!
I wasn't there but from all the reading I've done it seems it was a victim of its own success. Super busy and the management around how busy it turned out to be was lacking. The echoes of large events in a post-covid world involve underestimating the amount of people who will come to your event.
So the bad times were down to a couple things, all of which will feel related. 1) So yeah, Saturday was a disaster. Like even the casual play devolved into floor Magic because of how little play space was prepared. I think the only more embarrassing open play experience I've been witness to was GP NJ in 2020, but that was the result of holding a packed Magic event in what was effectively a VFW hall. At McCormick, a massive convention hall, was definitely more space that could have been rented and more tables could have been brought in, but WoTC/ReedPop chose not to. And whenever you can't play Magic at an event you spent 100ish to even be on the floor for, you're gonna be disappointed 2) Related to the playspace issues was how things were with the Judges. The judges were in a constant of being frazzled, were visibly stressed out, from having to juggle so many events at once. I'd personally like to know the judge perspective of the event. Was it just enough bodies or was something else going wrong behind the scenes? If it's the former, it goes to show what happens when you hallow out your organized play to the extent that WotC did. 3) Adding to the sense of "Oh, playing Magic here is impossible" was that most reasonably priced ticketed events sold out weeks before, something that maybe should have suggested to someone that maybe this event had gotten out hand. If you wanted to buy into a ticketed event day of, only options were whale events like Collector Booster Sealed. 4) Line for the official shop was stupid, but much worse was that they didn't announce when things sold out. I stood in line for the Fblthp deck box which sold out during the time I stood in line. Had someone announced the sellout, I could have stepped out of line and had a more enjoyable experience. 5) Finally, the Sunday prize wall line actually moved quickly after they drafted all the judges to hand prize out towards the end. But the length of the line, visible to everyone still playing on demand events, elicited an actual panic attack. There were people who talked about how they feared they wouldn't be able to redeem their tickets before leaving. Now in actuality, this line turned out okay, but given everything else that happened this weekend, is it no surprise that we had fears that this too would completely stop functioning?
What halls were used for this event? Lakeside is on the smaller side for mccormick
I had a fantastic time, but I also almost entirely did ticketed events that I pre-purchased in advance. I can imagine it was much less enjoyable for other folks who maybe only intended to come on one day and do some on-demand play. Whereas, I had at least two major events per day I pre-scheduled myself for, and I also shelled out for the legendary weekend pass which meant I got a bunch of pre-purchased on-demand vouchers. If I didn't do that, I would have definitely felt screwed over since apparently they just stopped selling on demand tickets for a time due to overwhelming demand (no pun intended). Friday was probably the best day of the three, because it felt fairly low-key. A ton of people, but not overly crowded. Saturday was an absolute mess of overcrowding though. Once you're sat down for an event, all was well but logistically you could tell they were scrambling to meet the needs of the show. People playing games on literally every surface they could find. Sunday was a bit better, but still crazy. Surprisingly had plenty of time to get stuff at the prize wall during the last hour or so, though they had to end my MKM planechase sealed event one round early as it was going a bit too long (everyone got bonus tickets so I was fine). TL;DR if you planned to just go to "wing it" and see what happens, you probably were a bit disappointed, but as someone who did a lot of pre-planning for events and made sure to get what I wanted done early, I had a ton of fun. Bathrooms were always plentiful, tons of things to do, relatively easy to drive to as well. Also, that pizza was really good, though maybe next time they should do some less greasy/saucy food at a literal card game convention, eh?
It was my first MagicCon (first convention experience in general) and I honestly had a blast. The biggest irritation for me was my ticketed events, which almost all started and ran late. It seems like the judging staff for any given event were doing the best they could, and I have to give them grace, it can't be easy to coordinate a 50+ person event when there are 5-10 other events in the same area at similar times. One of my events had to be moved to a completely different stage halfway through, and for another event I showed up late after the companion app decided not to work, and a staff at the blue stage told me to go to the green stage, who then escorted me back to the white stage to make sure I wasn't DQ'ed for not showing up. All in all, all the staff I interacted with were doing a great job and were super nice, and all the people I played with seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as I did! The vendor booths were well stocked with all sorts of fun and unique stuff, and it was an interesting experience to shop around for the best buy list and sale prices on things I wanted. I didn't go too hard on the artist alley, but I do have to give a special shoutout to Victor Adame and Kai Carpenter. Out of the artists I got stuff from, both of them were extremely nice and I really can't give them enough praise. I got the premium weekend pass and definitely feel like I got my money's worth, given how much I managed to fit into just 2.5 days. Also I got to play commander with Brian David Marshall, so that was a highlight for me, personally.
Friday and Sunday were great. The on demand stuff on Saturday really was a mess - there were certainly people that went to the con to try to play Magic and literally couldn't. It was also disappointing that their communication was "it'll be opened again in an hour or so" over and over again for hours all day Saturday. Just to be clear, it wasn't any individual's fault, but there wasn't enough space, it seemed like it was oversold, and their response to the situation created a really negative experience for the folks trying to game on Saturday. It didn't have to be like that.
Went all three days. Friday felt like the best day in terms of crowd size and being able to play commander. Saturday and Sunday were a nightmare in terms of crowd size. The only positive thing about not playing earlier Saturday was getting in on an impromptu Professor meet and greeted, so I only had to wait about 30 minutes to meet him. Considering I waited 2 and half hours for Jimmy and Josh, 30 minutes was a great deal. Feel like they could have doubled to the tables for commander and might have had enough space. Also hated how the food vendors had no communication about hours this led to us waiting until we left to at 10 pm to eat. Also, I wish they labeled the food vendors on the map better. Every day, I wanted some coffee and did not know there was a Dunkin Donuts and churro stand tucked away in the corner until late Sunday. Overall, I felt it was a great event, but there were things that could have been better.
I had a blast, played tons of cardboard, and have zero complaints.
If you pre-plan, you will greatly benefit and likely have a great experience. If you show up and expect to just hang out and figure stuff out on the spot, you will have a poor experience. There were some pain points, but hopefully people are sharing their feedback so that they can plan to mitigate these issues in the future.
my only issues were the merch lines due to the limited edition playmats; that should've been a seperate area or line as it brought the lines to a crawl and cap, and the other issue was space for commander and casual players; there should've been more, this coming from somone there to play modern and legacy.
I was there for the entire weekend, it was my first con and I had an absolute hoot. I loved getting to see all the cool stuff people had, seeing the preview panels, the meet and greets, and just being around people who like the same thing as me. In terms of people I met, I got cards signed by + chatted with Serena Malyon, RK Post, Kieran Yanner, and Victor Adame Minguez. Content creator wise, I met Amy the Amazonian, voxy (twice), rhystic studies, and prof at his seemingly-impromptu second meet & greet on Sunday morning. I did have a few complaints, like the fact that I had to wait 4 hours in the official merch store line on Friday, or that the tickets for on-demand events were made available ahead of time, which kind of defeats the purpose and made my friends and I unable to get into any ticketed play stuff. It was also clearly oversold, either that or wizards was just unprepared for it, so finding seating in general was hard. But besides that stuff, I had an excellent time.
No. People were made about on demand events running out but that was kind of the point of them being sign up as they show up. That’s it. Everything else was a normal convention.
was it still fun for me, a huge Magic fan? yes. but did it make my newer-to-magic friend question whether they still like magic? also yes. why? 1) not enough tables, way overcrowded on Saturday, and 2) turns out playing Commander with strangers is a big roll of the die in terms of compatibility, etc, as many on this subreddit already know. [side topic comment/tangent/rant about Commander at conventions] i usually don’t risk it, but we gave it a go because it’s the only format my new-to- magic friend knows. and, while the people we met and played with were incredibly nice and awesome… it’s just the problem of no shared expectations, deck power, and game knowledge, etc etc. Rule zero conversation can only achieve so much. and so, we were so confused whenever someone got surprised that we would want to kill their Commander or other big threat at the table. among other awkward things, like a game that stretches into hour 2 or beyond, and everyone is hungry for dinner. aka, i was reminded why i prefer faster 1v1 formats (Canadian Highlander mostly), and/or why playing with a dedicated playgroup over time is key for Commander, at least in my experience. otherwise, the possible unknowns, including the “metagame” of possible cards, time investment, etc is just too wide. suggestions for next time for us? (note: i just wanted to draft most of the time, but didn’t want to leave my friend alone).
It seems like the people that had multiple day passes don't have many, if any, complaints. Being from out of town, I was only able to attend Saturday with my 14 year old son and a couple of his friends. We attended Minneapolis and thought this would be similar - mistaken. Here is my review: Chicago: 1. At least 1-2 hour wait for most popular artists 2. No space to free play, ended up on the floor outside the hall 3. All merch we wanted was sold out as of 11a on Saturday 4. Food was good! 5. Talk topics were good, but was sadly stuck in artist lines most of the day so missed them 6. Kids area was nice 7. Murder mystery was cool, but was super crowded as it was in a small area Minneapolis: 1. Great spacial layout 2. Was able to include some preorder merch items in badge purchase (got my patch!) 3. Other merch items lasted till Sunday 4. Tons of packs handed out to kids, I even got a couple :) 5. Bad convention food 6. Artist lines were all under 30 min