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2009 into 2010

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ January 1, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Like a Kami­gawa flip card, we’re ready to flip this cal­en­dar from 2009 to 2010… okay so that was weak sauce, but just under a year ago I wrote about 2009. I listed goals and I made some pre­dic­tions. I liked that arti­cle, and so I’m happy to make this a new tra­di­tion. I’m going to look back over my pre­dic­tions and goals for 2009, then share my goals for 2010 and make some pre­dic­tions. See how this works?

2009 Pre­dic­tions:

1. ‘It will not be the best year of Magic.’ — WRONG — This year rocked in many ways for Magic. From Duels of the Planeswalk­ers to record GP turnouts to Magic 2010… yeah I screwed that one up.
2. ‘LSV and Cheon will con­tinue to win.’ — CORR-WRONG! — LSV had a GP win in Los Ange­les and remained among the top play­ers though he didn’t con­tinue his 2008 dom­i­na­tion. Cheon though was not to be seen, he took a job and retired from active com­pet­i­tive play at least temporarily.
3. ‘The Pro Tour for­mat will be a suc­cess’ — CORRECT! — Def­i­nitely true. Though some play­ers are not big fans of it, there has been almost no neg­a­tive response to be seen.
4. ‘Faeries dom­i­na­tion.’ — WRONG — Jund is by far the story of the year. It over­took Faeries even before ZEN knocked Lor­wyn out.
5. ‘Japan as MTG Team cham­pion.’ — WRONG — China took the cham­pi­onship but Japan wasn’t even in the top 4 of the team com­pe­ti­tion. Though Yuuya Watan­aba did take Player of the Year.

So I scored 2.5 / 5

2009 Goals:

1. Tri­umphant Return of Arti­cles — CHECK — I think we can all agree that this one was accom­plished. I found a sta­ble of excel­lent writ­ers who have con­tributed hun­dreds of pages of arti­cles over the year and will con­tinue to bring insight­ful and extra­or­di­nary con­tent to Man­a­Na­tion readers.
2. Change Magic Cov­er­age — FAIL — I didn’t get to imple­ment some ideas I had, hope­fully they will still come to fruition. So that’s two years run­ning that these ideas didn’t mate­ri­al­ize, with­out reveal­ing too much — obvi­ously it’s big :). 2010? Maybe.
3. Live Show — FAIL — I had planned to a UStream show from Pro Tour Austin but the wire­less con­nec­tion proved trou­ble­some. Still hop­ing to do it in 2010.
4. More Draft Footage — CHECK — We got mul­ti­ple draft videos from pre­mier events and I’ve posted the Brian Kibler draft video, but I still have two more that I haven’t posted yet. They’re com­ing though! Mar­tin Juza is in the next week or so.
5. Site Upgrade and Redesign — HALF — I decided not to go with any major redesign, instead per­form­ing a met­ric ton of upgrades and mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the background.
6. Travel More — CHECK — While not a marked increase in travel, I did make it to a Pro Tour and Grand Prix this year.

Here I did bet­ter, 3.5 out of 6. — I can be pretty happy with this. Man­a­Na­tion did a lot of great stuff and grew expo­nen­tially from 2008.

Things I didn’t plan for but made 2009 that much better:

1. Deep­en­ing the CoolStuffInc.com rela­tion­ship — They were our first spon­sor and 2009 made it fate that we would strengthen that rela­tion­ship with my join­ing their team.
2. Zendikar — H-O-L-Y C-R-A-P. Zendikar was a wild ride. Peo­ple were like junkies scream­ing for their next hit. When we debuted the first four Zendikar cards traf­fic went nuts! Then we got the awe­some Vam­pire Nighthawk spoiler and that was awe­some! Then TREASURE! Mind = blown.
3. Web comics — Along with Man­a­Na­tion the pod­cast, I had envi­sioned a web comic to go along with it. We launched not one, but two! T:apped, a web­comic drawn by my buddy Andres Gar­cia, who is an amaz­ing artist! And XMTG, inspired by the XKCD web comic, it is done by me with my envi­able Pho­to­shop skills.

So let’s now look at my 2010 Goals:

1. Con­tinue to expand and improve our Arti­cles — I’ve got some big plans for adding to the writ­ing staff and improv­ing the site expe­ri­ence for you all. Should be exciting!
2. Change Magic Cov­er­age — I’m car­ry­ing this one over from 2009, which was car­ried over from 2008 sort of. I’ve got to make it hap­pen. I just have to.
3. Live show — I still want to make this hap­pen. Either as a spe­cial from loca­tion, or as a reg­u­lar sort of thing. We’ll see.
4. Site Redesign — As we have increased arti­cles and Magic news, the site design is no longer quite what we need.
5. Mer­chan­dise Returns! — When Man­a­Na­tion launched I did a lim­ited run of T-shirts, sim­ple, screen printed, and quickly sold out. I’ve since had many many inquiries about their return. And 2010 is the year. I want to make shirts hap­pen, maybe some other stuff too!

Pre­dic­tions for 2010!

1. StarCityGames’s 10K open Series proves mas­sively suc­cess­ful — While only lim­ited to the US, it is the ground­work for other ven­dors to begin really push­ing tour­na­ments as a way for adver­tis­ing and addi­tional revenue.
2. Top play­ers of 2010: Kibler, Watan­abe, and Con­ley Woods — Kibler has been doing very well. Watanabe’s suc­cess can’t be ques­tioned. And Con­ley Woods has been con­tin­u­ally ris­ing and push­ing his way into the upper ech­e­lon of play­ers, I think 2010 we’ll see him with a big win.
3. Magic pod­cast­ing / blog­ging con­tin­ues to explode — 2009 saw a sharp increase in blog­gers and pod­cast­ers, and I pre­dict it to con­tinue in 2010.
4. A new web­site will rise to power — I’m not using this as a veiled way of say­ing Man­a­Na­tion will dom­i­nate. I’m talk­ing about a site, either a small one that will launch into the stratos­phere, or a com­pletely new one that we don’t know about. I’ve just got this feeling.
5. Another year of record atten­dances — I expect GPs to con­tinue to be highly attended.

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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