Yesterday, Pete Hoefling announced changes to SCG Premier Play programs. We knew changes were coming- Open Points had already been announced to not be awarded at IQs anymore- but I don't know that anybody was ready for the full scale of these changes. Here are some cliff notes:

Three Invitationals a year instead of four.
Only Standard and Modern Invitational formats.
All Sunday events at Opens will now award prize wall tickets instead of cash.
Open payout remains the same.
Fewer Legacy Opens.
Very few West Coast events.
Some stuff about squirrel tokens or something.

As a level-headed person looking at a business, it makes sense not to force somebody who qualified for an event by playing Standard to find a Legacy deck. As somebody who is excited that Dig Through Time was finally banned, this upsets me as I will have fewer opportunities to play Legacy. Also, let's be real, I don't want to play for prize tickets. If I wanted to do that, I'd be playing ski-ball. For me personally, this means traveling to fewer Opens and skipping town early on Sunday if my car doesn't day 2, where I would formerly always play the Sunday event.

As for financial impact, this undoubtedly impacts the market for Legacy staples. These cards are still as rare as they ever were, but with less support for the format it's going to get harder to move dual lands and the like. If you've ever tried to sell dual lands for market price, you know that this already was a relatively tall order.

These decisions are being made in the financial best interest of SCG, which is something that I can respect. But I don't have to like them. For my money, I'm going to be paying a lot more attention to the GP schedule going forward.