Swiss Unity League: Guide for Players

The Swiss Unity League (SUL) is a collaborative league in 2023 between various Magic tournament organizers in Switzerland with an end of year 2-day invitational tournament with 3.5k+ Prizes.

Any organizer can register their tournament for the league to make it award Qualification Points (QPs). Players need to collect these QPs in order to qualify for the invitational tournament.

Changelog

• 11 April:
  • End of season is reduced by 1 week.
  • Revocation Cardmarket coupons
  • Top 8/Playoffs clarification

SUL Invitational 18-19.11.2023

3.5k Prize Pool

• 1st: 1000 €*
• 2nd: 500 €*
• 3rd/4th: 350 €*
• 5th-8th: 250 €*
• 9th-12th 75 €*

*The prizes will be awarded in the form of Cardmarket coupons.

In March 2023 Cardmarket announced the revocation of Cardmarket coupons. We're currently working on a solution with Cardmarket, so that we can still hand out coupons as prizes.

How to Qualify

The season for the SUL will run from 1st of January 2023 to 31st of October 2023. During that time all tournaments participating at SUL will award Qualification Points (QPs). The top 32 players that earned the most QPs are qualified at the end of the season.

Tournament Structure

Location: To be announced

Entry: Free, but only qualified players can participate.

• Day 1:
  • 5 Rounds of Modern
  • 3 Rounds of Draft
• Day 2:
  • 3 Rounds of Modern
  • 3 Rounds of Draft
  • Top 8 Modern

How to participate

Tell your local tournament organizer (TO) about our league and show them the Guide for Organizers page! Your TO will then register their local events for the league so you can start collecting Qualification Points at those events.

Qualification Points

Players can earn Qualification Points (QPs) at all tournaments participating in the league. QPs are awarded in the following three ways:

• Match Points: A player receives QPs equal to the match points they earned during the swiss rounds of the tournament. (E.g. A record of 3-1-1 in swiss rounds awards 10 QPs).
• Participation: A player receives 3 QPs just for participating at the event.
• Playoffs: The top 8/12/16 players receive extra QPs (explained later).

Tournament Types

There are 3 types of tournaments (SUL Regular, Regional, and Premier). Your local tournament organizer will assign one of these 3 types to each tournament they organize. Depending on the type of tournament, a different number of QPs will be awarded to the participants.

SUL Regular

All normal events (weekly, FNM, Prerelease) at your local store or association are SUL Regular events.

SUL Regional

SUL Regional events are medium-sized events for which people travel all around your canton to attend them. For each format your local tournament organizers can organize one of these events per month (1 Modern, 1 Limited, 1 Standard, etc. per month). SUL Regional events can be with or without a top 8.

SUL Premier

SUL Premier events are meant to be huge tournaments for which people travel all around Switzerland. To make those events feel special and exciting your local tournament organizer can only host up to 2 of these events per year.

SUL Multiplier

Each of the 3 tournament types has a different multiplier that increases the number of Qualification Points the players earn. SUL Regular events have a multiplier of 1x, SUL Regional 4x, and SUL Premier 6x. The QPs earned for match points and participation (but not for playoffs) are multiplied with the given multiplier for the tournament.

Over the course of the season a player can earn a maximum of 500 QPs with all SUL Regular events combined, further points will be ignored. With SUL Regional and Premier events a player can earn an unlimited amount of points.

Qualification Points with Playoffs

Events with playoffs award additional Qualification Points according to the schema below. For SUL Premier events running a top 8 is mandatory. For SUL Regional events the tournament organizer can decide if they wish to run their event with playoffs or not (top 4 or top 8 depends on the number of players).

The QPs for 9th-12th and 13th-16th are only awarded if the tournament has more than 32 or 48 participants.

Example

Chandra plays a SUL Premier event (multiplier 6x) at her local gaming store with 41 participants. During the 5 Swiss rounds she manages to get 3 wins, 2 losses, and 1 draw (10 match points). She places 11th in the overall ranking. Therefore she receives 60 QPs (6x10) for the match points, 18 QPs (6x3) just for participating. Since the event has more than 32 players, she receives an additional 75 QPs for placing 11th. With this event she earns a grand total of 153 QPs.

Byes

The best performing players at the league are awarded byes (free wins in the first rounds) for the invitational tournament at the end of the year. A player can have at maximum 2 byes, further byes will be ignored. Players can earn byes in the following ways:

• The top 5 players (with the most QPs) will be awarded 1 bye.
• The player of the year (top 1 with the most QPs) will be awarded 2 byes.
• SUL Premier events with more than 128 participants award 2 byes to the winner of the tournament.

How do we finance this ?

In addition to sponsorships, tournament organizers will pay a small fee for each participant of the Regional and Premier events they organize. For detailed information, see Guide for Organizers!