What Were Planeswalker Points? Will We Ever See Them Again?

Teferi, Master of Time | Illustration by Yongjae Choi

The best part about Magic: The Gathering is, to no one's surprise, the gathering! Meeting with your friends, family, and other like-minded players at your LGS to enjoy pre-release and other special events is the greatest experience of the MTG community.

If you were playing Magic: The Gathering any time before or during 2012, you may remember planeswalker points as the mechanism for tracking your progress and participation at sanctioned events. If you started playing after 2020, let’s educate you on some MTG history!

What Were Planeswalker Points?

Path of the Enigma | Illustration by Jeremy Wilson

Planeswalker points, introduced in 2012, were the original reward system used around the world to track your progress and grant you various perks when playing at DCI events (basically, sanctioned tournaments). Any events sanctioned via Wizards of the Coast like casual prerelease events were included as players tracked their planeswalker points.

Planeswalker Point Rewards

Planeswalker points were awarded to you for at least showing up at sanctioned events and participating in Magic: The Gathering. Whether you won or lost at the event, you still earned points. However, if you claimed victory, you were awarded additional points. If there were special sanctioned events occurring, some of them even featured a points multiplier for the chance of earning more planeswalker points in one event.

For a typical casual event like FNM or a pre-release, you'd usually be awarded 3 points per match win and 1 point per draw. A more competitive tournament like a PTQ or Grand Prix might have something like a 3x or 5x multiplier to these numbers.

Three categories of planeswalker points were prominent. The competitive points category earned you planeswalker points for participating in Pro Tour, World Magic Cup events, and other sanctioned tournament events.

The professional category included points that you could accumulate during the Pro Tour season, which was a category added during the 2018 to 2019 season. Points were calculated to find out the best 12 players of the last four Pro Tour cycles. The last category of planeswalker points was your lifetime count, which meant how many points you have accumulated overall since you signed up for the points system.

Why Were Planeswalker Points Retired?

The planeswalker points system was retired on May 27, 2020, eight years after its inception. You no longer need your DCI number to participate in LGS tournaments.

Planeswalker points were discontinued because Wizards wanted to go for a more modernized system of gameplay accessible from your smartphone. Now, there’s a new app for that!

Additionally, there was a steep decline in in-store play due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and a restructuring of the tournament scene changed the way most players interact with competitive Magic. These events surely had an impact on the decline of the planeswalker point system.

What Replaced Planeswalker Points?

The MTG Companion app has multiple functionalities that any Magic player would want in their arsenal. You can track prior LGS or professional events you attended as well as the results of each of them. During each event, you’re notified of when your next match is and the time limit for your current match up.

If you want to get creative, you can have a tournament wherever you’re at with the MTG Companion app’s Home Tournament organizer. List up to eight players in the app and automatically get paired against someone in a tournament style event so you can enjoy a gameplay experience without having to leave the comfort of home or a friend’s house.

Can You Still Check Your Planeswalker Points?

No, you unfortunately can’t check your planeswalker points anymore. When Wizards shut down the planeswalker points system, they also ceased access to the website where you could check how many you had. This also means that prior gameplay history from 2011 to 2020 has been erased.

The only way you could have grabbed this play history was if you went to www.planeswalkerpoints.com before they shut down on May 27, 2020. Now, if you attempt to go to that planeswalker points tracking website, it automatically takes you to the Wizards of the Coast Magic homepage.

Planeswalker Points Ranks

Planeswalker points had a ranking system as follows. There were certain levels that could be achieved through sanctioned events, and your overall ranking depended on the number of planeswalker points you had in your lifetime. Not that you could earn “byes” at tournament events like Grand Prix by acquiring enough planeswalker points during a particular season.

Who Had the Most Planeswalker Points?

A gentleman by the name of Shuhei Nakamura earned 100,000 planeswalker points through the lifetime of the system. Among all Magic players, he was the ultimate Archmage. He earned 94,000 more points than the minimum required to become an Archmage.

Keep On Planeswalking, Players!

Path of the Ghosthunter | Illustration by Eli Minaya

Whether you started playing Magic: The Gathering when planeswalker points were around or after they phased out like permanents do when you cast Teferi's Protection, this 30-year-old tabletop game is still thriving, point system or not.

Do you want to learn more about the history of planeswalker points and how to use the MTG Companions app? Look no further than the Draftsim Discord where you can connect with other like-minded Magic players vying for more knowledge of the game. The veterans online will guide you!

Until then, keep planeswalking forward even without the planeswalker points. At least there’s the MTG Companion app now!