OK, here's some things that jump out at me immediately...
1) We now know when every Regional Championship is. We also know in general where every Regional Championship is. If you combine the "5 per date" with the information we know 100%, it tells us everything except the exact locations and the prize structure.
In short...
Fall: Southern Plains (Houston), Great Lakes (Ft. Wayne Indiana), North East (Philly), NoCal (Santa Clara), Eastern Canada (Toronto)
Winter: Northwest (Oregon), Mississippi Valley (St. Louis), Mid-Atlantic (Virginia), Florida (Orlando), SoCal (unknown)
Spring: Southern (UGA), Mountain West (Salt Lake City), West Canada (Vancouver), New England (Patriots Stadium), Midwest (Madison)
2) Kickers. I like this better than last year, though I do wish that all places scaled instead of being discrete levels. I don't think that winning a 3 person tournament is the same as winning a 64 person tournament.
3) CP distribution. Why is 9-12 different from 13-16? That makes zero sense. Those guys all go out at the exact same time under those kickers without exception. Those should NOT be different. But I REALLY like that Regionals are now worth more than States, at all places. Basically, Regionals are awarded one-step-up points from States. And I love this change!
4) BFLs. Those are kinda tiny, dontcha think? There are 10 weeks of BRs and at least 5 weeks of Cities (probably hopefully more). That's 20 BR tourneys and at least 10 Cities. In other words, you can only get points from 30% of BRs and 60% (at best) of Cities. And that's not including City Marathon events. I'm not sure about this change yet.
5) Discrete Worlds Invite Levels. I LOVE this. This should have been in place a LONG time ago! Now that there's no penalty for losing games or tourneys, I see people playing both to earn their way in and to potentially Grinch points from other players. More players playing is a good thing in almost every case.
6) Play! Points. What can you do with these?!? When will that be explained? And please don't say "holiday 2012". I've heard that far too many times for these casual awards kinds of things.
7) Season Start Date. Did I just hear a confirmation of US Nationals for June 28-30 in there? If all July events count for the next season's CP and P!P total, then that leads me to conclude that all of the current season's events INCLUDING NATIONALS will be completed by the end of June. For those that keep track of this, the Indiana Convention Center website at this moment basically shows the Con as being completely empty on that weekend. There's a 600 attendance Wild Birds convention, but that's nothing compared to the Centennial we had to deal with a couple years ago. And this year's event ends on a Saturday. Mebbe we can actually get reasonably priced hotels in downtown Indy this year? I certainly hope so ^_^
In total, I rather like these changes. They encourage higher attendance, give great information for late in the season, and best allow us to plan for every event except for Battle Road Autumn (largely due to the lateness of getting the information). This is good to hear, and I applaud TPCi for these changes.
