The Competitive Future: Prizing, Prestige, and Building Toward Big Tournaments

MetaZoo’s Organized Play (OP) roadmap isn’t about rushing to massive tournaments or giant cash prizes. Instead, it’s about building a sustainable, rewarding competitive structure that grows alongside the community. In their latest OP showcase and MetaZoo Monday Q&A, Charlie Hurlocker outlined the vision for tournaments, prizing, and prestige — a vision rooted in long-term success, not short-term hype.

Here’s how MetaZoo plans to grow competitive play that’s meaningful, fair, and fun.

Why Big Tournaments Come Later — and Why That’s Smart

Charlie was clear: launching huge tournaments too soon can be a mistake that hurts games rather than helps them.

The history of blowing all of your marketing capabilities on a massive tournament that a small number of people show up to because you have not put the work in to build a broad base yet is unkind… It is not a matter of whether or not we want to do bigger tournaments, and it is not a matter of whether or not bigger prizes can be associated with those. It is: what is the commensurate level of support that you need to successfully create a satisfying tournament series, and to create a satisfying prize pool relationship to those.

- Charlie Hurlocker

The plan is to first build a strong, grassroots player base through demos, kitchen table play, and small store events — creating a healthy ecosystem that can support larger events over time.

It doesn't take a historian to understand that this is also refers to the old MetaZoo's business practices of offering very large amounts of money for different tower tournaments. That was just one of many things that slowly put the nail in the proverbial coffin of the old MetaZoo.

2026 and Beyond: The Path to Prestige

While 2025 will focus on growth and local play, 2026 is when MetaZoo expects to begin introducing more significant competitive events.

At least I know I really like that structure — invitational type events where there’s prestige in having the opportunity to attend, and then they build off of that… I don’t want to hard commit, but 2026 is definitely the time to start looking and thinking: is that the time? And also, just making sure that there’s enough cards out to make for a cool and compelling environment to do that, which we’re not through that wall yet.

- Charlie Hurlocker

By waiting until the card pool is rich and the community is strong, MetaZoo aims to ensure its big tournaments are truly exciting and meaningful.

Prizing: Why Unique Cards Matter More Than Just Cash

Rather than relying on cash alone to drive interest, MetaZoo wants prizing to reflect its unique identity and reward players in ways that feel special.

One of the ways that we talk about this too early on is: I think that one of the disservices that games do is they overemphasize their own IP in these environments, and what they do is they alienate the sense of prestige… When you provide unique prizing through the lens of the IP that is valuable, that is where you get your immersion, and that is when things start to be really cool.

- Charlie Hurlocker

This philosophy ensures prizing builds connection to the game and its community, rather than simply attracting players chasing cash.

Serialized Cards and Prizing

Many players asked about serialized cards and how they’ll be used in future prizing. Charlie addressed this thoughtfully.

On a global basis, the importance of being able to supply the core product makes it challenging to do serialized in a compelling way… The right choice right now, which we’re pretty confident in, is to put it through this organized play path that we’ve outlined in the OP roadmap.

- Charlie Hurlocker

Serialized cards will be tied to OP participation — special rewards for those who engage in the community — rather than being mass-included in main sets, at least for now.

Building a Judge Program and Fair Tournament Support

Charlie also touched on plans for a judge program, emphasizing the need for accessible, community-supported adjudication.

Obviously there’s a core functionality that is necessary of having the ability for an individual who knows the game well to be able to identify in a public-facing way that they do know that game that well. And that’s especially important for stores… The front layer, when you have that problem, is having somebody who has put that work in to be credentialed in the lightest possible way, the most accessible possible way.

- Charlie Hurlocker

He also noted that while judge rewards are tricky due to legal considerations (e.g. avoiding misclassification as employees), there will be approved practices, such as staff promos, that help stores recognize volunteer contributions.

MetaZoo’s competitive future is about doing things right — building prestige, offering meaningful prizes, and creating tournaments that players can be proud to win. With big events on the horizon and a thoughtful, player-focused roadmap, the path from kitchen table play to regional champion has never looked more promising.

Stay tuned to MetaZoo News for the latest updates, insights, and community coverage as Organized Play unfolds.