Some Structural Patreon Changes

Hey y'all -- I'm announcing some changes to how I charge for my content going forward. Reasoning below, but giving the headline upfront:

Weekly strategy content going forward will be always gated by a paid subscription (instead of being free after 2 weeks), and that paid sub is going from $5/month -> $10/month.

The entire backlog will still be free and I will still publish free content occasionally, but this won't be the default

I'm also creating a discord for Patreon subscribers, meant to be a place for in-depth discussion in a smaller community.

I'm now going to be offering coaching for free to players with marginalized identities, gated as my own capacity for it goes up & down.

As usual, not going to police people about their identities, I'm not a cop, but I'll also offer "regular" coaching at the same rate as before ($50/hr) for anyone who wants to buy it from me.

When I started this Patreon, I had just finished 2nd at Arena Championship 5 and secured a Worlds slot. I wanted to try my hand at writing about Magic because I thought I'd be good at it. Even though I didn't get many paid subscribers until the Otters deck breakout (and that wasn't the primary goal based on how I'd set up the Patreon), I still felt like I'd proven I was good at this. I've always believed that the work I put into these pieces is labor that is worthy of compensation, and that my content would stand as valuable enough to sit behind a higher paywall - but I also wanted to be able to treat this as a creative project and give back to the community at the same time. The paid early access & free release system I think worked great for this, and I'm very proud of all I've been able to contribute to the Magic content ecosystem through that.

I'd been planning to look for a part-time job after Worlds as I tried to figure out how to stay afloat a bit more financially while preparing for PT1. I talked about this at the end of the Otters guide and noted that it would likely get in the way of being able to write as much going forward. The response to the Otters article and my explanation was that enough people seemed to be willing to pay for my content that I could somewhat justify not doing that, yet.

The way professional play works, I have no idea how long I'll be able to continue on the "train" - despite believing I am one of the best active players out there right now after spending a year getting better at Magic like it was a full-time job (it didn't pay like one, of course, but I had savings and made that choice intentionally, a choice I was and am privileged to be able to make). It's both incredibly hard to stay on the PT, and orders of magnitude harder to get back. Nathan Steuer, the World Champion from 2 years ago, is currently not qualified and it might take him a while to return even though it will happen eventually because he's an incredible player. I say this basically to say that it would not be financially viable for me to have "competing at magic" be something I spend the majority of my labor on, if I fall off.

Of course, this would be a completely fair outcome - nobody inherently "deserves" to be able to play a game for a living!

However, especially the way it's structured now, the effect of this for my content would be that it would go away or be drastically reduced in both quality and frequency.

I'd like to move to a structure that at least has a chance of making it worth it for me to continue writing about the game independently of my PT status, while also being able to give back to the community.

Additionally, particularly with the recent news about WOTC dropping support for the VML, I know we're going to need a community effort to create spaces where marginalized players can improve and reach the highest levels of the game in a communal way. I want to make my contribution to those goals more directly tied to the goals themselves, and free coaching for competitive players who want to reach the PT, and haven't yet, seems like a good way to do that. Subscribing to my writing will directly help me be able to offer this.

I usually spend somewhere between 5-10 hours a week creating these pieces (videos often take a bit less time), and the articles themselves are informed by my expertise, which comes from spending the rest of my time learning Magic in deep ways. $10/month is $2.50 per piece, and this seems like a fair price for the outputs of this labor -- still significantly less than people charge for a lot of other Magic content. A recurring cost is different of course, but I've published something I'm proud of every week since I started this, and I don't see that stopping unless I have to. To put it another way, I'm extremely sure I could make more money if I spent this time doing something else: I'm still writing about Magic specifically because I love it and believe I'm good at it, not because it's a way to make money, and this won't change that.

I understand that this will still mean some of my content is going to become inaccessible to people who just can't afford this cost. I am proud of the work I've been able to put out there for free, and I'm not asking anyone to buy my work going forward unless it is worth it for them to do so. I'm making a bet that it will be for enough people. If you can't afford a regular subscription but want access to a specific piece, feel free to reach out and I'm open to discussing individual exchanges like access for a discounted price, an honest public review, etc.

In terms of implementation, the fairest way to do this seems to be to create a new tier of Patreon subscription, and gate future articles behind that. Anyone is welcome to continue paying me $5/month if they'd like to support me, but that's pretty much all that tier will do. I'll keep that tier as a "you'd like to support me and want access to the discord" level or something like that, but obviously I don't expect anyone to stay on that subscription -- If anyone gets charged on that tier going forward without wanting to be, Patreon has tools for refunds and I'm more than happy to do that.

I appreciate everyone who's followed my work this past year - I hope these changes and my explanation for them seem reasonable, and I'm looking forward to making even more great stuff this year! If you won't be able to subscribe going forward, but got value out of the free stuff I created, thank you for reading! I would like to highlight a small thing you can do that helps me a lot, materially - simply share the free work that's out there whenever the topics it covers come up in Magic conversations and give your honest thoughts about it with others. This might seem like it doesn't matter but it has a really huge impact for me!

I have a few more pieces in the works, then there will likely be a short break in content for the first half of February as I dive into prep for PT1, much like I did for Worlds. This is the same process of deep preparation that led to the Otters deck and my guide for it, so I'm really excited to come back & write about whatever Sanctum comes up with next. Stay tuned!