Last week, we focused on some changes to tournament rules that will be officially implemented soon. However, that is not the only thing that has changed in Magic organized play in the last few weeks. The structure of high-level play, the Planeswalker Points system, and how invites to Pro Tours and byes at Grands Prix are awarded have changed.

As with the tournament rules changes mentioned last week, this post won’t go into all of the details. If you do want to see a detailed breakdown of all the changes you can read them here and here.

As mentioned above, here is a brief overview. How Planeswalker Points will be used for invitations and determining byes at Grands Prix will be changed. After Pro Tour Dark Ascension in Honolulu in February, a high competitive Planeswalker Points total will no longer be able to get you an invite to the Pro Tour. Starting with Pro Tour Avacyn Restored in Barcelona, invitations will be be awarded to high place finishers at preceding Pro Tours, Top Four players at Grands Prix feeding the Pro Tour, Pro Tour Qualifier winners, and Pro Player Club and Hall of Fame members.

Starting April 1, 2012, byes at Grands Prix will no longer be awarded based on those players with the highest totals, but will be based on a threshold. For example, instead of getting a bye at Grands Prix for having one of the top 1500 competitive Planeswalker Points totals, they will go to all players will at least 300 points. This system will change for all byes at GPs.

The final thing to point out here is that the multipliers for many events have changed. Friday Night Magic will now have a 1x multiplier (instead of the previous 3x multiplier). Additionally, public events at Grands Prix will now have a 3x multiplier (instead of the previous 5x multiplier).

There are a few other changes and additional details, and it is recommended that you read the articles linked above to learn about all of them.