Magic Online Weekly Announcements, April 9, 2024

Posted on Apr 09, 2024

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THE LEAD

Outlaws of Thunder Junction Set Article Live – On-Sale Next Week

Breaking News! It’s time to gather your motley crew of outlaws for a Crime Spree to collect a Big Score! Outlaws of Thunder Junction hits the digital shelves of Magic Online next Tuesday, April 16. But you can read all about all of this now in our set article:

• Play Boosters – including the Special Guests and The Big Score on The List, plus a Breaking News bonus sheet – and Commander Decks
• Art Bundles and two new Premium Effects – Gilded and Rain
• The return of Commander Leagues – tomorrow after downtime!
• Event Updates, including a whole mess of new Format Challenge events on weekdays!
• The usual slate of updates (MOPR, CMDR Backlog, Prestige Avatars, etc)

New Player Kits Update Tomorrow

Big news – and be sure to tell your buddies: after tomorrow’s downtime, the items that new accounts receive on sign up and after upgrading will change. Check out this article as Creative Director Ryan Spain shares the thought process behind the changes intended to playing games right away a frictionless experience!

New Account Starter Kit (Free-to-Play Tier)

After completing account verification, new players receive 5 Starter Decks – one each curated for Commander, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Pauper. These are playable out of the box – ideal for Open Play and Solitaire modes to acclimate to Magic Online’s game controls.

New accounts also get 20 New Player Points to try out Super Jump and the Modern & Commander Gauntlets. They also receive two of each common from recent sets and two avatars – all before ever paying a dollar inside the game!

Account Upgrade Kit ($4.99 USD)

In addition to unlocking all functions in the game and 10 more New Player Points, a world of deckbuilding possibility will open. The Account Upgrade Kit provides over FIVE THOUSAND cards with which to experiment. Included in the Kit are:

• The Buddy Lands and the Temples
• 4x copies of commons and uncommons in a wide variety of decks and formats
• Single copies of many common and uncommon Commander staples – all a new Commander player needs to build any number of decks!

Decklist Support

Because that amount of cards is, frankly, huge, we have assembled pre-constructed decklists across formats that use only cards within the Starter Kit and the Upgrade Kit. We’ve partnered with Moxfield to host our decklist page – where all you have to do is download the decklist and import it into Collection.

For those averse to “net-decking”, the idea is to download the list, get playing, then start tinkering. The lists are just Pre-Cons for 60-card formats.

Commander Workshop On Sale Tomorrow

Calling all Commander Players: Kick-start your Collection with 2,000 cards from across MTGO’s history curated for the 100-card format – all for just $39 USD! To learn more about this new evergreen product that goes on-sale after tomorrow’s downtime, check out Product Manager Tony Mayer’s article found here.

Congratulations to MOCS Season 1 Showcase Invitees

The Postseason has wrapped up, and we now know who has advanced to the next MOCS Showcase on Saturday, May 18 (10 a.m. PT at twitch.tv/magiconline). Congratulations go to:

For more information on MTGO Premier Play, click the link at the top of the Blog.

Downtime Tomorrow – 9 a.m. to Noon PT

Magic Online will be down for scheduled maintenance tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT (16:00-19:00 UTC) to upload all the changes mentioned above to the system. During that time, our Forums and Help sites will also be down. Keep an eye on our social channels linked at the top of the Blog for real-time updates.

MTGO BROADCASTS

MTGO Masters – Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. & 5 p.m. PT

Our newest streaming series - MTGO Masters – rolls on in the second phase of this season's competition!

Sixteen top Magic celebrities square off in a 12-week tournament to determine who’s best at solving the Modern metagame. Returning to host are Anuraag Das and Will Hall with added commentary from the players themselves throughout the broadcast.

Catch all the action every Wednesday at 1 p.m. PT (20:00 UTC) on twitch.tv/magiconline or twitch.tv/anzidmtg. There is also a re-broadcast in prime time in the Americas that begins immediately following the live stream (usually about 5-6 p.m. PT)! There are giveaways every week during the live stream, so be sure to join us!

Last week, Carmen Klomparens and Jake Beardsley became the first two competitors to reach the Top 8, while Luna and Reid Duke will have one more chance to get there in a few weeks.

Tomorrow’s show features the first eliminations of the season. Doing the best to avoid the chop will be:

• Modern Super League winner and PT commentator extraordinaire Corey Baumeister
• Ace MTGO streamer AspiringSpike
• The Pro Tour’s head scribe, from magic.gg, Corbin Hosler
• Canadian Modern maven Nikachu

Last week, Brad Nelson and Arya Karamchandani punched their tickets to the Top 8, while Eduardo Sajgalik and Cedric Phillips will have one more chance to get there in a few weeks.  

The two winners this week will advance to the Last Chance pod on April 24, while the other two will be done for this campaign.

PREMIER PLAY

Limited Qualifier Friday

Your first chance to score Regional Championship invites for this fall comes this Friday in the Limited Qualifier. The event kicks off at 2 p.m. PT (21:00 UTC / 06:00 Sat JST) and features the swan song of Murders at Karlov Manor with Sealed Deck followed by a Top 8 Draft.

The tournament costs 40 Season 1 Qualifier Points to enter, and prizes pay out to the Top 64 (Qualifier). The Top 2 finishers earn seats at that Regional Championship which feeds the first Pro Tour of 2025.

For more information on these events, click the Premier Play Information link at the top of the Blog.

It's Showcase Challenge Weekend

A new MOCS season is underway, so it’s time to qualify the first players for the next round of Showcase Qualifiers in July. 

It takes 40 Season 1 Qualifier Points to enter a Showcase Challenge. The Top 8 finishers in each event earn a Championship Entry Token for the event’s format plus earn Leaderboard Points toward an At-Large berth in the next Showcase!

Here are the dates and times for this weekend’s events: 

For more information on these events, click the Premier Play Information link at the top of the Blog.

ALTERNATE PLAY

Artifact Chaos Draft Starts Tomorrow!

Chaos Draft returns – this time featuring a ton of artifact-centric sets thrown in the grab bag! The League runs starting after tomorrow’s downtime until next Tuesday. The usual entry options of 10 Event Tickets or 100 Play Points apply and prizes mirror those of Cube Leagues.

Two boosters each from 18 sets will comprise the 36-booster draft pool, from which 24 are pulled randomly per draft pod (no player will open two of the same pack). Here’s the set list:

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Aether Revolt, Alara Reborn, Darksteel, Fifth Dawn, Kaladesh, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, Modern Horizons 2, Murders at Karlov Manor, New Phyrexia, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, Scars of Mirrodin, Shards of Alara, The Brother’s War, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Throne of Eldraine

Vintage Cube Run Ends Tomorrow

The current run of Vintage Cube wraps up with tomorrow’s downtime. Be sure to complete your last drafts by that time.

Alternate Play Schedule

Here’s a look at the schedule of events coming up between now and Outlaws at Thunder Junction. Except for Best-of-One, all of these offerings are Phantom – cards won’t be added to players’ collections in Phantom events. All transitions take place at 10:00 a.m. PT unless otherwise noted.

• April 10-16 – We’ve gathered 18 sets with a medium-to-heavy emphasis on the most universal of card types to create Artifact Chaos Draft!

When Is Vintage Cube Back?

A new regular feature of the Blog, this item will mention when the next scheduled run of our most popular event will take place:

• MOCS Support Round: May 8-22

EVENT UPDATES

Lots of New Challenges & Prelims on Weekdays!

Thanks to a lot of Community feedback last week, we have added 17 new Challenge and Preliminary tournaments Monday-Friday (and Saturday morning in the Asia-Pacific region). We’re hoping to cater to underserved audiences across the schedule!

You can find the updated schedule grid or check out our Calendar link at the top for this week’s events. The only one left between Blog post time and downtime is a new Modern Challenge 32 today at 1 p.m. PT (20:00 UTC). After downtime tomorrow, the first new event is a Legacy Challenge 32 at 2 p.m. PT (21:00 UTC).

Commander Leagues are Live Tomorrow!

Leagues for all types of Commander players are back on the menu starting tomorrow! There are two Leagues for Constructed and one for Limited:

• Competitive Commander: a 4-Player pod with winner-take-all prize
• Friendly Commander: a 4-Player pod with prizes awarded by votes
• Commander Masters Phantom Draft: 4-Player Draft & 4-Player Matches, winner-take-all prize

Full details can be found in the OTJ Set Article linked at the top of the Blog. These Leagues run until the launch of Modern Horizons 3 in June.

WEEKLY UPDATES 

Redemption Corner

We’ve updated our Redemption page with new quantity percentages.

Murders at Karlov Manor Redemption Tokens are now available and are almost half-gone.

Stock is running low for The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Redemption Tokens (both regular and premium) and Wilds of Eldraine (regular sets only).

Two-Factor Authentication Is Now Live – Protect Your Account Today!

A long-requested security feature is now part Magic Online – check out Ryan Spain’s article to learn the why, what, and how to put Two-Factor Authentication into effect to help protect your account!

Magic Online Format Challenges Every Weekend

Format Challenges are the first step toward qualifying for Premier Play through your favorite Magic formats and provide excellent prizes for those looking to test their mettle in their favorite formats. Learn more about Premier Play qualification to get started today.

Magic Online's Format Challenges run as shown on the schedule on this page.

PATCH NOTES – April 10, 2024

General Updates

• Outlaws of Thunder Junction and its ancillary sets have been added. Cards will be legal to use on April 16.
• New Player contents have been updated – see above for details and links.
• Avatars distributed from the Vintage vs Type 1 event in March have been fixed to avoid life total display conflicts.
• Commander Leagues have been re-enabled, both with voting and regular winner-take-all formats.
• The base foiling effect has been updated.

Card-Specific Issues

• Reenact the Crime will interact correctly with split cards.
• Braids, Arisen Nightmare interacts correctly with Kenrith’s Transformation
• Skyfisher Spider will correctly be able to be exiled from its controller’s graveyard by an opponent.
• Knowledge Pool has been reimplemented to function correctly.
• Barreling Attack will trigger as expected.

NEXT SCHEDULED DOWNTIME – June 5, 2024

After tomorrow, the next scheduled maintenance will take place on Wednesday, June 5 between 9 a.m. and 12 noon Pacific time (16:00-19:00 UTC). This is to support the release of Modern Horizons 3.