Magic Online Weekly Announcements, September 17, 2024

Posted on Sep 17, 2024

THE LEAD

Duskmourn: House of Horror Article Today!

From Rooms to multiple cool card treatments, this impending set does anything but manifest dread ... learn all about Duskmourn: House of Horror (set code DSK) in this article. Within that you’ll find out about all the scariness in store on MTGO starting next Tuesday:

• DSK Premium Boosters – get your bling on for just $5.99 USD each
• Commander Decks – both the ones from this set and several from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate
• Duel Commander’s ascent to full format with Challenges and Leagues
• Alternate Play (#horrorcube), including the return of Commander Draft Leagues
• Plus the usual bits and bobs: MOPR, Avatars, Treasure Chest info, etc

Downtime Tomorrow – 9 a.m. to Noon PT

Magic Online will be down for scheduled maintenance tomorrow, September 18, from 9 a.m. to approximately 12 noon Pacific time (16:00-19:00 UTC). Be sure to follow our social media outlets (Discord, Twitter/X, and more) to keep real-time tabs on this release. As a reminder, our Help site and Forums will also be down during this period.

VINTAGE CUBE LIVE

Final Chance to Start a Run to Vegas This Saturday!

One of the biggest events in Magic Online history hits its stretch drive this week. Win your way to Las Vegas to draft Vintage Cube – LIVE at MagicCon: Las Vegas, thanks to our friends at Ultimate Guard – and take everything you draft home with you!

For the latest updates to the series announced yesterday, check out this article. Feeder Leagues for Week 7 and Week 8 will be shorter than usual to limit the number of players who will end up unable to use their Tokens.

To get to Vegas, you must run a gauntlet of three different tournaments undefeated:

Step 1 – The Feeder League

The entry point for the series - 6 Event Tickets or 80 Play Points per course

Your final chance to play in the Feeder League will come this Saturday, September 21 starting at 9 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC). Note: Based on recent play history, this League could be as short as 8 hours. The player cap will be set at roughly two-thirds the level it was in Weeks. 3-6

Step 2 – The 64-Player Drafts

Use that Entry Token to battle through two straight single-elimination Cube Drafts. Six match wins in a single event advances you to the last step.

Week 7’s 64-Player Drafts are on a different posting schedule due to tomorrow’s downtime. Today’s events are already live. The events for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will post immediately following downtime or at 12 noon PT (19:00 UTC), whichever is later.

Friendly Reminders:

• Scheduled Events that are full will continue to be displayed in the client until their start time! This means that if someone drops from the event, that change will reflect right away instead of requiring you to restart MTGO.
• If a 64-Player Draft (or any other Scheduled Event) hasn’t reached its minimum number of players at the start time, the event will wait up to 15 minutes to get to the right number of players. There’s no reason to drop out after the start time – you'll be refunded if it fails to fire!
• If a regularly-scheduled 64 doesn’t fire for some reason, the replacement will be scheduled for 3 hours later and will be posted for entries as soon as possible following the cancellation.

Limited Championship Entry Tokens are usable as entry for all 8 Weeks of Vintage Cube LIVE.

Week 8’s 64-Player Drafts will post on the normal cadence – next Monday, September 23 at:

• 10 a.m. PT (17:00 UTC) for Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday events
• 5 p.m. PT (midnight Tuesday UTC) for Wednesday events

Any unused Entry Tokens will be exchanged for 120 Play Points each sometime the following week.

Step 3 – The Vegas Qualifier

The eight winners of a single Week’s 64-Player Drafts meet in one final showdown. The one player who’s left standing at the end punches their ticket to Las Vegas, while the other participants receive digital set prizes and an exclusive avatar.

Week 7’s Vegas Qualifier will be held on Saturday, September 21 at 9:30 a.m. PT (16:30 UTC).

The final player to reach Vegas will be determined on Saturday, September 28.

You can get full details on the entire series on this page, including the Official Rules. The link to the announcement article is found here.

MTGO BROADCASTS 

Congratulations Nam Dang, Our Latest MOCS Showcase Champion  

Eight of Magic Online’s top competitors gathered this weekend to earn their share of $50,000 and two invitations to the 2025 World Championship. In the end, Nam Dang ruled the day! 

The day began with Vintage Cube with the veteran Nam Dang having the hot hand. Nam ran a Boros Midrange strategy that defeated Dominick Paolercio, who played Radkos splashing green for planeswalkers, in the pod finals to lock up a seat in the Championship round. 

In the Modern rounds, the field’s 2 Mardu Energy decks met in the pod finals. Defending champion Stefan Schütz of Austria defeated Japan’s Naoto Inoue. 

Then in the Championship round, Nam dethroned Stefan with Domain Rhinos (a deck that went 0-3 in pod play) in two games. 

Nam took home $12,000 as Champion, while Stefan Schütz earned $11,000. Both players will appear at the 2025 Magic World Championship next year!  

The MTGO game team thanks all 8 Showcase competitors, our talented team of casters, and the exceptional behind-the-scenes production team for a great event! 

If you want to be part of the next Showcase in January, click the Premier Play Information link at the top to learn more. 

MTGO Masters Season 2 Concludes with Top 4 Showdown!

What began as sixteen online Magic luminaries gathering to sling spells in Modern on Magic Online is now down to the final four. It’s crunch time for MTGO Masters!

Tune in tomorrow at 1 p.m. PT (20:00 UTC) for the semifinals and Season 2’s championship round.

The four competitors for tomorrow’s show are:

• The defending champion, Arya Karamchandani
• Arne Huschenbeth
• Alexander Hayne
• Mason Clark

Anuraag Das and Will Hall return as hosts for the stream broadcast on the main MTGO Twitch channel – twitch.tv/magiconline – as well as Anuraag’s channel twitch.tv/anzidmtg. We would like to thank our co-streaming partners throughout the season – D00mwake and YungDingo! Also, keep up to date with the series at mtgo.com/masters.

PREMIER PLAY

Legacy Showcase Challenge This Sunday 

It’s time to get the next batch of players qualified for MOCS Season 3’s Showcase Qualifiers in November & December.  

You’ll need 40 Season 3 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 the second round of Showcase events – we are off our normal pattern for this round only:  
 

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

ALTERNATE PLAY

Modern Horizons 2 Flashback Starts Tomorrow

With the regular Vintage Cube League ending tomorrow with downtime, we owe the community an Modern Horizons 2 Draft event originally planned for May. That Phantom League will start tomorrow after downtime and run only until Duskmourn’s launch on Tuesday. Normal entry options and prize structures apply – 10 Event Tickets or 100 Play Points.

When Is Vintage Cube League Back?

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

• August Refresh to Support MOCS & Vintage Cube Live
  • New Cube in Feeder Leagues/64s/Vegas Qualifiers Now!
  • New Cube in Single Elimination Queues Now!
  • Normal Cube Leagues run until tomorrow
• October 28 to November 12 – Vintage Cube LIVE’s Prize Cube will be in MTGO

EVENT UPDATES

Format Challenge Entry & Prize Changes

We have heard feedback that the expansion of Constructed Challenges across our schedule last spring had unintended consequences on the overall MTGO economy – particularly, that too many Treasure Chests were entering the system. This was particularly exacerbated by events where only the minimum number of players (or close to it) joined. Also, we are interested in expanding the tent of players wanting to enter Challenge events.

So we are changing the entry amount and prize structure of Challenge events following tomorrow’s downtime. Constructed Challenges will now cost 25 Event Tickets or 250 Play Points to enter – down 5 tickets from before.

Prizes will be adjusted as follows:

We will be tracking attendance figures carefully and will be liberal in upgrading events from 32 to 64 players over the course of DSK season. (Limited Challenge 32 entry options and prize structures are unchanged)

Updates to Preliminary Event Schedule Kick In Next Week

Pioneer players have been showing up and showing out since the last B&R announcement a couple weeks ago, plus it’s the current RC format. Also, Standard’s rotation has led to renewed interest.

Therefore, we are adding additional Preliminaries to the weekly schedule starting next Tuesday in both formats. You can check out the updated Prelim and Challenge schedule on this page.

Unfortunately, because Pauper is not currently in the MOCS rotation and Prelims have barely fired at all over the last couple months, we have taken Pauper Prelims off the schedule. They will return the next time Pauper is a MOCS format, and there are no changes to Pauper Challenge times.

New Player Point Conversion

Back in June we announced the phasing out of New Player Points (NPPs). They have been replaced by Entry Tokens for distinct play experiences in Super Jump and Gauntlets. We will be removing NPPs from the system during tomorrow’s downtime and executing a one-time conversion of NPPs into Play Points as an allowance for play experiences not yet enjoyed.

Because 10 NPPs equaled one entry into Super Jump, we are granting 40 Play Points to each account with one or more NPP remaining in their inventory to ensure the account receives some play experience. (Accounts with 0 NPP remaining get nothing because they got their full play experience.)

We are applying this only for the portion of NPPs given as part of a purchase. Because a maximum of 10 NPPs could be collected by paying for the Account Upgrade Kit, the maximum number of Play Points granted this way will be 40 – any number of NPPs above 10 will not yield more Play Points.

AROUND THE WEB

MTGO University – MTGO Fundamentals How-To Series Live

We’ve introduced a brand-new landing spot for everything related to getting your new-to-MTGO friends up to speed on playing our game – MTGO University! Whether you’re new to a specific format, new to Magic Online, or are just curious about what this version of MTG is all about, check out MTGO University.

New to MTGO University – the MTGO Fundamentals playlist: short-form videos showing off a bunch of tips and tricks. Check it out on YouTube today!

2FA Required to Trade on MTGO

MTGO accounts that wish to engage in trade are now required to enable Two-Factor Authentication. You can read all about the reasoning for this change in this article and get instructions for enabling 2FA here.

WEEKLY UPDATES 

Redemption Corner

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

Bloomburrow redemption sets (both regular and foil-for-regular) are now on sale. As a reminder, we announced changes to the Redemption Program starting with Bloomburrow – read all about it in this article.

Duskmourn: House of Horror redemption tokens go on sale Wednesday, October 16.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is nearing the end of its run in the Store – be sure to redeem that set soon.

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.

TOMORROW’S PATCH NOTES – September 18, 2024

Duel Scene

• Planeswalkers and Battles will correctly lose their remaining counters when damage exceeds the amount of counters on them.
• In Duel Commander, cards in the 99 that are banned-as-commander will be unable to be swapped in during sideboarding.

Card Fixes

• Planeswalkers and Battles will correctly lose their remaining counters when damage exceeds the amount of counters on them.
• Quicken will correctly allow cards to be suspended during the cast-as-instant window.
• Ashiok, Nightmare Muse will correctly disallow bounced tokens to be chosen as a card to exile.
• Squandered Resources will no longer hang the game if a colorless land or a land producing multiple colors is sacrificed.

Administrative

• Admins will be able to send alerts just to players within a specific Scheduled Event if needed.
• New Player Points will be removed from the system – see the item under Event Updates

NEXT SCHEDULED DOWNTIME – October 16, 9 a.m.-Noon PT

After tomorrow, the next scheduled maintenance is set for Wednesday, October 16 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT (16:00-19:00 UTC).