Competitive Magic is in a weird spot right now. Paper events never fully recovered after the pandemic, and Commander feels like the game’s default format. That said, the tides are slowly turning. Rotation and the release of Bloomburrow have revitalized paper Standard in a lot of places. As recent market movements have reflected.
Now, as announced on today’s Weekly MTG stream, competitive events are making a big comeback in the form of the Magic Spotlight Series. Even if you’re not a tournament grinder yourself, the prizes on offer here are sure to capture your interest.
What Is The Magic Spotlight Series?
Let’s start by going over what exactly the Magic Spotlight Series is. This is a series of competitive tournament events that will run throughout next year, 2025. There will be eight of these in total, spread out across different regions. Five in the US, two in Europe, and one in Japan. In a fun twist, each of these events will have its own theme and its own format to boot.
The first event, for example, will be called Magic Spotlight Foundations. This will take place in Atlanta in January 2025. The format for this event, as the name suggests, will be Standard. Next up after that is Magic Spotlight Modern, which will be held in Utrecht in the Netherlands. This event will take place in March 2025. So far, these are the only two events announced, though six others are definitely on the cards.
The purpose of these events, as discussed on the announcement stream, is to increase the number of “weekends on the calendar” where you can attend a big Magic event without any kind of invitation, qualification, etc. This addresses a gap that has been felt keenly by the player base, particularly in recent times. While you will likely need to pay an entry fee to take part in these events, you won’t need to amass points or win an RCQ or anything. In that sense, they’re some of the most accessible competitive Magic events out there.
Untold Riches And Glory
This is a great new initiative and a fantastic way of giving the players what they want with regard to big events. Even more exciting than that aspect, however, is the prizes on offer at each Magic Spotlight Series event.
For starters, every event will have a $50,000 prize pool. That’s pretty huge, and William Jensen assured everyone on the stream that it wouldn’t be too “top-heavy” in terms of distribution. This has been an issue at recent major tournaments, so it’s good to see something being done to address it.
In addition to the monetary prizes, participants will also be able to claim some exclusive promos. There will be one of these per event. Magic Spotlight Foundations, for example, will offer a borderless Terror of the Peaks promo with stunning new art by Richard Kane Ferguson. See above for that lovely piece. Magic Spotlight Modern will offer Kaldra Compleat, again with fantastic new borderless art, this time by Monztre. Taking part will get you a non-foil version of the event’s promo while placing in the top 128 will also get you a foil version.
Most exciting of all, however, are the additional “themed” prizes for the winner of each event. For winning Magic Spotlight Foundations, you’ll receive a case of every Standard-legal set released in 2025. Not a box, a case. That’s a huge value prize and one of the best incentives for organized play we’ve seen in years.
Prize support like this will likely encourage more players to give competitive Magic a try. Especially when paired with the Pro Tour invites you can earn for placing in the top eight. That’s 64 extra entries in total over the course of the year. Very exciting stuff indeed.
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