If you played any MTG Arena this weekend, you may have noticed the Decathlon Events that showed up on the front page. If you’re not aware of what this event is, it’s effectively a series of mini leagues. These events span the course of a couple of weeks, with a larger event at the end. This is a new format for events for MTG Arena, as their events have historically been either weekend events, or are longer run single events. This new style of event is exactly what MTG Arena needs.
The Decathlon In Depth
The Decathlon is broken up into a series of 10 events, each with a different formats. These events are reasonably priced to enter, 2000 gold or 400 gems, which makes repeat entries much more reasonable for the average player.
The goal of these events is to accumulate 7 wins before losing 3 times. At the 7th win, you get a token for that event. Gather enough of these tokens, and you gain entry into the Finals for the Decathlon, where the Prizes are great!
How many of these tokens do you need to collect?
- 0-2 unique tokens: Nothing
- 3-5 unique tokens: 1 entry token to the Arena Decathlon Finals
- 6-7 unique tokens: 2 entry tokens to the Arena Decathlon Finals
- 8-9 unique tokens: 3 entry tokens to the Arena Decathlon Finals
- 10 unique tokens: 3 entry tokens to the Arena Decathlon Finals and entry into the February 2022 Qualifier Weekend event.
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What Are We Playing For?
While the prizes for the individual events are lackluster, it honestly isn’t the focus of those events, so I’m ok with that. We will get the free Decathlon Sleeve upon entering the mini events, and there’s packs and gold to earn along the way. Where the prizes get SPICY is in the finals.
When you enter the final event, you’ll get a “finalist” sleeve.
At 2 wins, you’ll earn a set of Unhinged basic lands!
These are great because you can’t get these anymore in the shop. At 4 wins, you add the “gold medal finalist” sleeve to your pot.
At 6 wins, you add a Jace, the Mind Sculptor avatar into the mix, which is pretty awesome.
At the coveted 7 wins, in addition to all of the previous rewards, you get a 1 copy of each card in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty.
In addition to all of these, you get Wildcards, and draft tokens mixed into these prizes as well, making this pretty fantastic.
READ MORE: Risk and Reward – Reddit’s Greatest MTG Investments of 12/13/21
Why Is This Good?
The structure of the event is awesome, giving players something more to play for than just ladder points or a chance at money in the Arena Open events. The real draw here is if you spike all 10 events, you get access to play in a future Qualifier Weekend. Really, this seemingly low key, casual event has a potential end game that results in higher level competitive play, which is definitely something that the game needs.
What are your thoughts with this event? Do you think that Wizards should do more events like this? Did you participate in these events? How did you do? Let us know in the comments!
