Welcome back to the How To Play Magic: The Gathering series from Star City Games. If you need to catch up, check out the previous article, a Buyer’s Guide to Magic products, or start at the beginning with The Basics.
Today’s article will break down Magic tournaments. Say you’ve learned how to play Magic and are doing well at FNMs or made it to Mythic on MTG Arena and are looking for the next way to challenge yourself. What’s the next step in your Magic journey? We recommend tournaments.
What Are Tournaments?
Tournament are where players who are looking to prove themselves in higher stakes matches go to show they are the best. Magic tournaments are highly competitive, structured events, made to leave one player standing at the end as winner. Tournaments can range from a few dozen players to thousands of players.
Players can compete in paper or digital tournaments, where many like-minded players pay an entry fee to compete in an event with prizes for the top finishers. Unlike casual play or competing in Leagues on Magic Online or the ranked ladder on MTG Arena, tournaments typically have a set amount of rounds to play that leads to a cut where the Top 8 players fight it out in a single-elimination bracket to determine the champion.
How Do Tournaments Work?
Most Magic tournaments use a number of Swiss rounds before the Top 8 cut, where players face off against other players with a similar record, leading to the top performing players to match against each other as the event progresses. After the final round of Swiss, the Top 8 players in the standings are seeded into a bracket and play until a player emerges victorious, earning prizes and pride at the end.
In tournaments, players bring one deck and can only use it for the event. A player wins a match if they win two games in a Best-of-Three set in a fixed amount of time per round. Unlike friendly or casual Magic, players adhere to a more strict set of rules enforcement, so there aren’t any take-backs, and breaking the rules comes with penalties.
Tournaments have a range of entry fees that influence the prize pool, with the majority of the prizes going to the Top 8 players, though some may extend down to the top 10% of players.
Why Join a Tournament?
Tournaments are a great way to test your abilities and skills as a player, or to see where your new or current deck stands in a format when tested against strong players with competitive decks. If you’re looking to take your game to the next level, tournaments are the next step.
There are many types of tournaments for all kinds of formats, so find the right one for you to start your competitive career. Thanks for reading, and we look forward to teaching you more in our other How to Play articles from Star City Games.
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