Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced the rosters for the MPL and Rivals League for the 2021-2022 season and paths to Magic World Championship XXVIII.
In what will be the final season for the MPL and Rivals, WotC named the 24 players in the MPL and 48 players in the Rivals League. The MPL, Rivals, and challengers will battle through three set championships this season (Innistrad Championship, Neon Dynasty Championship, and New Capenna Championship) in order to qualify for Magic World Championship XXVIII, which is doubling the size of the field from last year from 16 players to 32.
The roster for the MPL consists of:
- Chris Botelho
- Kai Budde
- Stan Cifka
- Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
- Jean-Emmanuel Depraz
- Javier Dominguez
- Arne Huschenbeth
- Yoshihiko Ikawa
- Eli Kassis
- Riku Kumagai
- Luca Magni
- Seth Manfield
- Jan Merkel
- Noriyuki Mori
- Gabriel Nassif
- Sam Pardee
- Keisuke Sato
- Rei Sato
- Lee Shi Tian
- Matt Sperling
- Ondřej Stráský
- Yuta Takahashi
- Gavin Thompson
- Jacob Wilson
The roster for the Rivals League is:
- Matthieu Avignon
- Federico Bastos
- Ian Birrell
- Brian Braun-Duin
- Autumn Burchett
- Corey Burkhart
- Austin Bursavich
- Márcio Carvalho
- Andrew Cuneo
- Louis-Samuel Deltour
- Reid Duke
- Kenji Egashira
- Ivan Floch
- Piotr Głogowski
- Simon Görtzen
- Kenta Harane
- Christian Hauck
- Alexander Hayne
- David Inglis
- Shintaro Ishimura
- William Jensen
- Martin Jůza
- Zachary Kiihne
- Grzegorz Kowalski
- Matti Kuisma
- Raphaël Lévy
- Eli Loveman
- Andrea Mengucci
- João Moreira
- Théo Moutier
- Brad Nelson
- Logan Nettles
- Ma Noah
- Tomáš Pokorný
- Sebastián Pozzo
- Sam Rolph
- Carlos Romão
- Luis Salvatto
- Bernardo Santos
- Luis Scott-Vargas
- Thoralf Severin
- Shahar Shenhar
- Mike Sigrist
- Miguel Simões
- Jakub Tóth
- Brent Vos
- Shota Yasooka
- Ken Yukuhiro
WotC has also reworked the way players can qualify for Magic World Championship XXVIII this season. With the expansion from 16 to 32 players for Magic World Championship XXVIII, more opportunities to qualify open up this year. To start, the Top 6 players from each set championship immediately qualify and will join Yuta Takahashi, who gets invited back as the reigning champ. From there, the five players in the MPL or Rivals with the most World Championship Qualifying Points (WCQPs) and the eight non-MPL or Rivals players with the most WCQPs qualify.
WCQPs are new points awarded to players — one for each match win at a set championship. Finally, if a player already qualified for Magic World Championship XXVIII makes another Top 6, the invite doesn’t pass down to the seventh-place finisher, instead the invites are accounted for as at-large invitations for the player or players with the highest amount of WCQPs who aren’t already qualified. Read more about qualifying for World Magic Championship XXVIII.
Read the original article from WotC.