March-April 2019: The Big Arcs of Competitive MTG Play

As we are mid-transition between systems, every month presents us a somewhat unique puzzle as to what to do as competitive players of Magic: the Gathering. While we are in 'Use Arena to qualify for the Invitational and last RPTQs' month, in February, March opens up a bit more. In this post I'm going to lay out a bit of the landscape for all of us.

Two Months of Modern

Except for SCG's Legacy in Syracuse March 2-3, we've got modern GPs and SCGs a-plenty. Counting them all down, GP Las Angeles on the 2nd? LASCG Regionals on the 9th? GP Tampa or Bilbao on the 16th? SCG Philadelphia, also the 16th? 1/3 of the SCG Team Constructed in Cincinnati on the 23rd? Magicfest Calgary on the 30th? SCG Cleveland on April 6th? GP Sao Paulo on April 13th? GP Yokohama April 20th? All leading into a Modern Mythic Championship on the 28th? Modern is the headline format of the next two months, except for two Legacy events, one by SCG, and one by WotC.

Also, we're midway through SCG's first points season. If you want to jump in, either immediately or when Season 2 starts is what you should be targetting. But that's gonna mean modern if you wanna travel. IQs, though, who knows!

The problem with that all that? Arena doesn't support Modern. And the next set comes out the weekend of that Mythic Championship.  So if you want to play Modern competitively, the next two months are great. If you don't? Welp... there is Mythic Championship: ESPORTS MODE.

Esports Mode: Top 1000 (or 4000)

The article laying out the online Mythic Championship is a little bit of a headline-burier, so let's break out the headlines.

The top 1000 Mythic players on Magic Arena for both constructed and limited in March AND April will qualify for 'Mythic Championship Qualifier 3'  Mythic Championship Qualifier 3 will whittle those at-most-4000 people down to 16, which will qualify for Mythic Championship Qualifier 3 (look at the infographic: 52 people total, 32 MPL, 4 other people, and 16 Magic Arena competitors.

This is something a lot of people have missed, that there's two months to qual for the big unscheduled championship. That's demanding. But it's only one month. Maybe if you aren't qualified for Mythic Champs London you can spend April grinding after Moderning all of March, while it's more the reverse if you're qualified: you want to Modern closer to the day of.

Wait, there's more!

April: Paper Qualifiers for Barcelona, Planeswalker Points for Richmond

Mid-April is when the paper MCQs start for Barcelona, which means Standard's the game again. April 1st is also when the Planeswalker Points threshold starts for Richmond MCQs the following qualifier season, so you need to get in your paper play for 200 planeswalker points in April, May, and June. Maybe you parley the Standard grinding in this month into those MCQs if you're not qualed? 200 PWPs isn't a lot, and there's still 2 more months in that season, so maybe this doesn't really matter, but it's worth being aware of.

The Local Caveat

Local MCQs and IQs are a big piece of their respective organized play structures and they could change the game for you personally. Especially since the MCQs aren't scheduled, I can't really look that far into the future, or help anyone do so. If people get on the ball with scheduling their stuff and making it queryable, I might dig into a unified presentation, but for now, that's where we are.

I'll be glad to update this if anyone has something significant to add, but right now this looks like the landscape to me. Pro points are still almost live, and if you are live for silver, you absolutely need to hit GP LA, because getting Silver there will get you two quals as per previous guidance given out directly to Ari Lax on twitter (I believe the qual you get out of that is MC Richmond.)