Magic: The Gathering Arena will offer two additional events, as well as three exclusive online-only Friday Night Magic tournaments offering special card sleeves as rewards.
As EarlyGame reported recently, Wizards of the Coast is taking the coronavirus prevention measures very seriously. First, they opted to limit the congregation of players in local game stores (LGS) by adjusting the product allocation and encouraging people to play the Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths prerelease at home.
Now MTGA is joining the COVID-19 #STAYHOME initiative by adding two new tournament formats and the first-ever FNM played from home.
Free Brawl and Theros Beyond Death Ranked Draft
The first two are already live.
The Brawlers' Guildhall is now open with no entry fee. The fun Commander-like format usually has a price of admission, but this time everybody gets to enjoy it for free.
The Theros Beyond Death Ranked Draft now live comes in addition to the other bi-weekly competitive events, so it is just another way to compete on the ladder and increase your Limited rank.
Online FNM
Now that’s really different. Friday Night Magic (FNM) is a format that’s been going on since the 90s. In short, players are rewarded for showing up in their local card shop and competing in a friendly tournament across all sorts of formats ranging from Draft to Modern and beyond.
FNM attendees are awarded cool exclusive promo cards that are usually pimped-up foil versions of decent Standard cards. This has always been a paper Magic event.
Well, for the next three weeks, to prevent people from potentially spreading the deadly disease, Wizards are asking people to play their FNM at home. The three events won’t charge an admission fee and will offer three different formats, namely:
- March 27—Challenger Decks
Compete with one of the four preconstructed 2020 Challenger Decks against others online
- April 3—All Access
Build a Standard deck having access to all of the cards in the format - not just your collection.
- April 10—Historic Brawl
Build a 60-card Brawl deck from your Standard and Historic collections - the closest thing to Commander yet.
Rewards
The online FNM events are free, but they will offer prizes! Players who prove to their LGS that they indeed participated in an event, will be given a code to unlock three super cool card sleeves to use inside MTGA - including one with the crossed swords of Planeswalker twins Rowan and Will Kenrith.
Not all stores are participating, so check with your local community. Here’s how to do it:
- Play in the event (you don’t have to actually win, just participate)
- Take a screenshot of your event page
- Go to locator.wizards.com to find your local game store's contacts
- Join their social media channel (Discord, WhatsApp or other)
- Share your screenshot with a message on their channel
- The store will message you a code through that social media channel
Keep in mind that those codes are limited. Wizards says this is just the first step to reconnecting their players to the local communities in these times of crisis. We hope to see more initiatives like this one. Meanwhile, for everything MTGA, keep it here at EarlyGame.
