SCG Invitational Tournament Magic The Gathering
Image via Star City Games

Magic: The Gathering fans should watch the Star City Games Invitational

It's a tabletop tournament without toxic Food decks.

Much like the pro Magic: The Gathering events run by Wizards of the Coast and ChannelFireball, Star City Games (SCG) has an MTG pro-level league, too.

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The SCG Invitational begins today (Nov. 15) and runs to Nov. 17. The bi-annual Magic: The Gathering tournament in Roanoke, Virginia has a total prize pool of $100,000.

The Invitational features the Magic formats Pioneer and Modern. The person who finishes in first place will earn $20,000 and a seat at the Star City Games end-of-year championship. 

  • Day one: Players will participate in eight Swiss rounds of Pioneer and Modern MTG formats (four each). Those with 15 or more match points will advance to day two.
  • Day two: The top-eight players from four Swiss rounds of Pioneer and four Swiss rounds of Modern will advance to day three. 
  • Day three: The playoffs and finals will be fought in a single-elimination bracket Pioneer best-of-three format. 

Pioneer wasn’t the original format for the SCG Invitational. It was supposed to be Standard. But after WotC failed to ban Oko, Thief of Crowns, Star City Games felt that the Standard format was too toxic for tournament play and switched to Pioneer. 

After seeing a flood of Food decks at Mythic Championship VI last weekend, Magic fans can watch a balanced metagame this weekend at the Star City Games Invitational. Coverage begins today at 10am CT on the SCG Twitch channel. 


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Danny Forster
Lead Magic: The Gathering/Teamfight Tactics scribe and staff writer for Dot Esports. Danny is a gamer beach bum residing in Spacecoast Florida and has been a journalist for seven years, of which five have been at Dot Esports. Prior media outllets Danny wrote for were Screen Rant and TheGamer. You can typically catch Danny playing TCGs and a variety of strategic games. He also hangs out on Twitter @Dannyspacecoast.