Hello, I'm Lee Sharpe, the Digital Product Manager for Magic Online events! Today I want to talk to you about upcoming plans for the Magic Online Championship Series.

The Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS) is the flagship event series of Magic Online. It consists of tournaments throughout the year that culminate in a sixteen-player in-person Magic Online event where players compete for $116,000.00 USD in total prizes, an invite to the Magic World Championship, and Platinum status in the Pro Players Club. Who will join Anssi Myllymäki, Carlos Romão, Reid Duke, Dmitriy Butakov, Lars Dam, and Magnus Lantto as a Magic Online Champion?

Our goal for the Magic Online Championship Series to bring together players who have proven their success, whether in paper Magic or on Magic Online, and allow them to compete in Magic Online events with awesome prizes to highlight Magic Online as a great way to play Magic. Wizards brought together members from its R&D, Organized Play, Magic Online Business, and Community teams to make changes to MOCS to help better achieve this goal.

What is the structure of the 2016 Magic Online Championship Series?

Please note, we've recently made some changes to the above structure. Now, the Top 8 players from the Monthly Qualifiers will move onto the Quarterly Playoffs, not the Top 4.

Players can earn Qualifier Points (QPs) for top finishes in selected Magic Online queues, Leagues, and scheduled events. Once a player has saved up enough Qualifier Points, they can join a MOCS Monthly event. Yep, they can now be saved up! Instead of having seasons each with their own QP type like in years past, we are eliminating the seasons and using a single QP type throughout the year. Even if it takes you a long time to earn enough QPs, you can join when ready instead of being confined to a season.

The Top 4 in each MOCS Monthly Event can join the MOCS Playoff and compete against other high-finishing players. MOCS Playoff Events are held four times a year, one week after each Pro Tour. These will have an exciting new type of prize never used on Magic Online before: boosters and sets for the next Magic Online Standard-legal set release, granted the day that set's boosters go on sale!

The defending Magic Online Champion, the Magic World Champion, the finalists from each of the four Playoff Events, as well as top players from the MOCS Leaderboard (more on this below!) will compete in the in-person Magic Online Championship to become the Magic Online Champion. Here's how the series looks:

Aside from your share of the prize money, becoming the Magic Online Champion comes with several benefits:

An invite to next year's Magic Online Championship

An invite to the next Magic World Championship

Platinum status in the Pro Player's Club

The Platinum status for the Magic Online Champion is new for the 2016 series, upgraded from Gold!

How do Qualifier Points work?

You earn Qualifier Points (QPs) as prizes for top finishes in selected Magic Online queues, Leagues, and scheduled events. You can see the full details to learn more about how much each specific event awards, but the 8-4 Single Elimination drafts are now going to award 2 QPs for 1st place and 1 QP for 2nd place. This will help cement these drafts as where competitive players should be playing.

Once you've received 35 QPs, you can play in a Monthly Event. There used to be Preliminary Events that turned 15 QPs into 35 QPs if you didn't earn enough, but now that players can save up QPs and join once they have earned enough, we are eliminating these Preliminary Events.

Do members of the Pro Players Club and Pro Tour Hall of Famers still receive benefits in the Magic Online Championship Series?

Yes, as part of trying to help Magic premier play promote both paper and online play, we will continue to offer benefits for these players in this system:

Platinum pros are invited to every Playoff Event.

Platinum pros, Gold pros, and Hall of Famers will receive an invite to each Monthly Event. This will initially be done by granting their accounts 35 Qualifier Points before each Monthly Event.

Silver pros (except Hall of Famers) will receive 15 Qualifier Points during the downtime before each Monthly Event. These can be combined with other Qualifier Points for entry, or used by themselves to join one Monthly Event every quarter.

What are the details of a MOCS Monthly Event?

As you can see in the above graphic, the MOCS events are essentially divided into quarters. Each quarter will have four MOCS events—three Monthly Events and a Playoff Event—for a total of twelve Monthly Events and four Playoff Events each year. Each quarter will have one Monthly Event that is Modern and two Monthly Events that are Standard.

You can view the details for the Monthly Events here.

You'll notice that these are MOCS Leaderboard Points as part of the prizes. These are not objects you'll have in your collection, but rather something we'll track on MTGO.com. So what can you do with the MOCS leaderboard points you've earned? For starters, play in the Playoff Events!

Monthly Events don't award Magic Online Championship or Pro Tour invites, but you can use them as a bridge to the Playoff Events, which do award these type of invites on top of a lot of other awesome prizes!

As noted above, each Monthly MOCS Event all year long will awards players a copy of the MOCS Yearly promo, which is Lightning Bolt:

What are the details of the MOCS Playoff Events?

The four Playoff Events are going to be huge and do a lot to control who makes the Magic Online Championship. (More on that later!) Each Playoff Event will occur the weekend after a Pro Tour.

You qualify for the first Playoff Event if you meet any of the following criteria:

Finished in the Top 4 from any of the three Monthly Events that quarter

Are in the Top 50 of the MOCS Quarterly Leaderboard for that quarter

Are a Platinum member of the Pro Players Club

You can qualify for the second through fourth Playoff Events of the year if you meet any of the following criteria:

Finished in the Top 4 from any of the three Monthly Events that quarter

Are in the Top 25 of the MOCS Quarterly Leaderboard for that quarter

Are in the Top 25 of the MOCS Yearly Leaderboard

Are a Platinum member of the Pro Players Club

The MOCS Leaderboard events reward players who have performed well consistently across several events, even if those players didn't finish high enough in any single event to gain an immediate qualification.

You can find the full details for MOCS Playoff Events here.

The top two finishers in each Playoff Event win an invite to the next Pro Tour, the Pro Tour Challenge at that Pro Tour, and the Magic Online Championship!

As this structure notes, some set and booster prizes are for the next Standard-legal Magic Online set. Winning these will put you in great positions to enjoy the new Standard and Draft formats once the next set is released! These will be granted to winning accounts the day the boosters for that set go on sale on Magic Online.

There is also a unique promo card for each Playoff Event, which you can win as described in the prize structure above. For the first quarter, the promo card is Liliana of the Veil!

Magic Online Championship

All of these events culminate with the Magic Online Championship! This sixteen-player event will be played in one geographic location using Magic Online. The following players have guaranteed slots in the Magic Online Championship:

Defending Magic Online Champion

Current Magic World Champion

Top two finishers for each of the four Playoff events

Additional players will be invited from the top of the MOCS Yearly Leaderboard for that year until there are sixteen players in the event. This structure will reward both excellent finishes and consistently strong performances over the course of the year.

These players will be competing for a total of $116,000.00 USD in prizes. As stated above, in addition to a portion of the prize money, the Magic Online Champion receives:

An invite to the next Magic Online Championship

An invite to the next Magic World Championship

Platinum status in the Pro Player Club

With seasons being removed, do I get a promo card for earning enough Qualifier Points?

Between the removal of seasons for Qualifier Points with a desire to focus the series on the events themselves, MOCS promo cards are now earned exclusively through the Monthly and Playoff events rather than being available by earning Qualifier Points as in years past.

Is there in-game support for these MOCS Monthly and MOCS Playoff events?

Yes! Our Digital Event Coordinators will be available throughout each event. If you need anything related to the event, join the chat room "#MOCS" and a Digital Event Coordinator will be able to help you!

Schedule and Rules

For complete information, please see the schedule and full rules page.

As always, you can direct feedback to the official Magic Online Twitter account, my personal Twitter account, the Magic Online Tumblr, or through email at MagicOnlineFeedback@wizards.com.

Lee Sharpe

Digital Product Manager—Magic Online Events