This morning, Wizards of the Coast announced that the Magic Pro League would begin its weekly matches on Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 3pm Eastern on twitch.tv/magic.
Each Saturday between 3 and 7pm Eastern, the members of the Magic Pro league will compete to qualify directly into the second day of MTG Arena Mythic Championships. That means the winner of each of the four divisions (listed below) will skip Day 1 entirely and begin the competition on Day 2.
The 2019 Magic Pro League season will be divided into three splits, with each split being made up of four weeks and feeding into one of the three MTG Arena Mythic Championships in 2019. The first split, the Spark Split, will take place between May 11 and June 8 and will feed into Day 2 of Mythic Championship III on June 21-23, which will be Standard Best-of-3 with sideboards.
The second split of the 2019 Magic Pro League season, the Core Split, will take place between August 3 and September 7 and feed into Day 2 of Mythic Championship V in September, while the third split, the “Archery” Split, will take place from October 5 through November 2 and feed into Day 2 of Mythic Championship VII in November. The formats for Mythic Championships V and VII have not been announced. Venues for all three MTG Arena Mythic Championships have yet to be determined.
Unfortunately, Wizards did not announce how each Saturday event would work. Hipsters of the Coast reached out to for clarification but did not hear back before publishing.
The Divisions
The Magic Pro League will be made up of four divisions: Emerald, Pearl, Ruby, and Sapphire. (No Jet Division…yet.)
The Emerald Division features three Hall of Famers, Seth Manfield, Martin Juza, and Shota Yasooka, as well as Pro Tour Avacyn Restored Champion Alexander Hayne.
The Pearl Division features the reigning World Champion Javier Dominguez, as well as two-time World Champion Shahar Shenhar and former World Champion Brian Braun-Duin, plus the reigning Player of the Year Luis Salvatto and Hall of Famers Lee Shi Tian and Eric Froelich.
The Ruby Division has three Hall of Famers: Ben Stark, William Huey Jensen and Yuuya Watanabe, as well as three non-Hall of Fame Pro Tour/Mythic Championship winners: Gerry Thompson, Lucas Esper Berthoud, and Carlos Romao….plus Reid Duke. However, Watanabe was disqualified from Mythic Championship II London for having marked cards and it is currently unknown if that will affect his membership in the Magic Pro League.
Finally, the Sapphire Division will include Mythic Championship I Cleveland champion Autumn Burchett, Mythic Invitational winner Andrea Mengucci and runner-up Piotr Glogowski, as well as Hall of Famer Paulo Vitor Dama da Rosa and former Player of the Year Mike Sigrist.
