Mythic Championship III Las Vegas will see all 32 members of the Magic Pro League face off against 36 Challengers looking to win their share of the $750,000 prize pool. Here are 10 players to watch this weekend, six Magic Pro League members and four Challengers, any of whom could take down the whole tournament.
To celebrate the very first MTG Arena Mythic Championship, we’re hosting some awesome fantasy leagues on Thousand Leagues! Pick your favorite MPL players—or some of the Challengers we’ve highlighted below—and you could win a Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition!
The Four MPL Division Winners
Brad Nelson, Brian Braun-Duin, Ken Yukuhiro, and Rei Sato won their respective divisions in the inaugural Spark Split of the Magic Pro League. While those division titles won’t qualify them for the non-existent Magic Pro League playoffs, they did receive byes directly into Day 2 of Mythic Championship III for their trouble.
Heading directly into Day 2 is a huge advantage for these four players. Not only do they automatically get a spot in the Top 16 bracket—putting them three or four wins away from the Top 4 right away—but they get to rest and conserve their energy on Day 1. They’ll be coming into the their first matches of Day 2 fresh, while their opponents will have had to battle to six wins on Day 1 in order to make Day 2 themselves.
The Two Newest Members of the MPL
Jessica Estephan and Janne “Savjz” Mikkonen joined the Magic Pro league just over a month ago, making Mythic Championship III their debut as members of the MPL.
They were both put in a rough position in the Spark Split—since they joined the league late in the split they were forced to play all seven of their matches with a single deck over two weeks, rather than over five weeks and having the chance to switch decks every week like the other 30 members of the Magic Pro League. As a result, neither player did particularly well, with Estephan going 2-5 and Savjz going 1-6.
Estephan and Savjz will be looking to bounce back from their rough league starts at Mythic Championship III and show what they can really do as part of the Magic Pro League.
The Hall of Famers with Discretionary Invites
When Wizards of the Coast announced that they would be adding 16 discretionary invites to each of the three 2019 MTG Arena Mythic Championships, they said that they would use the invites “to invite a broader representation of the Magic competitive community to high-level play.”
Then, last week, Wizards revealed that three of those discretionary invites would be going to Magic Hall of Famers Luis Scott-Vargas, Kai Budde, and Raphael Levy. All three are among the best players in Magic’s history, with Scott-Vargas and Budde being consensus Top 5 Magic players of all time, and are always a threat to win a Pro Tour or Mythic Championship they compete in.
Ondrej Strasky
Strasky Top 8’d back-to-back Pro Tours (PT Khans of Tarkir in 2014 and PT Dragons of Tarkir in 2015) but struggled to find that kind of success afterwards. He announced his retirement from competitive Magic in August 2018, saying GP Stockholm would be his last tournament unless he won, an event which he promptly Top 8’d—putting him back on the Pro Tour. That lead him to GP Stockholm three weeks later…which he proceeded to win.
He qualified for Mythic Invitational last March by being in the Top 8 Mythic Constructed on MTG Arena and noted that he would be in a very tough group at the Invitation, then again joked that he would retire unless he won the tournament. He went on to make the Top 4 of the Mythic Invitational the hard way—by losing is first match of both the Day 1 and Day 2 double-elimination brackets and then sweeping the losers bracket both days.
Strasky was invited to Mythic Championship III Las Vegas as a discretionary invite, as well. He is an excellent player, an extremely entertaining character, and he’s sure to be a pleasure to watch at the Mythic Championship.
Those are 10 players to watch at Mythic Championship III Las Vegas, which starts tomorrow morning at 11 AM Eastern on twitch.tv/magic. Don’t forget to pick your favorite players (or cards!) in our Mythic Championship fantasy leagues on Thousand Leagues and you could win a Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition!