Star City Games Announces the Return of SCG Tour Online – and a Mysterious Arena Championship

Star City Games has been known for many years as one of the largest retailers, event hosts, and Magic: The Gathering related content creators around, sponsoring events across many Magic formats both in-person and online. The SCG tournament circuit is large and well-respected enough that their events often feed into official MTG tournaments sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately, the realities of the Covid-19 pandemic affected the SCG tournament circuit all the same, and all of their tabletop events either had to be cancelled or were forced online in early 2020.

SCG Tour Online events have mostly carried on through the course of the pandemic, although until this morning (July 20th), they had not announced any new events since May of 2021 when the SCG Strixhaven Championship Qualifier served as a feeder event for the official Qualifier Weekend and Strixhaven Championship. Today, however, SCG announced the return of the SCG Tour Online, beginning with satellite events that will feed into $5k MTG Arena Championship Qualifiers running from late July through mid October.

Interestingly, what and when this MTG: Arena Championship actually refers to is very much in question. It does not seem to refer to the World Championship XXVII, which will already have taken place by the time the upcoming SCG circuit finishes. Back in May, Wizards of the Coast caused an uproar in the competitive MTG community by announcing the discontinuation of the current system for organized play without any details on what would be replacing it. Wizards still has not officially announced any major events after the upcoming World Championship, but this announcement from SCG quite clearly states that there will be some form of Magic Arena Championship in the future. There is a page on Magic.gg for the Qualifier Weekends that the SCG Qualifiers feed into, but the only information regarding what players are qualifying for is deliberately vague:

Qualifier Weekend is a two-day event held on Magic: The Gathering Arena in which top eligible players at the end of the event will receive invitations to compete in a future Championship event (event name, date, and format(s) to be announced).

https://magic.gg/events/qualifier-weekend

We’re still in the dark about what exactly the Magic Arena Championship will look like, but it seems on the surface like it may be similar to the Mythic Championships that originally replaced the Pro Tour back in 2019. We’ll be keeping our eyes open for any new information or announcements from Wizards regarding this new championship, but in the meantime, the new SCG Tour Online events will be getting underway starting this coming weekend. See below for dates:

For those interested in participating, all of the SCG Tour Online Satellites are open to the public, requiring only an $8 fee for entry. All of the SCG tournaments will be hosted on MTGmelee, and we will be providing full coverage of decklists and results here on MTGA Zone each week.

In addition to the online events, SCG announced the return of their in-person SCG CON on October 29-31. The convention will be taking place in Roanoke, Virginia, and it will feature the Star City Games Invitational Standard tournament in paper. Players participating in the SCG Tour Online will have a chance to qualify for this event in addition to the ambiguous Arena Championship.

For more information about the SCG Tour Online and SCG CON, please check out SCG’s official announcement as well as their SCG Tour Online information and registration page.