By David Whitfield

David works on the Magic community team as a content specialist. He spends his days writing about Magic Online and trying to play too many colors at once in Limited.

What Is the Magic Online Weekly Announcements Blog?

Every Tuesday, we round up all of the biggest Magic Online news for the Weekly Announcements Blog.

Check in weekly for the latest updates!

Quick Links

Magic Origins Prerelease and Release Events
Standard Super League Finals Tonight
Magic Online Collection Performance Upgrades
Qualify for the Upcoming Modern Festival Championship
Mirrodin Block Phantom Draft Events Available Now
Modern Masters 2015 Edition Events Run Through July 8
The Holiday Cube is Available July 8
Season 7 Magic Online Championship Series Preliminaries Begin Tomorrow
Upcoming Wizards Account System Maintenance for Wednesday, July 15
Downtime for July 1, 2015
Build Notes
Upcoming Events
Download Magic Online

Magic Origins Prerelease and Release Events

Magic Origins Prerelease Events come to Magic Online on Friday, July 24! The Swiss Draft will give players a shot at drafting Magic Origins for the first time. Meanwhile, the Friendly and Competitive Sealed events make their comeback, now with six Magic Origins boosters plus the seed booster of your chosen color. Pay particular attention to the participation avatars this time around—there are five of them and some are only available during the Prerelease!

Get the full scoop on Magic Origins Prerelease and release Events here.

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Standard Super League Finals Tonight

Stop by tonight for the Standard Super League finals! Over the course of the past season, Magic Hall of Fame members Randy Buehler and Luis Scott-Vargas, have hosted eight-player single-elimination tournaments every Tuesday night to see which competitor emerges as the first Standard Super League Champion. The deciding match starts at 6:00 p.m. Pacific (UTC-7) on twitch.tv/magic!

For a recap of what happened in last week's episode of the Standard Super League, head over to Randy Buehler's latest article.

Remember, we'll be posting each player's deck lists for the Standard Super League finals to MTGO.com at 6:00 p.m. Pacific (UTC-7) so that viewers can follow along at home!

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Magic Online Collection Performance Upgrades Coming July 8

We have made a number of behind-the-scenes changes designed to improve the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of Magic Online that will be rolling out during the Wednesday, July 8, downtime. These changes have several practical benefits, many of which help reduce the amount of time you have to spend waiting for Magic Online to respond. There are three main changes that you should see immediately.

Log in time is greatly reduced. That means if you get disconnected during a draft or a game, you’ll be able to rejoin the action faster!
Moving large groups of cards is much smoother. Practically, this lets you create massive trade binders or organize a large collection with less headache.
We have reduced many cases where a “Waiting for Main Navigation” message or a crash would occur due to memory or performance issues.

There are a few other changes that we’d like to highlight as well:

We have improved our performance when moving, sorting, and filtering cards for display. Magic Online should remain responsive while these actions occur. If there is a delay, it will be indicated by a momentary light grey overlay.
We have updated of a number of error messages that might display while navigating your collection to make these errors more helpful.
We no longer pop up a progress bar while waiting for deck, collection, or active trade binder synchronization to the server to complete.
It is not necessary to clear binders between trades and re-add items.

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Last Chance to Qualify for the Upcoming Modern Festival Championship

Now's your chance to win one copy of every Modern-legal set in the Magic Online Modern Festival Finals!

Since the start of Modern Masters 2015 Edition Release Events, the Modern format has taken center stage on Magic Online—and the celebration doesn't stop there. Whether you're looking to get into Modern, already love the format, or are just looking for some sweet promos, the Modern Festival has something for you.

The Modern Festival Preliminaries only last through tonight, so today is your last chance to get into the finals! Modern Festival Preliminaries run on the same schedule as the Modern Daily normally does, which you can find the schedule for here.

Get the full Modern Festival event details.

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Mirrodin Block Phantom Draft Events Available Now

Revisit Mirrodin, Darksteel, and Fifth Dawn in the Mirrodin Block Three-Round Phantom Draft event. As part of the Modern Festival, you can get a great Modern promo—a full-art Lightning Helix—just for participating.

Get the full event details.

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Modern Masters 2015 Edition Events Run Through July 8

Modern Masters 2015 Edition is available on Magic Online now!

In the spirit of the Modern Festival, we've extended the duration of Modern Masters 2015 Edition events! All events listed below will remain active through Wednesday, July 8, instead of their previous end date of the June 17 downtime. Not only will events keep running, but Modern Masters 2015 will also remain on sale in the Magic Online Store until Wednesday, July 8!

Modern Masters 2015 Edition Events that are extended through Wednesday, July 8:

Check out the updated event schedule article for the full details on Release Events.

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The Holiday Cube is Available July 8

Randy Buehler is a longtime Magic player, a friend of the Vintage format, co-host of the Standard Super League, and a lover of Magic Online Cubes everywhere.

Randy and Magic R&D have set their sites on updating the Magic Online Holiday Cube! Read up on the redesign in the full article then check out Lee Sharpe's latest article for details about the upcoming Holiday Cube Events from July 8 through July 22.

Read about what went into the redesign in the full article.

Check out the full, newly-updated Holiday Cube list here.

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Season 7 Magic Online Championship Series Preliminaries Begin Tomorrow

The Season 7 Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS) Preliminaries begin tomorrow and run through July 3. Five or six wins in a MOCS Preliminary earns players 35 Qualifier Points (QPs), which earns entry into the MOCS Season Finals!

Whether you've been saving QPs up all season long, or you earned them in one fell swoop via a MOCS Season Preliminary, you'll want to be sure to compete in the MOCS Season Finals. To cap off all of the Modern festivities that we've been holding over the past several weeks, the MOCS Preliminaries and MOCS Season Finals will both be Modern. Big Prizes are up for grabs, including an invitation to the Magic Online Championship and Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar!

Learn more about the Magic Online Championship Series here.

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Upcoming Wizards Account System Maintenance for Wednesday, July 15

The Wizards Account System will be undergoing maintenance on Wednesday, July 15, from 7:00 p.m. Pacific (UTC-7) through Thursday, July 16 7:00 a.m. Pacific. Customers will be able to file for reimbursement and submit bug reports during this time, but responses will be delayed.

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Downtime for July 1, 2015

All tournaments will close Wednesday, July 1, at 5:00 a.m. Pacific (12:00 UTC)
Store and trade activity will be suspended at approximately 7:45 a.m. Pacific (14:45 UTC)
The system will be down from 8:00 a.m. Pacific (15:00 UTC) until 12:00 p.m. Pacific (19:00 UTC)

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Build Notes

General

General | A sales tax of 8.5% will now be charged for purchases from Tennessee.