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$5000 Magic: The Gathering Tournament Just Changed From Standard to Pioneer


Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast just announced the new nonrotating Magic: The Gathering format called Pioneer, and the new format is about to have a huge tournament with a $5000 prize pool.

Over on Twitter, The Nerd Rage Gaming (NRG) Series in Madison, Wisconsin has announced that it's changing the format of its upcoming $5000 MTG tournament from Standard to Pioneer. The tournament will take place this Saturday, and according to NRG, over 110 people have already expressed their interest in playing in what is set to become the biggest Pioneer competition yet.

"We're so excited to be bringing Magic's newest format to the NRG Series and we are looking forward to a successful event," NRG said in the announcement. "We can't thank the greater Magic community enough for helping us spread the word and make this Saturday event possible."

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Credit: Wizards of the Coast

The news comes only a few days after NRG cancelled their $5000 Standard tournament after seeing weak preregistration numbers (only 2 players signed up when they announced the update), and NRG said today that they are in the process of refunding the the 25 entries to the Standard tournament.

It seems that Magic players are losing interest in playing Standard because of the format's unbalanced meta with green-based decks with the overpowered "Oko, Thief of Crowns" making up most of recent competitions, and players are already asking Wizards of the Coast to ban the Throne of Eldraine Planeswalker card from Standard. While WotC already addressed the issue with Oko, they also confirmed that there won't be any emergency bans before Mythic Championship VI, and that they will stick to the scheduled ban and restricted announcement on November 18.

While it's not surprising to see that not a lot of players are interested in playing Standard right now, it's still surprising to see that many players interested in playing in a big Pioneer tournament, and this is a good early sign that the new format, which uses cards from Return to Ravnica and forward, will be a fan-favorite just like Modern. If you want to know what players think about the new format, you can check out their Pioneer brews and reactions here.

The $5000 NRG tournament will take place in Madison, WI on November 2. You can pre-register on Nerdragegaming.com here. And if you can't make it to that event, be sure to check out the 2020 MagicFest schedule here to find out when the Pioneer Grand Prix will be in Q1 2020.

We're also inviting you to join our Pioneer Facebook group here:

Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Players Private group · 2,532 members Join Group A group for Magic: The Gathering Pioneer Format discussion, news, deck tips, strategy, rules help, memes and more! For general MTG discussion, post he...

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