Magic Online Weekly Announcements, March 4, 2025

Posted on Mar 04, 2025

THE LEAD

Vintage Cube Returns Next Week

It’s nearly time for a new round of MTGO’s favorite – the Magic Online Vintage Cube! Watch MTGO.com this Friday, March 7, for the latest updates to the Cube and spend the weekend strategizing before it goes live next Wednesday, March 12 at 10 a.m. PT (17:00 UTC).

Vintage Cube Free Preview League Next Monday & Tuesday!

As a welcome back to everyone following all the lag issues we’ve dealt with in 2025, we are bringing back the Free Preview League that we ran with the Holiday Vintage Cube in December. For two days next week, you’ll be able to play single-game matches of the new Cube for free!

Try out some wacky strategies and learn how to find your draft lane – all in preparation for the real League starting next Wednesday.

The Free Vintage Cube Preview League kicks off next Monday, March 10 at 8 a.m. PT (15:00 UTC) and runs until Wednesday, March 12 at 5 a.m. PT (12:00 UTC).

In order to enter the League, you’ll need to get yourself Draft Points. How do you acquire those? Enter the code 2025MARCH into the box in the MTGO Store, just as shown below.

You can only redeem the code once on your account, but you will receive 2 Draft Points. Spend one of them to enter the draft queue, then play up to three single games with your Phantom draft deck. Then repeat this process once.

Win just one of those six total games and you’ll receive this event’s only prize - a special tradeable avatar featuring Scythecat Cub!

We’ll clear out any leftover Draft Points once the League ends.

MTGO's Recent Performance Improvements

The MTGO team has been doggedly battling persistent lag issues for the past several months. After a dedicated effort, we’ve implemented both short-term and long-term fixes to improve your gameplay experience—we hope you’ve noticed smoother performance in recent weeks!

These issues appeared in different forms over multiple weeks, each with its own elusive root cause. Tracking them down required weeks of trial-and-error from our team of veteran engineers. Ultimately, we identified a series of solutions that, together, counteracted the performance issues and restored MTGO to normal cruising speed.

Encouraged by this progress, we’re now testing additional optimizations set to roll out in the coming weeks—cutting digital traffic jams, cleaning up unnecessary code, and more. A key focus is addressing the slowdowns that creep into long Commander games.

US Daylight Savings This Sunday

It’s time for Magic Online to spring forward for its semi-annual time change. Daylight Savings kicks into the client starting this Sunday at 2 a.m. PT (UTC -7). What does that look like for you?

• Times listed in-client for events starting after 2 a.m. PT will be off by an hour until DST begins.
• In the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, 2 a.m. becomes 3 a.m., so you lose an hour of sleep.
• In all other parts of the world, weekly events will start one hour earlier in your local time than they did last week.

PREMIER PLAY & EVENT NEWS

It's Showcase Challenge Weekend

A new MOCS season is underway, so it’s time to qualify the next group players for the round of Showcase Qualifiers taking place in April. 

Here are the dates and times for our upcoming events: 

It takes 40 Season 1 Qualifier Points to enter a Showcase Challenge. The Top 8 finishers in each event earn a Championship Entry Token for the event’s format plus earn Leaderboard Points toward an At-Large berth in the next Showcase. Prizes pay out to the Top 64, including a full set of Aetherdrift for all players who finish the last Swiss round with 2 or fewer match losses!

For more information on these events, click the Premier Play Information link at the top of the Blog.

ALTERNATE PLAY

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ Flashback Draft Starts Tomorrow

It’s time for our first return to 2023’s most popular non-Cube set! The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™ takes center stage starting tomorrow, March 5 at 10 a.m. PT (18:00 UTC) and runs for one week. Entry options are either 10 Event Tickets or 100 Play Points, and the usual suite of prizes for a Phantom League apply.

Alternate Play Schedule

Here’s a look at the schedule of events coming up between now and Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Each description mentions if the Draft is Phantom – cards won’t be added to players’ collections in Phantom events. All transitions take place at 10:00 a.m. PT (18:00 UTC until March 8, 17:00 UTC after) unless otherwise noted.

• Now-March 5 – Time for a couple Flashback drafts … first up Modern Horizons 3 Phantom Draft.
• March 5-12 – For the first time, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth® (Phantom)
• March 12-April 2 – The Vintage Cube will be back with another refresh for a single 3-week run. (Phantom)
  • Look for the article describing the latest update on Friday, March 7.
• April 2-8 – Before leaving Avishkar and Aetherdrift behind, we’ll make a return trip to the plane’s original format – Triple Kaladesh (Phantom)

When Does Vintage Cube Return?

• March 12-April 2 – Spring Refresh
• Late April into May – exact dates TBD – Update to support MOCS

AROUND THE WEB

MTGO University – Fundamentals of Playing MTGO

We’ve introduced a brand-new landing spot for everything related to getting your new-to-MTGO friends up to speed on playing our game – MTGO University! Whether you’re new to a specific format, new to Magic Online, or are just curious about what this version of MTG is all about, check out MTGO University.

New to MTGO University – the MTGO Fundamentals playlist: short-form videos showing off a bunch of tips and tricks. Check it out on YouTube today!

New Education Series Comes to MTGO University in March

Next month, we’re launching an exciting new How-To series featuring one of our favorite content creators, OblivionSorrow, from The Grim Tutors! Join her as she embarks on a journey through Magic: The Gathering Online, guiding both new and returning players through the ins and outs of the game. From streams to YouTube videos, shorts, and more—there’s something for everyone. Stay tuned for more details!

WEEKLY UPDATES

Aetherdrift on MTGO

The need for (max) speed and the thrill of the open (interplanar) road take center stage in the newest expansion to arrive on Magic Online! Aetherdrift is available now in the MTGO Store - check out this article now for details on this shiny new set:

• The Golden Booster, with its GOLD First-Place Foils, awaits winners of Scheduled Events during DFT season plus it appears in 1 of 20 Treasure Chests.
• The 10-card Premium Booster returns with a tinge of GOLD – a First-Place Foil in every one – for only $6.99 USD.
• Beyond the Golden Booster, the Booster Fun in this set is stunning! Check out our favorites in the article.

Redemption Corner

We’ve updated our Redemption page with new quantity percentages.

Aetherdrift redemptions will go on sale earlier than planned – it will now be tomorrow, March 5!

A limited number of Duskmourn redemption tokens – both regular and foil-for-regular – have been added back into the Store.

Meanwhile, new BLB redemption orders are temporarily on hold. A technical issue incorrectly is requiring Starter Kit cards to Bloomburrow redemption as of a couple weeks ago. Apologies for the inconvenience.

As a reminder, we announced changes to the Redemption Program starting with Bloomburrow – read all about it in this article.

The last batch of Outlaws of Thunder Junction foil sets still remain available.

Magic Online Format Challenges Every Weekend

Format Challenges are the first step toward qualifying for Premier Play through your favorite Magic formats and provide excellent prizes for those looking to test their mettle in their favorite formats. Learn more about Premier Play qualification to get started today.

Magic Online's Format Challenges run as shown on the schedule on this page.

THURSDAY’S PATCH NOTES – March 6, 2025

Card Fixes

• Nullstone Gargoyle will correctly counter only the first noncreature spell played each turn.
• Scythe of the Wretched and Unscythe, Killer of Kings will correctly not trigger if unattached.
• Activating Words of Worship, Words of Wind, etc during your upkeep will no longer cause a game reset.
• Words of Waste will function correctly.

Client Fixes

• All card animations (including recent premium effects) will be turned off when Disable Foil Animations is ticked on.

NEXT SCHEDULED DOWNTIME – April 2, 9 a.m.-Noon PT

The next scheduled maintenance is set for Wednesday, April 2 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT (16:00-19:00 UTC). This is to support the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm.