The banned announcement posted on August 20 failed to list the bans as of August 25 downtime for Sol Ring in the 100 Card Singleton, Prismatic, and Tribal formats. The original announcement has been corrected.

Effective: August 25 downtime

From the Vault: Relics will be added with this downtime. It contains a preview card from Scars of Mirrodin, Sword of Body and Mind. This card is legal in Legacy and Classic based formats as of the August 25 downtime. It will not be legal for Standard and Extended based formats until Scards of Mirrodin is legal for those formats.  Additionally:

* Sol Ring is restricted in Classic.

 

Effective: September 8 downtime

During this downtime, Duel Decks: Elspeth vs. Tezzeret will be added to the system. Because of the new wording of Elspeth, Knight-Errant which creates an emblem in the command zone, the command zone will be implemented on Magic Online effective as of this downtime.

In addition to emblems, commanders in the Commander format have special rules for the command zone rather than exile. (The owner will have the option to put it in the command zone from there if it would go to a graveyard or exile. Casting it from the command zone mirrors the old rule of casting it from exile.) Similarly, avatars in vanguard formats will be in the command zone.  As a result of the Commander change, one unbanning will occur:

* Riftsweeper is no longer banned in Commander.

Premier Event Round Length Change

Starting 8/20 our regularly scheduled Premier events will switch to a 50 minute round time. This change has been made to reduce the time commitment required to play a premier event. Premier events that are affected are: Legacy, Extended, Standard, Block Constructed, Sealed Deck, Magic Online Championship Series LCQs, MOCS End-of-Season Tournaments, and Release Event Championships.

8-Player 4-Booster Sealed Deck Queues Begin

Beginning after the 8/18 downtime, 4-Booster Sealed Deck queues will replace the traditional 6-Booster Sealed Deck queue in the Sealed Swiss Room. This will be a Swiss-style queue with the following prize structure:

 

September 2010 Player Rewards

For the September 2010 season (August 25 to September 29) the Tier 1 and 2 alternate art land promo cards are from the third set of the European Land Program, originally released in September 2000 for the Invasion booster box sales promotion.

Each card represents a European location: the plains depicts Steppe Tundra, Russia; the island depicts White Cliffs of Dover, UK; the swamp depicts Camargue, France; the mountain depicts Mont Blanc, France; the forest depicts Nottingham Forest, UK.

The Tier 3 and 4 promo card is Skyknight Legionnaire, originally released as a prize for the Arena League Ravnica: City of Guilds season in 2005.

The Tier 5 and 6 promo card is an alternate art Slave of Bolas, originally released as part of the Wizards Play Network in 2009.

The Tier 7 and 8 promo card is a current frame Ifh-Biff Efreet.

The Tier 9, 10, and 11 promo card is a current frame Time Warp, originally released as a Judge promo card in 2004.

Downtime Notes for 8/18/2010

The system will be down from 8:00 AM PDT (1500 UTC) to 2:00 PM PDT (2100 UTC)

The system will go into ‘No Pay’ at 5:00 AM PDT (1200 UTC).
Store and trades will shut off at approximately 7:45 am PDT (1445 UTC).
This downtime is expected to last approximately 6 hours.

• General
  • Fixed - Trade issue where logging out during a trade causes an error
  • Updated trade messaging for trades missing digital objects
• Card Rules
  • Fixed - Lightmine Field no longer damages creature put onto battlefield attacking
  • Fixed - Sharuum + Sculpting Steel trigger
  • Fixed - Overwhelming Stampede now factors in +1/+1 counters
  • Fixed - Illusionary Mask and casting additional creatures
  • Fixed - Portent now informs players that the library was shuffled
• User Interface
  • Reinstated the M10 new account decks in a new Archived Theme Deck folder
  • Fixed Unrecoverable Error message box behavior
  • Updated new account email to reference M11 product

In general, Magic Online falls under the same basic Collusion and Bribery rules as paper: Altering the outcome of any Magic Online event in exchange for or influenced by the offer of reward or other incentive is not allowed and violates the Terms of Service.

Players who wish to share prizes in an event may only do so in the FINAL ROUND of that event. Any prize sharing negotiation or offer to change or alter the result of a match in any round that is not the final round of an event can be considered Collusion or Bribery and is a violation of the Code of Conduct.

When negotiating to share prizes in the final round of the event, ONLY THE TOTAL PRIZES ALLOTTED for first and second place (including Qualifier Points) may be discussed. While match concessions CANNOT be a part of this negotiation, players may discuss which place gets which prizes and which prizes they prefer. Any offers to 'sweeten the pot' by adding something extra, either within Magic Online or outside of the game system, is a violation of the Code of Conduct and may result in administrative action being taken against the players involved and their Magic Online accounts, up to and including account termination.

Magic Online does not currently recommend, endorse, or support prize sharing in any way. Any prize sharing negotiation is made at each player's own risk. Players should never negotiate a prize share unless they know and trust the player they are negotiating with. Please note that offering a prize share more than once in any match may be considered harassment and a violation of the Terms of Service. Magic Online also reserves the right to evaluate any prize share negotiation and take administrative action on a case-by-case basis.

Magic 2011 Release Events
Magic 2011 Release Events are still going on. Check out the page for the full schedule and details.

Thursday Night Magic Online
This week Thursday Night Magic Online will be 4 booster sealed! We have also added a time to the schedule, events will fire at 5am, 10am, 3pm, 8pm PDT.

MOCS Season 9 Information
MOCS Season 9 will be Standard constructed. The promo card for the championship event will be Birds of Paradise with art by Terese Nielson (the art from the paper buy a box promo).

Downtime Notes for 8/11/2010

The system will be down from 8:00 am PDT / 1500 UTC to 12:00 pm PDT /1900 UTC

The system will go into ‘No Pay’ at 5:00 am PST / 1200 UTC.
Store and trades will shut off at approximately 7:45 am PST / 1445 UTC.
This downtime is expected to last approximately 4 hours.

We will have a small build tomorrow to fix some back end event issues.

Thursday Night Magic Online begins tomorrow!

Each week we will highlight a format and set up several Thursday Night Magic Online events in the Premier Events room. Here is the Thursday Night Magic Online Schedule for the month of August:

• 8/5 -- Standard Constructed
• 8/12 -- Magic 2011 4-Booster Sealed Deck
• 8/19 -- Zendikar Block Constructed
• 8/26 -- Magic 2011 6-Booster Sealed Deck

Have fun and good luck!

Thursday Night Magic Online
Starting this Thursday you can participate in Magic Online's latest event offering, Thursday Night Magic Online! Check out the website for times and other details.

Magic 2011 Release Events
The release of Magic 2011 is upon us, and so are the release events! The What's Happening page has all of the information you need to find an event that suites you.

Gen Con Live Series
Gen Con starts on Thursday, and with it another Live Series! If you are at the convention, make sure you come and check it out!

MOCS Season 7 Championship
First, congratulations to Archer. for winning the latest MOCS championship! We also regret to inform everyone that qualified, but chose to skip the event, that granting product to your accounts will be delayed. We will post to the announcements when we know when they will be granted.

Downtime Notes for 8/4/2010

The system will be down from 8:00 am PDT / 1500 UTC to 12:00 pm PDT /1900 UTC

The system will go into ‘No Pay’ at 5:00 am PST / 1200 UTC.
Store and trades will shut off at approximately 7:45 am PST / 1445 UTC.
This downtime is expected to last approximately 4 hours.

We will not have a build tomorrow, just maintenance.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE DOWNTIME TOMORROW
Tomorrow's downtime (full notes at the end of this announcement) will start at 6am tomorrow. Please plan accordingly!

Prize Changes
You asked and we listened. We are making the following changes to queues.

• Urza's Saga/Urza's Legacy 4322 queue will pay out:
  • 1st - 2 Urza's Saga, 2 Urza's Legacy
  • 2nd - 2 Urza's Saga, 1 Urza's Legacy
  • 3rd and 4th - 1 Urza's Saga, 1 Urza's Legacy
• Legacy, Classic and 100 Card Singleton 2 man queues will pay 1 Urza's Saga booster instead of Urza's Legacy.

New Account Package
After tomorrow's downtime the New Account Packages will switch to Magic 2011 product.

Magic 2011 Prerelease
The Magic 2011 prerelease events will start on this Friday at 10am PDT (17:00 UTC). Check out the page for full details.

MOCS Season 7 Championship
The MOCS S7 champs are this Sunday at 11am PDT

Downtime Notes for 7/28/2010

The system will be down from 6:00 am PDT / 1300 UTC to 3:00 pm PDT /2200 UTC

The system will go into ‘No Pay’ at 3:00 am PDT / 1000 UTC.
Store and trades will shut off at approximately 5:45 am PDT / 1245 UTC.
This downtime is expected to last approximately 9 hours.

We will have a build tomorrow. We are also doing some hardware maintenance.

• General 
  • M11 cards / content
  • Banned Channel, Staff of Domination, and Tolarian Academy from Commander

• User Interface
  • Added handling for when the client state gets out of sync with the server, which would previously cause errors that could not be recovered from. Now the client requests a game state refresh from the server in an attempt to continue the game.
  • Fixed Pauper and other filters to include UL cards as appropriate.