Toy Snowman Sponsoring Strixhaven ARENA WORLD SERIES SEALED LEAGUE

ARENA WORLD SERIES SEALED LEAGUE

STRIXHAVEN TOURNAMENT RULESET

Toy Snowman is one of the happy sponsors of the league 

Register here AND Join the Discord server Linked  Discord link here

LEAGUE PLAY IN BROAD STROKES

1. Open a virtual sealed pool

2. Make a 60-card deck

3. Play a 3-game match against an opponent

   1. If you win, generate a virtual pack for the loser

   2. If you lose, add a virtual pack to your pool and rebuild

4. Play 5 matches per week against different opponents

5. Keep playing until

   1. You make Top 8 at the end of Week 6 play

   2. You reach your 11^th loss and are eliminated before then

TOURNAMENT-SPECIFIC RULES [‘COLLEGE’ MECHANIC]

Colleges

Each College—Witherbloom, Prismari, Lorehold, Silverquill, and Quandrix—will get its own private text and voice channels. We gently recommend that you use the following free Arena sleeve codes to match your league deck’s sleeve to those of your College, to visually remind your opponents who they’re battling:

COLLEGE	SLEEVE CODE
Witherbloom	SwampPunks
Prismari	ArtClub
Lorehold	RockJocks
Silverquill	DebateDuelists
Quandrix	MathWhizzes

At the end of the league, all members of the College with the most accumulated match win points and any bonus points generated by Rivals matches receive College Scholarships of $12.50 store credit at Three King’s Loot, regardless of their ultimate individual rankings. To avoid unbalanced outcomes, only points from the Top 80% of each College’s highest-ranked players (rounded down in number to that of the smallest College) will count. In case of a tie, the tie-breaker will be the highest individual final rankings of each tied College’s best player. College Scholarships are 40% of the 3KL prize pool, with the other 60% distributed among the Top 50% of players on the basis of their individual rankings.

Deans

At the beginning of the tournament, the overall top-performing league players for the 2020-2021 season though Chaos sealed league (measured by their cumulative match win point totals) are designated as ‘Deans’ of the Colleges of their choice. Deans mentor and coach their fellow College members.

Where two top-ranked players have a conflict as to which College they would like to lead, they will play a Best-of-Three match with their Chaos sealed league decks to decide which player gets to be the Dean of the College of their choice.

Students

Other registered players are designated as ‘Students’, and are assigned in an algorithmic order based on previous league performances (roughly a snaking order, taking into account preferences of College where possible):

Champions

The highest-ranked College member at the end of any week of play is their College’s ‘Champion’ (this role is also initially assigned at the beginning of W1 according to past performance—and so will, at least temporarily, be the Dean). This role can rotate between College members, but is kept for a minimum of one week of league play. Champions can battle the Champions of other Colleges to earn extra points (see Rivals, below).

Rivals

All members of other Colleges are considered ‘Rivals’.

Playing matches against your College’s Rivals gives your College a cumulative bonus point if you win:

All Champion vs Champion matches are worth triple College Points, and so will be of higher interest to everyone. They must be announced to league chat in advance of their starting, and they must be streamed by both players if possible.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

1. League sealed pools will be generated via the Booster Tutor bot during Registration Week (between 6pm EST Friday April 30^th, 2021, and 6pm EST Friday May 7^th, 2021) on the league Discord:

   1. To register, players must complete a Registration Form, providing their full name, country of residence, local game store and Arena player ID to the Tournament Organizer, and pay the $5 CAN entry fee to Three King’s Loot.

   2. Discord handles must be changed to the FIRST NAME LAST INITIAL // ARENA ID format (for example: Jane Q // Wins4Dayz#89045)

   3. Starting pools will be posted for players in the ‘Starting Pools’ Discord thread.

2. Once pools are imported to Arena, players will create 60-card minimum decks, with the remainder of their pools making up their sideboards (Recommended: keep your full league pool in one deck, then clone it and delete cards to make your operational deck for playing matches).

3. Once decks are built, players may Direct Challenge each other on Arena (Settings: Challenge Match / Deck Type: 40 Card [actual size of decks is 60 cards, but this allows oversized sideboards] / Format: Best of Three / Coin Flip). Voice chat is possible by entering the same voice channel on the league Discord’s ‘Multiverse’.

   1. Winner of the match goes to the Discord ‘Pack Generation’ thread, then commands Booster Tutor to open a standard-legal pack of the loser’s choice [sample command: ‘!KHM @Jane Q // Wins4Dayz#89045’]. Winner then copies the text of the pack contents and posts them, along with the match result, on a Match Results form [found in the ‘Match Results’ Discord thread].

   2. Loser of the match adds the cards from the generated pack to their league pool on Arena. They may rebuild their deck before playing their next match.

4. Weeks of play are always from Friday 6pm EST to the next Friday 6pm EST. Week 1 begins immediately after the end of Registration Week. Players must play a number matches per week which range between their minimum play requirements for that week (at lowest) and their maximum play allowance for that week (at highest), against different opponents for each match (see table below for the specific numbers of minimum and maximum required cumulative matches per week). Opponents can typically be found via the league Discord’s ‘Looking for Matches’ thread.

5. As this is an elimination tournament, many players will eventually receive their 11^th loss and be eliminated. Players who do so must stop playing matches immediately. If any week of play ends with 8 or fewer active players remaining, player rankings (determined via total number of match wins, with average opponent win percentiles as tie-breakers) will be used to determine the Top 8.

WEEK 1	WEEK 2	WEEK 3	WEEK 4	WEEK 5	WEEK 6
3-5 MATCHES	8-10 MATCHES	13-15 MATCHES	18-20 MATCHES	23-25 MATCHES	28-30 MATCHES

THE FINE PRINT

The league is played at Regular REL & normal limited Magic tournament rules apply.

A:  Registration

1. The registration period for the Arena Sealed League World Series Strixhaven tournament ends at 6pm EST Friday April 30^th, 2021.

2. The registration fee is $5 CAN, payable to our monetized sponsor, Three Kings Loot.

3. Upon joining the league, players will receive a randomly-generated virtual sealed pool consisting of 6x STX packs.

B: Deck Construction

1. Minimum deck size is 60 cards.

2. Only cards from the starting card pool, subsequent punishment packs added after match losses, and basic lands (with no other supertypes) are legal for league play.

3. No trading of league cards is allowed.

4. Players may sideboard cards from their pool into their decks in between games / matches.

C: Playing and reporting matches [‘Week #s’ / ‘Overplaying’ / ‘Underplaying’ / ‘Punishment Packs’].

1. Play for the Arena Sealed League World Series Strixhaven tournament begins at 6pm EST Friday May 7^th, 2021

2. League matches are untimed Best-of-Three games. If a match would result in a draw, additional games must be played until there is a clear winner.

3. Players are required to play 3-7 matches per week, resulting in a cumulative number of matches within the required range for each week of league play that grows by 5 matches per week (see table above).

4. Weeks of play are always from Friday 6pm EST to the next Friday 6pm EST, and are numbered sequentially in order of occurrence from Week 1—Week 6. Matches count as being played in the week that their results are submitted. For example: a match that began on Friday 5:45pm EST (at the end of Week 1) and concluded 30 minutes later that same day at 6:15pm EST (at the beginning of Week 2) would count as a ‘Week 2 match’, regardless of whether or its players intended it to be a ‘Week 1 match’.

5. Players may never ‘overplay’ (play more matches than the maximum allowed for the week of play they are in).

6. Players may never play against the same opponent more than once per league week.

7. Intentional concessions are not permitted.

8. The loser of each match chooses and adds a ‘Punishment Pack’ to their league pool: a randomly-generated pack of any Standard-legal set. Punishment packs must be generated by the winner for the loser on the ‘Pack Generation’ Discord thread and then copied to a Match Results form at the conclusion of the match. Winners must indicate the winning and losing players’ names, the match result (e.g.: 2-1 / 2-0), and a text copy of the cards opened in the Punishment Pack.

9. Players who ‘underplay’ (fail to reach the required minimum number of matches per week) or ‘overplay’ (play more than the maximum allowed number of matches per week) will be penalized with automatic 2-0 match losses to ENTROPY (our league’s spreadsheet-balancing NPC) for each match they are under the week’s minimum or over the week’s maximum. No Punishment Packs are opened for these losses. If match losses due to overplay cause a player to have more losses than allowed in the tournament ruleset, they will be immediately disqualified from the tournament.

10. All match loss penalties count as played matches toward weekly play requirements.

11. Records of all league match results will be published along with current player standings on the Discord’s ‘Dynamic Spreadsheet’ thread.

12. The maximum number of Punishment Packs that can be added to any player’s league pool is 10.

13. When a player reaches their 11th loss, they are eliminated from the tournament (a match report slip must still be submitted by the winner, indicating the loser’s elimination) and can play no further matches.

D: Arena-Specific Rules.

1. Players are responsible for crafting the virtual packs they open using their own wildcards from their personal Arena accounts.

2. All ranked matches must be played on the Magic Arena client.

3. Card-specific bugs on Arena occasionally occur and have an inevitable effect on some games. It is each player’s individual responsibility to be aware of known bugs and client issues, as match results will stand whether or not the outcome has been decided by a bug.

4. One-way disconnects are repairable if the other player keeps the game open—which they should for a minimum of 5 minutes. In case of a two-way or permanent disconnection, count all games that have already been played as played. Then, after both players have reconnected, play additional single games as needed until a decisive match result is produced.

5. All two-way or permanent disconnects must be immediately reported to the Tournament Organizer for adjudication.

6. When streaming matches, the offenses of advising, sniping, and spying are considered cheating and will be penalized accordingly. Definitions of these terms are given below using a sample case, wherein Player A is playing against Player B, and Player A is also streaming the match while Player C is watching (offending player appears in italics):

   1. Advising—Player C advises either Player A or Player B on the best line of play during a live match.

   2. Spying—Player C tells Player B private game information about Player A, such as cards in hand and other hidden info.

   3. Sniping—Player B slips into Player A’s stream to gain private game information about Player A.

E: Top 8 Finals—MegaDraft & Prizes.

1. The main tournament concludes at the end of Week 6 of play. At that time, if any players ranked 1^st—16^th place are tied in terms of the total number of matches won (Rank 1), cumulative opponent match win percentile to two decimals (Rank 2), and total game win percentage (Rank 3), then tie-breakers for the remaining Top 8 positions will be decided by non-ranked best-of-three matches between the tied players to break those ties.

2. Immediately following the end of the main tournament (Week 6), invitations to the MegaDraft finals are offered to the 8 top-ranking players. The finals must take place within 7 days of the close of the main tournament—precise dates will be arranged by the Tournament Organizer, in consultation with the Top 8 players. If a Top 8 finals invitation is declined for any reason it will pass down to next highest ranked uninvited player. Invitations keep passing down until 8 players are confirmed for the MegaDraft. In the rare case of a no-show on the date of the finals, the invite will pass down to the highest-ranked uninvited player available on the Discord server. Players who decline their invitation keep the points they earned during the regular season, and will place / prize accordingly.

3. In the league finals, the Top 8 players will retire their main tournament league decks and play a three-round MegaDraft (each player will draft one pack from each Standard-legal set in reverse chronological order on mtgadraft.herokuapp.com).

4. No seeding will occur: draft seats and Round 1 pairings will be randomized.

5. Players will build a new 60-card deck from their draft pool and play 3x Best-of-Three Swiss rounds of to determine their ultimate ranking in the finals.

6. Each league finals match win will count for 3 points, with the exception of byes which will count for 2 points, and each pre-finals weekly play match win will count as 1 point towards determining final rankings for league players.

7. In the case of a tie in points at the end of the finals event, tiebreakers will be based on standings in the MegaDraft.

8. Players are eligible for the following prizes from our generous sponsors, Face to Face Games and Three Kings Loot (please note that international shipping may be temporarily suspended for some of our supporting stores):

ARENA SEALED LEAGUE WORLD SERIES STRIXHAVEN TOURNAMENT PRIZE TABLE