Welcome to the voting for the 10th annual Magic Invitational!
Set to run May 10-12 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, the Magic Invitational will award the chance to design a Magic card for an upcoming set, following in the footsteps of such Hall of Famers as Jon Finkel, Darwin Kastle, and Olle Råde.
Two of the original 16 Invitationalists will be unable to attend: World Champion Katsuhiro Mori and APAC regional winner Masashi Oiso. Their spots have been filled by our pass-down policy.
The pass-down for the APAC region happens as follows:
Tsuyoshi Fujita takes the spot of the APAC regional winner as the second-place finisher in that ballot.Because Fujita was elected to the Pro Players spot in a vote subsequent to the APAC ballot, he relinquishes his Pro Player invitation to the second-place finisher, Antonino De Rosa.De Rosa had been the North American winner, but his vacated spot passes to Jeff Cunningham.
Since the World Champion is an automatic invite as a title-holder, the vacated spot does not go to the second-place finisher at Worlds – in essence, we shut down the category and a third name is taken from the Fan Favorite ballot. Normally that would have been Jeff Cunningham, but because he is already earning a pass-down invitation from the North American ballot, Geoffrey Siron earns the invitation as the fourth-place finisher in the Fan Favorite poll.
The formats have also been announced: Duplicate Limited, Auction of the Geniuses, Mirage-Visions Booster Draft, Decadent Sealed, and Block Party. More information can be found here.
Congratulations to all the Invitationalists! We'll see you all at the 2006 Magic Invitational at E3 on May 10.
For more Invitational information, read Mark Rosewater's feature and Brian David-Marshall's recap of the voting and announcement of the five formats. And then get ready for the second week of May, when all the talking stops and these 16 masters of Magic get down to business -- with immortality on the line.