My eyeballs are ready.
If you've been around a while, you know what lurks behind those innocuous words—Pro Tour—wild decks, magnificent bluffs, opportune topdecks, great players, a few tears (sometimes of joy), a trophy, Draft, Constructed, a Top 8, and a Champion. There's a Pro Tour coming in Amsterdam, so of course it's going to be good. But this one is shaping up to be extra-good, extra-exciting, extra-special.
The Pro Tour is the culmination of many paths—all competitive—to one of Magic's most prestigious tournaments, with $500,000 in prize money (plus a trophy) up for grabs with invitations and points to qualify for the annual Magic World Championship.
Nearly 250 competitors—from Regional Championship events, 2023–24 season performances, top finishers at previous Pro Tours, MTG Arena, Magic Online Premier Play, and more—have invitations to play in Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3. The invitation list is available online (and subject to change).
Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 will be streamed all three days of the event, June 28–30, at twitch.tv/magic. Catch players, fans, and social coverage across the weekend at @PlayMTG with the hashtag #PTMH3.
On Friday and Saturday—June 28 and 29—broadcast begins at 5 a.m. ET (11 a.m. CEST // 6 p.m. JST) with three rounds of Modern Horizons 3 Draft followed by five rounds of Modern Constructed.
On Sunday, June 30 for the Top 8 playoff, broadcast begins at 4 a.m. ET (10 a.m. CEST // 5 p.m. JST) with all four quarterfinal matches, followed by semifinals matches then the finals of Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3.
While competitors begin their Friday and Saturday at 9 a.m. CEST on-site, broadcast begins later in the day at 11 a.m. CEST (5 a.m. ET) with a featured drafter to follow into their Round 1 gameplay. As we continue the Pro Tour broadcast we'll catch up to the tournament, showing a full feature match from every round and reducing downtime until we're pacing live gameplay on a short delay.
The Sunday Top 8 playoff broadcast begins at 10 a.m. CEST (4 a.m. ET) showing a full quarterfinal match and then as many games from other quarterfinal matches as possible, moving on to a full semifinal match (and as much of the remaining semifinals match) then the complete finals.
Here's why this Pro Tour is so special: It's partly about the calendar.
Amsterdam is act three of our season, with only the World Championship to come in Las Vegas in October. In Amsterdam, the field for Worlds is set. As we've played Pro Tours in Chicago and Seattle, that field has gradually expanded, granting us tantalizing glimpses of the final field. From the last World Championship, there's reigning Champion Jean-Emmanuel Depraz and Player of the Year Simon Nielsen. Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor added the likes of Hall of Famer Seth Manfield, and former World Champion Javier Dominguez. Another former World Champion, Yuuta Takahashi, joined the Worlds field at Pro Tour Thunder Junction, along with perennial online winner Sean Goddard of the United Kingdom. And then there are the Regional Champions, with Brazil's Guilherme Merjam, Italy's Marco del Pivo, and China's Fu Yu among those making it truly a global championship.
But there's so much more to come. The Top 8 in Amsterdam joins the Vegas party, and so too will the Top 32 in adjusted match points across the season, also known as People Who Done Good Recently. This is where the World Championship field really adds lustre, with pretty much everyone who has been better than most people most weekends. As for the people who are at the very top of the pile, there's the Player of the Year race. Here's the Top 10 as we head into Amsterdam (and how they did at the previous two Pro Tours):
- Yuta Takahashi 35 (Top 16, 2nd)
- Seth Manfield 30 (Champion, Top 64)
- Simon Nielsen 30 (2nd, Top 32)
- Adam Edelson 29 (Top 8, Top 16)
- Jason Ye 29 (Top 16, Top 8)
- Sean Goddard 29 (Top 32, Top 8)
- Mingyang Chen 27 (Top 8, Top 32)
- Javier Dominguez 27 (Top 16, Top 16)
- Yoshihiko Ikawa 27 (Did Not Play, Champion)
- Alexander Friedrichsen 25 (Top 8, Top 32)
What strikes me most about this list is consistency. From a combined nineteen starts, only one fell outside the Top 32. So it's reasonable to expect this group to be in the thick of the Player of the Year race, both in Amsterdam and Las Vegas. But with plenty of points still to be won, the Top 8 in Amsterdam will be vaulting up the leaderboard ahead of the Las Vegas showdown.
Another feature of this Pro Tour includes a fantastic pair of formats. Friday and Saturday mornings both feature Modern Horizons 3 Draft, played exclusively within tables of eight (draft pods). This Draft format really does have something for everyone. The mighty Eldrazi are back, and although there are color pairs available in red-green (Eldrazi Spawns) and green-blue (Eldrazi Ramp), nobody says you can't combine them into Temur (green-blue-red). The competition for energy might be even fiercer. Azorius (white-blue) has an energy-matters theme, while Izzet (blue-red) focuses on midrange, a step or two behind Boros (red-white), with its go-wide aggro strategy. So why not go Jeskai (blue-red-white), and devote all your energy? Or maybe modified is your thing? Abzan (white-black-green) are where you want to be. And nobody said you can't just avoid all that nasty fighting for picks and strike out on your own with Dimir (blue-black) to draw three cards or Rakdos (black-red), where artifacts matter. It really is promising to be a super-fun Draft format, and we'll bring you extensive coverage as always.
In the afternoons on Friday and Saturday, it's five rounds of Modern, and that's also the format for our Top 8. The Metagame (the percentages of the field that chooses to play any particular archetype) can typically have a huge bearing on success at the Pro Tour. Correctly identifying and playing the best deck can get you a long way. So, too, can applying the next-level strategy of identifying the best deck, then playing the deck that beats the best deck. But Modern is a format simply groaning with options. From Boros Burn to Azorius Control, Hardened Scales to Indomitable Creativity, Amulet Titan to Domain Zoo, and Living End to Rakdos Grief, Modern remains the Constructed format where you really can play almost anything and have a legitimate shot. And you can be sure that plenty of our players will be looking to stretch the definition of almost.
So far this season, four teams have strutted their stuff above the rest. In Seattle, Sanctum of All put both Rei Zhang and Jason Ye into the Top 8. That's great, but Etienne Eggenschwiler (11-4-1), Nicole Tipple on debut (11-5), Greg Michel (10-5-1), and Cain Rianhard (10-6) all finished inside the Top 32. That's an outstanding performance. But the clear winner in Seattle was Team Moriyama Japan. Nine of their ten players had a winning record. Five were in the Top 32. Three—Yuta Takahashi, Takumi Matsuura, and Yoshihiko Ikawa—made Top 8, with Ikawa claiming the title. Their metagame read worked out perfectly, and that's going to be tricky to replicate. Let's see how they do.
Back in Chicago, it was Team Handshake Ultimate Guard and ChannelFireball Ultimate Guard who dominated. Handshake put two Danes into the Top 8, with Simon Nielsen eliminating Christoffer Larsen in the semifinals before falling to Seth Manfield in the final. Manfield joined Sam Pardee from CFB in the Top 8, and once again a Metagame read was a big deal, their Rakdos Vampires deck doing the business. For Amsterdam, team rosters are shifting. For Handshake, neither team leader David Inglis nor former World Champion Nathan Steuer make the start list, while CFB—always laden with Hall of Fame talent—can arguably boast the three greatest players of all time in their squad, with Jon Finkel, Luis Scott-Vargas, and the legendary Kai Budde all set to sit down and draft on Friday morning.
So, you see, between the drama of Draft and the Modern Metagame; the power of the dominant teams versus the lone wolf homebrews; and the race for not only the title, but seats at the World Championship and the Player of the Year race. Well, Amsterdam really is looking to be special.
My eyeballs are ready. Are yours?
Modern Constructed decklists for the tournament will be published on the Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 event page on Friday, June 28 at the beginning of Round 4 gameplay, approximately at 8 a.m. ET (2 p.m. CEST).
All Modern Horizons 3 Draft decklists will not be published.
You can watch coverage for Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 each day here at Magic.gg and at twitch.tv/magic.
- Maria Bartholdi: Host
- Frank Karsten: Expert
- Eilidh Lonie: Reporter
- Riley Knight: Play-by-Play
- Mani Davoudi: Expert
- Cedric Phillips: Play-by-Play
- Corey Baumeister: Expert
Following Twitch's Content Sharing Guidelines, you can co-stream the Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 broadcast from twitch.tv/magic using OBS or XSplit. This allows anyone on Twitch to cover the event in their voice and with their community. To be clear, co-streamed content is not endorsed by Wizards, and we expect anyone who participates in co-streaming to follow Wizards' Fan Content Policy.
Competitors that finish with 30 or more match points at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 earn invitation to the first Pro Tour of the 2024-2025 season, taking place in early 2025.
All players compete for their share of $500,000 in prizes, with the Pro Tour Champion winning $50,000. All competitors will receive at least $1,000 regardless of the final placing.
| Place | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1 | $50,000 |
| 2 | $30,000 |
| 3-4 | $15,000 |
| 5-8 | $10,000 |
| 9-12 | $5,000 |
| 13-16 | $4,500 |
| 17-32 | $3,000 |
| 33-48 | $2,000 |
| 49-66 | $1,500 |
| 67-154 | $1,250 |
| 155-249 | $1,000 |
| Total | $500,000* |
*Assumes 249 Players
