Mythic Championship Cleveland 2019
| Mythic Championship Cleveland 2019 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | February 22–24, 2019 | |||
| Location | Template:Flagicon Cleveland, Ohio, United States | |||
| Format | Standard and Booster draft | |||
| Prize pool | $500,000 | |||
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Mythic Championship Cleveland 2019, the first Mythic Championship since the branding change from "Pro Tour", will take place on February 22-24, 2019, in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
Structural changes
Few structural changes to the Pro Tour were announced with the name change to Mythic Championship; the event retained its core structure of 16 rounds of tabletop Magic, including Standard and Booster draft. Prize structure and qualification methods were also more or less the same. One change, however, was that after Mythic Championship London 2019, an invitation no longer includes paid airfare to the event. Instead, every player in attendance wins at least $500, regardless of performance. This increased to prize payout to approximately $500,000, assuming an event size of 500; however, it does not necessarily represent a net increase in overall player compensation. This effect was not in place for Mythic Championship Cleveland, for which players still received paid airfare despite the increased prize purse.
Format
The release of Ravnica Allegiance resulted in major changes to the Standard metagame. The five additional shock lands meant that a wider variety of color combinations had a viable manabase, and cards such as Wilderness Reclamation spawned entire new archetypes, particularly with Nexus of Fate, resulting in a best-of-one ban of the latter. Another big hit was Hydroid Krasis, which became an integral part of several decks in the format, including what was previously Golgari Midrange, now Sultai Midrange due to the addition of the Krasis (and to a lesser Hostage Taker and certain sideboard cards). Other decks with succeess leading up to the Mythic Championship included Mono-Blue Aggro, which was strengthened by the printing of Pteramander; Mono-Red, which had acquired new weapons such as Light up the Stage and Skewer the Critics to become more of a burn deck than what had been the case prior to the release of Ravnica Allegiance; Rakdos Midrange, which won Grand Prix Memphis in the hands of Jody Keith; Azorius Aggro, a white-based aggro deck that shifted from Boros in the previous Stanard format to Azorius to make use of Negate and/or Deputy of Detention; Esper Control or Midrange; and Izzet Drakes.