Over the past weeks, several Magic: The Gathering events have already been cancelled due to the Coronavirus concerns, including MagicFest Turin, and the four other MagicFest events ChannelFireball recently announced, and Star City Games Baltimore and Syracuse.
Today, Wizards of the Coast has announced that they're cancelling more MTG events for the health and safety of fans, players, employees.
Here are the significant changes WotC is making:
ChannelFireball recently cancelled all MagicFest events through mid-April.
Players who were invited to Players Tour Finals in Houston, originally scheduled on April 24-26, will be invited to the already-scheduled Finals scheduled for Minneapolis, July 9-12. According to WotC, the event will be larger and will award more prize money to accommodate the larger field.
For Regionals Players Tours, WotC has moved and rescheduled the events:
The Mythic Invitational Ikoria is cancelled and won't be rescheduled, and all Mythic Invitational invites for 2020 will be shifted, so playerswho qualified for the May Invitational will instead be invited to the Mythic Invitational scheduled for July 23, and anyone invited to the July Invitational will instead be invited to the October Mythic Invitational.
"We are rescheduling several events to later in the year as it gives us the best chance for travel and local restrictions to be lifted and to adequately assess the health and safety of our events," WotC stated. "Please understand that this is a developing situation and some details may not be finalized and others may change depending on the recommendations and guidelines of government officials. We will work to finalize all dates and details as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we work through these changes."
WotC went on to say that they will be sending travel reimbursements to qualified players with non-refundable, non-transferrable flights to previously scheduled Players Tour events if they booked their travel prior to March 12.
It's good to see that WotC is prioritizing the health and safety of the Magic community with these significant schedule changes for competitive MTG. Hopefully, a vaccine will be made available soon, so the other major MTG events scheduled later this year won't be cancelled.
Related: 2 'New' Magic: The Gathering Keywords Revealed (For Ikoria?)