Two and a half months and more than 20 hours of recorded CCG action later, the MT Invitational of 2026 has wrapped up. Congratulations to Bugle, our champion for this year, and also for every competitor, especially those who competed for the first time this year.
These are tournament placements for 2026. The top 4 finishers have earned points that will count towards their qualification for next year’s event.
- Bugle (18 points)
- Bigcheese (10 points)
- Smithers (5 points)
- anamoy (2 points)
- Pancake
- Andrew
- Golden Note
- Brandon Pagano (dropped pre-tournament)
One big change for this year was the running a "Last-Chance" Qualifier tournament immediately preceding the competition in January. We had good attendance for that, so that is going to be returning next year.
Changes For Next Year
In prior years, the first place finisher was given an automatic invite to next year’s event, but that’s being changed this year. (Though the 18 points that Bugle will receive would have been enough to qualify for every previous running of the tournament.)
This year, we ran into a situation that had never happened before with the tournament, where we very nearly didn’t have eight people with points who were able to compete. Luckily for us, in the end we did manage to get eight people together, but for a while before the tournament started, that appeared to be very much in doubt. (And even as things stood, Brandon had to drop before play began.)
The biggest issue that this would have caused for us, aside from reducing the amount of content that could be created, was that the process of randomly seeding the double elimination bracket only really works with a player pool that is a power of 2 in size. Any attempt at creating some sort of bracket for 7 or fewer players would either have created unfair advantages or created the risk of being unable to properly assign players into it.
Therefore, for 2027, the Invitational will be using a seeded bracket, with the amount of points that a player accumulates throughout the season determining the seeding. In its way, this might create some extra drama in the tournaments leading up to the event, as now points matter even above and beyond crossing the threshold required to qualify. But it also means that if we have to use a more exotic bracket due to having an odd number of players, we’ll be able to assign things properly. And the upshot is that the 1st-place finisher has to receive points this year, rather than just an automatic invite.
Compendium Of Content
In case you missed any of our streams or videos this year, here are all of them gathered together for your viewing pleasure.
Upper Bracket
Quarterfinals
Semifinals
Final
Lower Bracket
Rd 1
Rd 2
Semifinals
Final
Grand Final
Special Thanks
The Invitational is a labour and a big show to pull off, and as ever I need to thank everyone who helps to make it happen, from the players who make time in their lives for deckbuilding and play, to the commentators who join me on streams. An extra special thank-you to Hithroc this year, who assisted with recording some of the games!
Our commentators:
- Andrew (QB1, QB3, UF)
- Hithroc (QB2, SF2, UF)
- Pancake (QB2, GF)
- Grand Pause (QB3)
- Bugle (SF1, GF)
- Bigcheese (LBSF, GF)
Looking Ahead
The schedule seemed to work out reasonably well this year, so there will be no changes to that for 2027. That means that the next Last Chance event will be in January of 2027, with the tournament itself likely starting by the end of Februrary once again. See you all next year!
