British winner makes history in Magic: The Gathering’s first tabletop Mythic Championship

The first tabletop Magic: The Gathering Mythic Championship – the evolution of the card game’s long-running high-level Pro Tour format – was one for the history books.

The three-day tournament held last weekend saw almost 500 players compete for a prize pool of half a million dollars in Cleveland, Ohio, reportedly making it the second biggest single Pro Tour equivalent ever held behind last November’s Guilds of Ravinca Pro Tour – the final event to use that name.

The last eight players in the tournament shared more than 20 Pro Tour/Mythic Championship Top Eight appearances between them, with the final match seeing a showdown between consecutive two-time English national titleholder Autumn Burchett – playing for the first time in a day three at a premiere tournament – and Japan’s Yoshihiko Ikawa, who claimed his second Top Eight placing.

The final match ran to five games, with Burchett returning from a 2-1 backfoot to ultimately win 3-2, defeating Ikawa’s Esper Control deck using their Mono-Blue Tempo loadout.

As well as making Burchett the first winner of the rebranded Mythic Championship format, the win made them the first British winner of a Pro Tour-level event. As a transfemme non-binary person, Burchett is also the first non-male winner of a top-level Magic: The Gathering competition.

“So much love and thankfulness in my heart right now,” Burchett tweeted following their win.

“If me being out and achieving things makes even one trans person feel more able to come out and be themselves... that is just... everything," they later added.

The Cleveland Mythic Championship also marked a different milestone for competitive Magic, as veteran commentator and reporter Brian David-Marshall announced that he would be stepping away from the tournament scene after more than 20 years of covering high-level Magic.

You can watch the moment Burchett made Magic: The Gathering history below.