MagicCon Amsterdam General Post

This year I was lucky enough to attend MagicCon Amsterdam as a creator - a huge thank you to Wizards of the Coast and YRSTruly for inviting me! It was an amazing event and I had the absolute best time there! In this post I'll give you a general overview of what was happening at the convention and then in some later posts I’ll go into more detail about what I did personally!

WHERE AND WHEN?

Magic Con Amsterdam 2024 took place at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre over the weekend of 28th - 30th June 2024. This place was huge and even though the event was sold out all weekend, it in no way felt crowded. It felt like there was enough space for everyone and there was always somewhere to sit down and play a game! Another great thing about holding the convention here was that it was really easy to access by public transport.

WHAT TO DO?

There was SO much to do at Magic Con Amsterdam from playing the game itself, to shopping to meeting the artists behind the cards!

✮ PLAYING MAGIC: THE GATHERING

There were a number of ways to play Magic during the weekend, the first being Freeplay. Around the convention centre there were maybe hundreds of tables where you could sit and play a game with friends or strangers that would become friends. There were even tables in the area where you queued in the morning so you could get a game in before the convention started! In the Command Zone there were a ton of tables to play, and if you didn’t have a full pod, all you had to do was ask for a sign that corresponded to the type of game you wanted to play, casual for example, and wait for people to join you - what a fantastic idea! Another way to play was Ticketed Play. These were tournaments that you had to sign up and pay for in advance. There was a wide variety of events on offer, such as FNM pauper games, Commander pre-con battles, Drafts, All Play and of course, Gavin Verhey’s famous Unknown event. Each event had a different price and different prizes. The most common prizes were Tix. Tix are basically tickets that you redeem at the prize wall for different prizes. A lot of prizes were available, from binders, to boosters to deck boxes, and my two personal favourites - uncut sheets of cards and oversized cards. I really hope to own an oversized card one day!

✮ THE PRO TOUR

Convention goers weren’t the only ones playing Magic! The Pro Tour was also happening at this event! If you want to watch the pinnacle of high-level play, this is the activity for you! The games can get pretty intense- especially when you’re rooting for your favourite player! 

✮ MEET THE ARTISTS

This is probably one of my most favourite things about any convention - meeting the artists behind the cards! I have a bachelor's degree in history of art and I’ve always loved art and meeting the artists is a way to combine two of my passions! It’s always so fun to meet the artists and support them directly by getting your cards signed and buying merch from them! Some artists will even do sketches on artist proofs for you during the convention and some will also alter the art on their cards too! Not all artists do this though- they simply don’t have time!

✮ MANA STAGE EVENTS

The Mana Stage was a really important part of the convention- it was here that most of the big events took place, like preview panels or Game Knights Live or even the Cosplay Contest! The atmosphere in this area was fantastic - just a ton of people sharing their love of Magic together!

✮FIND FBLTHP

We all know and love the little one-eyed homunculus Fblthp, but he’s always getting lost! Luckily, at MagicCon Amsterdam attendees could help find him! Hidden in strategic places around the convention centre were seven QR codes that Fblthp hunters had to find and scan to track him down! If you managed to do all of this, a prize awaited you at the end…

✮COMMUNITY PANEL EVENTS 

The Community Panel room was like a smaller Mana Stage where many fun events took place, including a panel with Gavin Verhey and a very cool MTG quiz.

✮FAMILY MAGIC

Family Magic was a fun space where there were fun activities for all the family such as colouring in your favourite Planeswalkers, making MTG friendship bracelets or even taking a drawing lesson with a MTG artist!

✮SHOPPING

Shopping was one of my favourite things to do at MagicCon, even if I didn’t buy much, so let’s call it window shopping… There was a huge array of TCG stalls selling all sorts of cards from Alpha to Alliances and from Eldritch Moon to Modern Horizons 3! It was a lot of fun checking out these legendary cards from Magic’s history! Aside from actual cards there was the merch stand where I did actually buy stuff, especially the blind bags pins - I absolutely love pins! But I’ll show you more of them later!

✮CREATOR ZONE

As I attended MagicCon Amsterdam as a creator, I spent a lot of time in the creator zone doing a lot of different things! I won’t go into detail about what I did just yet, but here’s a little taster of things you could do. Meet and greets were a lot of fun. These were opportunities to meet your favourite creators, play some pack wars and maybe even win some prizes! This was also a great opportunity to get the MagicCon Amsterdam 2024 creator passport stamped. This was a passport that was available during the event to get stamped and signed by your favourite creators! You could also play games of Magic with some creators; anything from commander, to drafts, to two headed giants, to spectacle play! It was a lot of fun and so many different opportunities were on offer!

Stay tuned for my day by day play by play!