The Magic Invitational Tournament, formerly called the Duelist Invitational, is a tournament in which successful pro-players are gathered by Wizards of the Coasts to play round-robin in various formats, often joke formats or very unusual formats. During the tournament, the players submit card ideas. The winner of the tournament will get to design a card to see print in a future set, of course after R&D had it's input on the card. However, the card to see print is not necessarily the same card as submitted in the tournament and sometimes not even remotely related to it.
Often the winner designs a creature card and those creature cards usually will bear the likeness of the winner in the art.
Winners and designed cards[]
- 1997: Olle Rade: Sylvan Safekeeper
- 1998: Darwin Kastle: Avalanche Riders
- 1999: Mike Long: Rootwater Thief
- 2000: Chris Pikula: Meddling Mage
- 2000: Jon Finkel: Shadowmage Infiltrator
- 2001: Kai Budde: Voidmage Prodigy
- 2002: Jens Thoren : Solemn Simulacrum
- 2004: Bob Maher: Dark Confidant
- 2005: Terry Soh: Rakdos Augermage
- 2006: Antoine Ruel: Ranger of Eos
- 2007: Tiago Chan: Snapcaster Mage
In addition, during the 2005 Tournament Wizards of the Coast held a public vote among the users of their website for the most popular card among the submissions which would also be printed after going through the usual R&D process but without featuring the winner in the art. The winning card was submitted by Tsuyoshi Fujita and was eventually turned into Gemstone Caverns.