Building a Strong Testing Team for Magic Players

Many aspiring competitive magic players have dreamt about playing on the Pro Tour. The path to get there is reasonably clear - win a Regional Championship Qualifier, place well at the Regional Championship, and get onto the Pro Tour for your first time. Simple enough, but scoring that first place finish at your local RCQ takes quite a bit more effort than going 4-0 at your local FNM.

Forming a solid testing team is going to separate the players that consistently perform well at competitive events from players that may see more mixed results. You can certainly prepare for your local RCQs by attending FNM for your format of choice, but five rounds of FNM does not represent everything that you’ll need to do well in the competitive world. A great way to get really good at magic is to consistently play against players that are also really good at magic. I don’t know how your FNMs look, but my area boasts a very strong crowd. Some players are certainly more seasoned than others, and I’m much more interested in picking the brains of those stronger players when I’m preparing for competitive events. There’s more to a strong testing team than simply grabbing the best local players and playing cards at someone’s house.

First, it’s important to look for players that have similar goals to you. Is your goal to spike the local RCQ next weekend and attend the RC? Is your goal to grind all season for good reps, crush the RC, and place well at the PT? Try to surround yourself with other players that are looking for similar things. It would be a tall ask to have every player’s goals align exactly with yours, but surrounding yourself with a team of players with similar goals is going to be a great starting point.

My local testing team consists of several players that are setting out with the goal of attending every RC and placing reasonably well. We also have a couple of players that are mostly interested in playing as much local competitive magic as possible, and if they spike an RCQ they’ll start to plan for that. To be entirely clear, there isn’t some huge skill gap between the players in my group that are aiming for the Pro Tour versus the players that just want to play competitive magic. This comes down to setting attainable goals and realistic expectations - if your job has you working 80 hours a week, it’s probably going to be more difficult for you to put in the time to really prepare for your local RCQs, let alone qualify and start prepping for your next competitive step.

Second, look for players that you’re willing to chat with about the nuts-and-bolts of your format of choice. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have multi-format all stars that are willing to get together for testing, but it’s possible that your area has players that are more dedicated to one format over another. I wouldn’t necessarily grab my Legacy buddies for feedback on Pioneer.

Even when I find strong Pioneer players that I’d be willing to test with, some players are more archetype experts rather than format experts. I was previously a Modern-only, creature-combo only kind of guy, so folks would regularly come to me with questions about how to play against Yawgmoth, or (in the old days) Kiki Pod or Druid combo. It can be valuable to have access to players with experience on specific archetypes to help build out your sideboard, but not every format has a deck of each type. Ideally, you want to have access to players that are familiar enough to explain the dynamics of matchups that you don’t understand. That said, with enough time, ink, and printer paper, you too can become an expert in any matchup under the sun.

Third, it’s important to find players that are willing to commit time to actually joining up for testing. You can get an enthusiastic “yes” from anybody at FNM, but when it comes down to meeting up and getting your reps in, nothing’s worse than having your testing partners flake out. Consistency is key! If you frame preparing for competitive magic events similarly to how you’d prepare for a test in school, you get much more value (and will retain more information) when you spend several sessions preparing over the course of weeks, rather than cramming as much information as you can at the last minute.

Prior to SCG Atlanta’s Modern 10k, my testing team was meeting up 1-2 nights a week to go over specific matchups, tweak our 75s, and go over sideboard plans. Not every player can make it every week, but consistency is important in preparing for large events.

You may be wondering when I’m going to talk about how important it is to have the best players joining your testing team. Honestly, that’s really not my biggest concern - as long as you’re a reasonable player that’s able to pilot their deck proficiently, and I’m able to have a good discussion with you, I don’t care whether you’re the highest performing player at FNM. Most of the time that I’ve spent with my testing groups has consisted of running theory questions and matchup-role questions for various scenarios. Getting value out of your testing sessions is a much deeper topic that really deserves its own article, but suffice to say that the aim of your testing sessions shouldn’t be to simply win as many games of magic as you can.

Finally, something to keep in mind when building a strong testing team is that you want to keep your team to a reasonably small size. If you’re lucky enough to have 30 players that all share similar aspirations, that you can speak with about your decks, and that all want to meet up regularly to test, that’s amazing! In my experience, it’s difficult to get meaningful testing out of groups larger than 8-10 players. Once your group gets larger than about a draft pod, it quickly becomes overwhelming to sift through all of the feedback being provided when somebody asks a question. Caveat: If you’re preparing for the PT and you need to learn a specific draft environment, I could see getting 16 players together to double up on each seat of a draft and discussing picks, but outside of that I’d try to keep your testing groups to fewer than 10 players.

That wraps up this first article on preparing for competitive events! To very briefly recap this article, I’ve boiled everything down to the following three points. 1) A testing team full of players with similar goals will leave you more likely to leave each testing session with renewed motivation and valuable feedback. 2) A testing team consisting of players with strong format or archetype knowledge will lead to more productive discussions during your testing sessions. 3) A testing team that is willing to meet up regularly should see better results than a testing team that meets up sporadically or only the day before an event. 4) A testing team that is too large will struggle to parse feedback into meaningful bites. Have you had any success prepping for your local compREL events? Let us know what strategies worked best for you and your team!