Testing teams are a cornerstone of competitive Magic, bringing together dedicated players to unravel the mysteries of Draft and shape Constructed decks with the hopes of qualifying for future events, or perhaps even breaking into the Top 8.

Team ChannelFireball Ultimate Guard and Team Handshake Ultimate Guard have both been powerhouses in that regard, from the launch of the current Pro Tour system in 2023 all the way through to the upcoming World Championship. This year, Team Sanctum of All joined them in putting up awe-inspiring results in tournament after tournament, cementing the team as one of the new juggernauts in competitive Magic.

While testing teams help players cultivate and share expertise, teams can also learn from one another. All three of these teams approach testing, collaboration, and tournaments in their own way, and appreciating the skills and strengths of other teams is important for knowing how to play against them and continuing to develop the team dynamic.

So, in the eyes of the players who make up these teams, what makes them stand out?

Team ChannelFireball Ultimate Guard is a group that has been playing and testing, together and in other configurations, for eight or more years. They're some of the most experienced players in any given tournament, and together, they create one of the most battle-hardened teams.

Anthony Lee of Team Handshake Ultimate Guard sees that in ChannelFireball's technical play.

"ChannelFireball has the strongest technical players, so whenever you play against them, they're pretty much the scariest opponents you can play in the tournament itself," said Lee. "It's always really, really difficult playing against them."

Claire Rianhard of Team Sanctum of All agrees. "They're really pushing for crisp, clean technical play. That kind of pursuit of excellence is pretty admirable."

ChannelFireball was also responsible for one of the splashiest and most effective innovations of the season, the Rakdos Vampires deck they brought to the Pioneer portion of Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor.

"It's hard to get away from the Vampires deck that they brought," Rianhard said when talking about what stood out during the past season. "We're also a team that enjoys an innovative build, so somebody keeping up with us on that front is a pretty hot item."

They're not just Constructed adepts. Rianhard has also come to appreciate ChannelFireball's Limited prowess across the season.

"I think they're really good at Limited, and the most impressive part is you get these players that are consistently going better than 4-2 a lot of the time. Each win up the ladder is harder and harder to get. You know what they say about them: they'll beat you up in Draft."

ChannelFireball also laid the groundwork for other contemporary testing teams like Handshake.

"I think they do all of the normal things better, and that makes sense because they're the original super team, so a lot of what all of us do is based off what they did," said Lee. "I think they've laid down the fundamentals for the rest of us and the whole concept of a big testing team. Even things like Limited meetings or testing houses, things that we kind of take for granted, come from ChannelFireball in large part."

While ChannelFireball is comprised of some of the longest-working players, Sanctum of All is a much more recent team arrival on the competitive scene.

"Sanctum of All bursting onto the scene is incredibly impressive," Lee said. "One of the biggest things in succeeding in competitive Magic is networking, and a lot of the advantages that traditional super-teams have had is in having those established networks. People of marginalized identities haven't benefited from that as much, and that means Sanctum of All had a much bigger challenge building those networks and a strong team compared to ChannelFireball and Handshake. They've still done really well, and you can tell that they have some very strong players."

To Lee, that also means that Sanctum of All isn't done with its rise to the top.

"They're building a really good talent pool already, and I think that's really impressive. I think that means they probably have a lot more untapped potential than the other big teams as well. We'll see probably increasingly strong results over the next couple of years from them."

For Reid Duke, a member of Team ChannelFireball, Sanctum of All's team members embody a wide and unique range of talents that they bring to bear on the Pro Tour.

"Sanctum has proven that deep mastery of a particular archetype can also be the winning approach," he said. "For example, in Pro Tour Thunder Junction, my team had worked on the Four-Color Legends Slogurk, the Overslime deck and concluded that it wasn't objectively one of the best strategies. But on the day of the tournament, Sanctum was just so proficient with such a highly tuned version of the deck and playing it at a level above the folks who were playing it in our house. They ended up being the scariest opponents you could face in that Pro Tour based on their mastery of the deck and knowing things that the rest of the competitors didn't know."

"I think they're more boldly creative than the other teams in both Constructed and Limited," Lee agreed. "They're more daring. I think they commit more to the wild ideas and actually execute on them. It's not that hard to come up with crazy stuff. You see lots of people theorizing and making wild decks. But the unique thing about Sanctum is that they do that in a way that makes sense in the context of the Pro Tour. That's something that we haven't really seen before, and I think Sanctum does it really, really well."

For Lee, that outside-the-box approach is a team quality that Handshake is actively trying to cultivate.

"We've tried to lean into that a little bit more, having seen how well they've done and tried to employ those unpredictable strategies. That's been something that we've looked at in recruitment. We are actively looking for people to fill in that kind of mad-scientist role that they do so well, so we can maybe get some of that."

Duke also sees the ways that Sanctum of All's cultivation of unique talents has helped them get a leg up on the rest of the field.

"Sanctum seems to leverage the unique, irreplaceable skills of its individual players. Sanctum has individual players that can do things that the rest of the Pro Tour field can't, and when you have a bunch of individuals like that, you have a bunch of chances for someone to come up with a winning strategy that can put you a level, or sometimes multiple levels, ahead of the competition."

Team Handshake Ultimate Guard is, in some ways, the middle-point between the long-established ChannelFireball and the fresh-faced Sanctum of All. They've shifted, regrouped, and reshaped across the years,

Their results, however, have remained consistently strong.

"With Handshake, it's been their ability to maintain excellence and discipline despite having to deal with some high-profile churn across the season," said Rianhard. "For a long time, I associated Tangrams and Nathan with the team, and they both fell off over the course of the season, and yet you still have Handshake crushing every event. I think the churn of the Pro Tour is one of the biggest questions facing teams as they exist now, and it's definitely impressed me to see them taking it in their stride."

"Team Handshake operates like a really professional team in the sense that they select players who are working hard and playing a lot," Duke said. "Handshake has the highest intersection point of player skill and effort. Team Handshake has shifted younger than us, toward people who are at the peak of their Magic career and willing to put in a lot of hours. The intersection of player skill and how much work they're putting in each and every time is just really hard to match."

Handshake's commitment to top-tier preparation results in rigorous testing and deck selection for each event, which both Duke and Rianhard pointed to as one of the team's strongest elements.

"They're at the peak of their game and they know how to give themselves the best chance of doing well in a tournament," Duke said. "That means being flexible with their deck choice. You never really encounter Team Handshake being stubborn or clinging to a deck that's not clearly the best. They know how to approach the format and use a flexible approach and strategy that winds up giving them the best deck and the best preparation for every event."

"I think Handshake is really good at knowing when you're just supposed to play the good deck," Rianhard said. "Everybody's allowed to do it, and it is going to be the correct choice more often than some of us would like to admit. I think of that as another form of discipline: knowing when to commit to the good deck."

That commitment goes beyond having just the best deck.

"It's not just that they play the best deck, it's that they really push the boundaries of the best deck in a way that is consistently impressive," Rianhard said. "Looking at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor, where they had the innovation of playing Ashiok in the main deck as a way to combat the mirror and Lotus Field, that was a pretty unintuitive way to develop what was the best deck at the time that really paid off for them. I think it's that kind of conservativeness but also ingenuity that I wish I had."

Of course, these three top teams are just one slice of the competition at the Magic World Championship.

"We get a lot of this stuff from sources outside the top teams as well," Lee said. "I think that's important to note."

And while all three teams share a common goal, their path to putting players into the Top 8 varies widely.

"I think it's really neat how you have all sorts of different structures for these Magic teams that are all succeeding at a high level," Rianhard said. "We're definitely a much looser, communal group rather than having an executive director type, which I think some of the other teams do. It's cool to see each team succeeding in their own way."

Still, when each team's players sit down for the first round of the Magic World Championship. They'll ultimately have more in common than less.

"I feel so lucky to play with and against such talented competitors and other players," Duke said. "The thing that I love most about Magic is facing people who are really skilled and really passionate. Handshake, Sanctum, and the other big teams and competitors out there are helping us all bring out the best in ourselves."