This fall marks the three-year anniversary of the first Regional Championships, the premier way for both up-and-coming and established competitive Magic players to make their way to the Pro Tour. Some players turn their RC invitation into regular Pro Tour appearances, while others return to their regional stomping grounds.

For many of these players, the Regional Championship isn't just a means to an end; it's a worthwhile journey in and of itself, as they often make it there because of the community they've built by routinely participating.

"The more I compete in these [Regional Championships], the more excited I get to hang out with the network of friends that I've made who live all across the country and all end up traveling to the same RCs," said Chris Botelho, who will be playing in Atlanta after qualifying via the US Regional Championship this past summer. "It is very fun to have a sort of middle ground where everybody travels to a foreign city, gets a big room, hangs out, and goes to dinners together."

For Botelho and many others, the Regional Championships echo some of the experiences that they used to turn to Grands Prix for.

"I think Regional Championships are similar to old Grand Prix events in a way that I really enjoy. I think they're kind of different from a lot of tournaments like the Pro Tour in that they are a mix of really high-level play and really open, uncertain meta games," he said. "I really enjoy trying to put my finger on the pulse of what decks I think are going to be popular on a given weekend. I try to figure out how to tune a popular deck or pick something that's built to exploit the deck that I expect to be the most common. With Pro Tours, you have people being more secretive and you have to be prepared for more novel things. But at Regional Championships, I feel like you can usually get a kind of clear picture of what most people are going to bring. And I—being a control player at heart—really enjoy getting to abuse that."

Botelho first qualified for the Pro Tour in 2016 with a 5th-place finish at Grand Prix Portland. It was an unanticipated catapult onto the professional scene for a mostly casual player.

"I had a really weird trajectory with competitive Magic in that I spent about a year playing super casually at FNM and bringing my own decks to Store Championships but I was never good enough to win a tournament. Then, I did weirdly well at a Grand Prix and qualified for the Pro Tour before I had ever won anything in my life. I jumped into the deep end kind of randomly, so the Pro Tour was basically my first competitive experience. I think that helped me, because once you have been to a Pro Tour or two, you get less overwhelmed by other high-level events. I think Magic is a much easier game to play if you can focus entirely on the game and forget every external aspect of it until the match is over, and that gets easier and easier the more experience you get with it."

For Australian player Jennifer-Rose Holloway, who won the first Regional Championship she ever played in this past July, these Regional Championships are an opportunity to connect with players from across the country.

"For me, especially being Australian, there's not a ton of big events that you can get a bunch of friends to come for, because I've made a bunch of friends in the Sanctum RC chat and they're from all over Australia. There's four or five of us, and one lives in Sydney and two live in Queensland, so when there's an event that can get us all together to hang out and play, it's really nice. I really enjoyed that in particular, just having the excuse to meet up and play Magic."

For Linden Koot, who qualified for the Pro Tour through a Regional Championship for the second time this past summer, the draw of seeing friends is paired with the fact that in-person play is his preference.

"I haven't qualified any other way, but it's definitely different since most of the other ways you'd qualify are online, and I like playing paper. It's my main way of playing the game. I definitely play paper Magic better and enjoy playing paper Magic way more than playing digital Magic."

Enjoying the journey is another key reason that Koot keeps coming back to Regional Championships.

"I would say that a big part of it is having fun and enjoying the journey. Obviously, it's important to have goals and work toward them, but enjoying the journey is also important. And that's partly why I like going to almost every Regional Championship. It's what I enjoy."

The joy and satisfaction of high-level Magic and strong collaboration are threads that wind through both the Regional Championship and the Pro Tour testing experience for players like Botelho and Holloway.

"It has been a much more collaborative sort of experience than when I qualified through Grand Prix events or through big qualifiers on Magic Online," Botelho said. "For Regional Championships, because they are such a seasonal event, it's been easier to find a group to test with because we all compete on the same weekend with the same goal in mind. So that has been a fun kind of community experience to get, to have a bunch of people all put their minds toward figuring it out at the same time."

That's something that continued as players gather in testing team houses to prepare for the coming Pro Tour.

"I'm going to be joining Team Sanctum of All at a testing house, which I have done in the past and is always a total blast. There is something so incredibly unique about just drilling down for almost an entire week in a house where everyone's only goal is to brainstorm and play crazy, high-level, and complex Magic. There's something very satisfying and almost pure about a bunch of people being really positive about just going all in on doing one thing to the absolute best of their abilities. It's a very unique sort of positive experience."

That camaraderie is on Holloway's mind as the Pro Tour approaches. She is also preparing with Sanctum of All.

"The Pro Tour is going to be stressful, and I hope it goes well, but I don't really care about prizes or doing well. I want to requalify [for the Pro Tour], obviously, but otherwise I don't mind how I do. I just want to have fun. But the testing house and hanging out and trying to find a good deck and playing a lot of drafts with really good players, just playing good Magic with really good players is a really fun experience that I don't want to give up.

"I would love to qualify for the next Pro Tour," she said of her hopes for the coming weekend. "I'm already qualified for World Championship 31, which is still an insane statement. I'm on Team Sanctum, so I love hanging out with them and doing well. The testing house, while I've only been here for half a day, has been great. Hanging out in the Discord, practicing, and preparing with the team has been incredible, and I don't want to miss out. I'd love to requalify for that. I also really hope I do well because, in Australia, I've had a bunch of different people and women and trans people message me and be like, 'It's really nice to see someone doing really well.' So I would like to do well for that, but I also don't know how much I enjoy being seen. We'll see how that goes."

Future events are also front and center for Botelho and Koot as they look beyond the upcoming Pro Tour.

Beza, the Bounding Spring

"The biggest thing on my radar is Worlds at the end of the year," Botelho said. "It features Standard, and I am deeply, deeply excited to probably register Beza in a Standard event. I don't know what the metagame will look like, but I've got a sneaking suspicion Beza will still be good."

"This is my second time qualifying through a Regional Championship. From the start, my goal was to make it to the Pro Tour for the prestige and the experience of it," Koot said. "It's exciting to get to compete at such a high level. I'm a very competitive person, so it's very exciting. My goal is to requalify for the next Pro Tour at Pro Tour Edge of Eternities. I'm looking forward to working with my team that I've gotten close with. I'm excited for the testing house experience. I didn't really get that with my first Pro Tour, so I'm looking forward to that for Atlanta."

With Pro Tour Edge of Eternities on the horizon (along with whatever comes next), all three players are preparing to play in a Pro Tour that features Modern, though they qualified by playing Standard.

For Koot, change of formats is a boon.

"I feel very comfortable in almost every 60-card format. Modern, Pioneer, and Standard—not Legacy—are formats I feel comfortable with. I feel like I'd be fine with any of them. I think Modern is in an extremely healthy state right now, and I'm really excited to get to play it. It's the perfect time, I think, for a Modern Pro Tour."

Botelho and Holloway, on the other hand, have both had a rockier journey from uncertainty to acceptance to maybe even confidence.

"I have played some Modern on and off over the last couple of years, but the Modern gameplay styles have historically trended toward more linear decks that try to do their thing faster than the other decks as opposed to grindy, interactive, control-oriented stuff, which is what I usually have more experience with," Botelho said. "For this Pro Tour, I may have spent a couple of weeks kind of depressively saying, 'I don't know how any of these decks work. I've played all of them, and I don't know what any one's doing,' and being kind of sad. But after a couple of weeks of starting to understand what other decks are doing, I think I have found a deck that feels interactive and fun. Now, I am actually pretty excited to play Modern."

"I feel confident in my drafting skills and my generic gameplay," Holloway said. "I'm a bit lost in the format. It's my first time playing Modern as well. I definitely was just a Standard girlie. But I have a really good team that's working on some really interesting decks, and I'm trying to play my weird and fringe pet decks, so we'll see how it goes. I feel confident that I'll be able to play a good deck and do well.

"It felt rough at the start, but playing Modern is just really, really fun, and being forced to play different decks and different styles of Magic is also really fun. It helps you play the game better. It was a bit daunting, but I think it was good for me."

While their journeys through the Draft and Modern rounds of Pro Tour Edge of Eternities have yet to begin, Holloway, Botelho, and Koot have already started on their path through the tournament. It began even before they joined up with their friends and teammates at the RCs or at their testing houses, and it will continue past this weekend no matter what the rounds ahead hold.