Every World Championship competitor has their own path to the big tournament. For some, it's straightforward—qualify for a Regional Championship via your local store and then win the whole thing. For others, the path to Magic World Championship 30 later this year has come through the Pro Tour, or from their overall performance over the year.
But almost no path to the World Championship is quite as winding as the one Toni Ramis Pascual took.
The Inca, Islas Baleares native is a longtime Magic player and regular on the tabletop tournament circuit. He made his first career Grand Prix Top 8 in 2011, and earned what was the crowning achievement of his career in 2018 when he won Spain's nationals. After that, the changing Magic landscape seemed to leave Pascual always just outside the cutoff for whatever the most recent qualification was; and feeling somewhat disillusioned, he took some time away from the game's highest levels.
But you can't keep a good Magic player down, and Pascual is a very good Magic player. The 32-year-old adapted to the new paradigm and got to work in MTG Arena. And that brings us back to that winding paththe tabletop veteran turned online grinder had to go through to add his name to the growing list of World Championship competitors.
Like all players advancing on the Arena path, Pascual first had to earn enough play-in points from Arena events to make it to a Qualifier Play-In. From there, he advanced through a Qualifier Weekend to make it to Arena Championship 5. It's a tough road, but it's worth it—the Arena Championship is an exclusive 32-player event with big stakes: the Top 16 qualify for the Pro Tour and the top two finishers earn that coveted spot at the World Championship.
That's a lot of events, and a lot of tournaments to play. It hasn't been easy (more on that later), but after shocking the field with Izzet Phoenix last weekend at Arena Championship 5, Pascual is back in a very big way: he's got a second title to add to the trophy case.
We have a winner! Toni Ramis Pascual defeats Ryan Condon in the finals to earn the trophy and title from Arena Championship 5!
— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) March 31, 2024
We'll see both #AC5 finalists at the World Championship later this year! pic.twitter.com/SzscdkSMTd
Arena Championship 5 was absolutely dominated by the Rakdos Vampires deck that has taken Magic by storm since the printing of
Most notably, that included the premier testing team for the event that turned in the most tuned build of the bloodsuckers. David "Tangrams" Inglis, Arne Huschenbeth, and Jesse Hampton were part of the team that crushed the Swiss rounds and put three of the five Rakdos Vampires players into the Top 8.
And Pascual's path took him right through two of them. Arne Huschenbeth had three previous Top Finishes to his name including a win at the Kaldheim Championship in 2021. He was the draw for Pascual in the quarterfinals, and it was the Arclight Phoenixes that took the match in three tight games.
And now, dozens of tournament matches and thousands of games of Magic later, Pascual was at the precipice of what it was all for. One more match, an invite to the World Championship on the line. And his opponent was none other than the feared Inglis, captain of the most dominant Pro Tour testing team in recent years.
It was a nerve-racking situation, made all the more so by the fact that he was playing from home with nothing but his computer screen to accompany him as the tournament stretched to midnight in Spain.
But Pascual is a national champion. He knows what it is to play high-level Magic. The Top 8 of a major tournament with huge stakes on the line? Not only was he playing from home, he was at home in this tournament.
"The morning of the tournament, I got into the shower and had a thought: just maybe this was my tournament," Pascual said. "Not because I was more prepared than other times, but because I didn't feel nervous at all. It was the day of the tournament, and I hadn't felt any pressure at all. I've played many premium events in the past, but my results were never as good as I wanted, and I thought maybe I wasn't prepared for the big events.
"But coming into this tournament I prepared with Bernas Torres—I was closer to playing Vampires, but we played Phoenix because he kept beating me with it—and we were in constant contact with Javier Dominguez and Márcio Carvalho, who always help us out with everything we need. Having two of the best players in the history of the game at your service is something that is priceless."
And with the World Championship on the line against Inglis, all of that preparation came together to pay off in the best way possible. After years of multiple near-misses in key moments, Pascual did not miss this time, either against Inglis or against Ryan Condon's Quintorius Combo in the finals.
In 2024, competitive Magic is played at a lot of levels. I love that the Legacy enthusiast playing paper Magic can find a path to the Pro Tour that fits the way they game. And that those who prefer playing online have multiple tools at their disposal with MTG Arena and Magic Online. The World Championship of modern times is comprised of a unique field of qualifiers that arrived there playing sometimes in very different ways, but playing high-level Magic all the same. And for those like Pascual who have mastered both? That's the recipe for setting oneself up for the most opportunities possible.
Pascual now has many such opportunities in front of him—he's got the Pro Tour and World Championship to look forward to, a draft format to crunch, and sleep to catch up on.
"I was up until four in the morning answering congratulation messages!" he added happily.
The Other Perk of the World Championship
We talk a lot about the Magic World Championship and how special it is. I'll let you in on a secret, though: once the tournament starts, it plays out pretty similarly to any other Pro Tour style event. It's the stakes and the truly global nature of the event fed by Regional Championships and online events that set the World Championship apart.
And, of course, the World Championship player spotlight card.
As you might know, winning the World Championship comes with more than just the trophy and prize winnings. It comes with your likeness forever immortalized on a Magic card that you help design. We ask players before every tournament what winning would mean to them, and nothing drives the highest tier of completive players quite like joining the ranks of Javier Dominguez, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, Yuta Takahashi, and Nathan Steuer above.
The practice of awarding a special card to the World Champion has its origins almost 30 years ago, back at the 1996 World Championship. As part of our countdown to Magic World Championship 30, Frank Karsten and I are looking back at the previous 29 years, and the 1996 World Championship won by Australia's Tom Chanpheng stands out for a few historical reasons.
There were 28 countries represented by national teams (a new high), and Chanpheng said he was especially proud to have won it on behalf of his country's community. His deck innovation aside—check out Frank's column for more details on that—Chanpheng was an accomplished player who had been testing with everyone he could in the year since he had picked up Magic in 1995.
The Top 8 features some of the biggest names from the early years of Magic. Chanpheng defeated Mark Justice in the finals, and the Top 8 also included future Hall of Famers Olle Rade and Tommi Hovi, while a player named Jon Finkel finished just outside of the Top 8.
For his win, Chanpheng was also awarded with this incredible piece of Magic history.
It wasn't exactly a Standard staple, given that there was only the one ever printed, and it came inside the trophy awarded to Chanpheng, but you can trace recent cards featuring the likeness of the Magic World Champion, such as Nathan Steuer's Duelist of the Mind in Outlaws at Thunder Junction, back to that original 1996 prize.
The march to Magic World Championship 30 continues with Pro Tour Thunder Junction—be ready to see more battle toward the world stage witht he Seattle showdown April 26-28!