Behind every trophy is a tale. And every good Magic story of a player winning that trophy begins long before the day they claim that trophy.

Your typical Regional Championship or Magic Spotlight Series event includes fifteen or sixteen rounds of Magic followed by a Top 8 showdown, but champions know that it takes more than nineteen rounds to win one of these tournaments; it's probably closer to 190 once you start accounting for the endless deck building, Magic Online leagues, trial runs against teammates, and dozens of informal testing matches in between drafts. When we highlight Magic champions, it's not a stretch to say that their win was a long time in the making.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Magic winner's story this long in the making. But at this point, as Magic speeds into its third decade, stories like Raul Porojan's shouldn't be shocking.

Porojan recently added a sizeable title to his Magic resume, having won Magic Spotlight: Modern in Utrecht against a field of over 1,500 players. "I've been playing for 27 years, having started in school when I was 9 and competed in my first tournaments at 11 or 12. I've never stopped competing since," he explained. "Competitive Magic is simply one of the biggest joys of my life. Competition is almost like meditation to me, it tends to make me very calm, focused, and present in the moment."

Raul Porojan is the champion of Magic Spotlight: Modern! His Orzhov Blink deck triumphed over 1,576 competitors to claim the title. Congratulations! 🏆#SpotlightModern pic.twitter.com/GAv9GdrO6K

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) March 16, 2025

You may be familiar with that first part of the story—it may be familiar for those among us who were introduced to the game at a young age—but Porojan's competitive history goes back to 2007. It was then that he qualified for Pro Tour Valencia, an Extended event that would go on to be won by Rémi Fortier with "CounterTop Goyf" (playing Tarmogoyf , Dark Confidant , Sensei's Divining Top , and Counterbalance in a wild-looking Top 8 that included Enduring Ideal Combo in the finals). It was in Valencia that Porojan began to realize his rather unique trait when it comes to competition: his ability to stay calm and collected in the finals of an event.

Porojan's prowess translated to the Pro Tour, and he played in several over the next decade while also making the Top 8 of three European GPs, his favorite events of the season. Most notably, he was the captain of Team Romania at the final World Magic Cup in 2018. If it had been a complete Magic career, it would have been wildly successful for a kid who had first scribbled decklists in the lunchroom.

But it wasn't the end of his story. The pandemic forced Porojan's play online, and real life—the Berlin native works as a startup founder—got in the way of Magic at times, but he always remained active online, playing in every MTG Arena qualifier event he could while never missing an Arena Direct event to win boxes of Play Boosters. As tabletop play returned, Porojan largely kept his eye on it from the outside, but Utrecht was different. The Magic Spotlight Series, featuring a large, open-field tournament with a direct path to the Pro Tour, is reminiscent of those Grand Prix events of which Porojan has such fond memories, and he couldn't resist the opportunity to come back out and spin the tires one more time.

But first, he needed a crash course.

"This was my first paper tournament since 2019, and my first Modern event since 2018. I played my first match of this current Modern format five or six days before Utrecht, tried out different decks, and landed on Orzhov [Blink]," Porojan recalled. "I played about six matches with the deck and knew it was a great deck for me. Sure, some people focused on me just picking up the format for a couple of days, but this win has been 27 years in the making."

That second part is what makes Porojan's tale of the trophy so intriguing. While many Modern stories involve fanatical players dedicating years of their lives to one deck, striking when the moment is right in the metagame, steering the deck to victory.

That's not the case with Porojan; it was instead one heck of a crash course. But once he found his deck, featuring Aetherdrift's Ketramose, the New Dawn , things began to click into place.

"It might sound weird but understanding this deck and all its matchups wasn't too difficult despite my inexperience with the format. It's a playstyle I'm very familiar and comfortable with, the underpowered, nickel-and-dime, Jund-style decks in a field of overpowered and unfair decks," he explained. "In this way, Orzhov Blink was a perfect match with the things I'm good at, understanding what matters in every game, my path to victory in each situation, picking opponent's gameplans apart while advancing my own, turn after turn. There wasn't a single moment in the entire tournament where I wasn't 'in the game' or couldn't see a path to winning, which in itself is an extremely powerful characteristic in any Magic deck."

Who says you can't teach an old Magic grinder new tricks? And Ketramose, the New Dawn gets very tricky.

"While it's complicated to play and find the right line compared to, say, Eldrazi, or Boros Energy, multiple opponents told me they felt uncomfortable playing against me as I had so many angles of attack," Porojan elaborated. "From Ephemerates demolishing their counterplans, tempo swings with Flickerwisp with Witch Enchanter or Phelia, grinding them out with Ketramose, a multitude of different hate cards for all different scenarios, or a solid land-destruction package, it was very difficult for my opponents to ever get their thing going, at which point I could often drag them into a 'fair fight,' which would typically favor me. Even though prep time was short, I felt very confident with this deck, so I'd say I was actually in good hopes about Utrecht."

Of course, settling on an archetype was far from the final challenge Porojan would face long before he squared off against Alberto Manchado's terrifying Temur Breach deck in the finals. He'd also have to read sideboard guides, get physical cards, and ease back into the physical demands of a long tabletop tournament. Porojan had help on his way back to the Pro Tour—and the fact that Porojan's longtime friends had a part in making it happen made it so much sweeter.

This event in 2025 may be named differently than it was in 2015, but the thrill that only high-level Magic competition can bring is still there. The only difference, really? For the first time, Porojan's weekend ended with him holding the trophy.

"I prepped mostly on Magic Online with daily chats with Arne Huschenbeth, who has become a great friend in the last few years and has been my main connection to competitive Magic talk while I was watching from the sidelines. I also learned some vital points about the Orzhov mirror in my last-minute testing with Joschua Bausch on Friday, although I'm sure he benefitted at least as much from me convincing him to cut Emrakul from his sideboard," Porojan said. "Magic is a team sport, even if we play it alone in tournaments. I wouldn't even have played Utrecht at all without a deck, and I was lucky that Dorian Wiese loaned me a whole deck. I absolutely enjoyed just hanging around with Magic players again, rooming up with old friends Lino Burgold, Simon Leigh, and Robert Boemke, but also all the little fist bumps, prep talks, high fives, bad beats between the rounds, the dinners, the walks around the city; the things are really important to me and were a main part of the enjoyment, which I'm sure everyone traveling to these tournaments feels."