All good Magic victory stories start with the (metaphorical) car ride before the tournament, where someone has a small breakthrough or detail that came as a result of a conversation with a friend over long hours together. Over the decades of Magic tournaments, that breakthrough has often shown up as a key sideboard suggestion or unexpected deck idea.
In some ways, Magic Spotlight: Eclipsed winner Valerie Jade's story is no different. The origins of her victory in Toronto earlier this month can be traced back to a conversation with a friend that changed everything. But like all good Magic victory stories, it comes with its own twist.
"In January 2025, I saw a match from some live tournament coverage of [World Champion] Nathan Steuer getting crushed by Omniscience combo on turn four two games in a row and thought, 'That can't be a Standard deck, it looks like Legacy," recalled Jade. "I looked it up online, found it was as strong as I thought, and started talking about it with my housemate Laurel. She told me something to the effect of, 'I've heard you talk about a lot of wacky ideas over the years, and you talk about this one differently. This could actually be your ticket to pro play.' The she just picked up the entire deck and told me to go play events with it. She's actually my hero."
As a movie that my toddler watches on repeat has taught me, sometimes it takes someone to see something in you that you don't see in yourself. In this case, the nudge was the turning point for Jade, who to that point had put together a Magic résumé with a handful of impressive finishes in Limited events but hadn't gone further in pursuit of the Pro Tour.
The Omniscience deck changed all that.
"With Omniscience, I went to my first Standard FNM in over ten years, made the Top 4 of my first Regional Championship Qualifier with it, and won my second for my first Regional Championship qualification. After that I made the finals of the MXP Phoenix 5K with Omniscience. At my first Regional Championship, I was one win short of qualifying for the Pro Tour," she recalled. "Collectively, all of that and the friendships I was making got me fully back into competitive Magic."
Jade was ready to expand her skills beyond Limited, still her standby. It wasn't long after she did before the results started coming in: a Top 50 performance at her debut Regional Championship in Minneapolis in May 2025, a Top 4 at MXP Phoenix in August, and a breakthrough 9th-place finish at Houston's Regional Championship in October that sent Jade to her first Pro Tour.
It's a finish that Jade describes as a "miracle" (mind the pun).
"I had fully intended to play Mono-Blue Belcher at the event, trying to win. But I ended up registering Miracles to try to enjoy the weekend and focus on friendships, not stress about competing. But I somehow ended up locked for the Top 32 after thirteen rounds," she recalled. "I qualified for the Pro Tour after over a decade of trying. I cried a lot, called my friend about it, and played rather poorly in the last two rounds of what felt like the least relevant matches of my life. Finally having made a Pro Tour vastly overshadowed any thoughts of the Top 8. It was a completely wild experience."
That's the power the Pro Tour has exerted for over 30 years of Magic, and Jade's debut onto that stage more than lived up to the hype. She joined Team Sanctum of All, a large squad renowned for upending Standard repeatedly over the last several years, in part thanks to Rei Zhang, also known as cftsoc, or "combo for the sake of combo." Now you know. The team was at it again at Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed in Richmond, and Jade went from watching the tournament to playing in some very high-stakes matches.
"My first Pro Tour was a magical experience," Jade said. "It was a lifelong dream to get there, and it was so special to get to be in the room with all these people I had followed for so long. Working with Sanctum in the team house was an awesome time. cftsoc broke Standard and handed me a 7-3 Constructed finish on a platter, and I really felt like we did a phenomenal job of breaking down the Limited format.
"Losing my Round 16 requalification was pretty crushing. It was the first match I had ever played that was both win-and-in for the next Pro Tour as well as lose-and-out, and the pressure really got to me. No discredit to my opponent, Lorenzo was nice, played well, and won, but I do wonder if I would have won that match if it wasn't my first Pro Tour. Either way, it was a valuable learning experience."
Jade's climb through the ranks mirrors what many experience. Playing Magic at the highest levels is simply not the same as playing at a kitchen table or even Friday Night Magic. Every decision is magnified, and there's simply almost no margin for error—and even less if you can't steady your mental game when mistakes inevitably do happen.
The lessons Jade learned on her way to—and at—the Pro Tour are indeed valuable learning experiences. But here, Jade's story takes another turn to Toronto.
"Less than a week later, I was in Toronto competing in the Spotlight Series!" she marveled. "It was a great weekend, and my Sanctum Limited prep was definitely huge there."
Fresh off a Day Two finish at the Pro Tour that could have been bettered if her draft had gone differently, Jade was ready to rebound by playing the same 40-card Magic that first saw her Top 8 the Magic Online Aether Revolt Limited Championship back in 2017. Leaning on the lessons from the pre-Pro Tour testing house, Jade played coolly and confidently on her way to the Top 8—including a very intricate bluff in Round 12 that not everyone would attempt. But it worked out perfectly for the San Francisco native.
That was where those lessons come into play. Unlike her last run at a Top 8,Jade was ready for more—helped along with a photo of the trophy snapped by her friend Evan telling her to lock in.
Lock in she did, because during the Top 8 draft that followed in the culmination of a packed Limited Spotlight event, Jade was at the top of her game—and it helped that she opened
"The deck drafted itself from there. Other than a slightly low Elf count that resulted in playing a lot of three-drops and a couple of mediocre creatures, the deck was just about perfect. This is definitely the biggest achievement I've ever had. Getting an actual, really cool trophy, getting to be the person who won, it's been really incredible," she said. "My biggest take on this draft format is that the powerful cards are crucial. Throughout our testing, it was repeatedly clear that you need broken cards in your deck.
"While not quite an axiom, a surprisingly reliable heuristic has been, 'Take the best card in the booster for your first seventeen picks and fix your deck from there.' This doesn't always give me the best deck I could have, but it reliably gives me a deck that is playable and wins games!
"My second draft was particularly exemplary of this, where an early
This is what I mean when I say that competing at the highest levels of Magic just isn't like drafting at Friday Night Magic, where I see a Merfolk, draft a Merfolk, and ask questions later.
🏆 Congratulations to Valerie Jade, winner of Spotlight: Eclipsed! 🏆
— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) February 9, 2026
After going 6-2 on Day 1, she went 3-0 in every single draft pod on Day 2, in both the Swiss and Top 8! pic.twitter.com/g5vZIQ46WR
"Going from 2025 into 2026 has been such a fairy-tale story in Magic for me, so I really have to talk about that whole year together. It's an unreal story to tell and more unreal to have lived through," Jade admitted. "The year or so has been really incredible and there's so much I could say, but honestly it's just an incredible experience to realize my dreams, and it being backed thoroughly by the power of friendship has just been so wonderful. So many amazing friends have carried me every step of the way."
What's next for Jade? Well, there's another Pro Tour on the horizon she's now qualified for, but she has her sights set on the one tournament that's more prestigious than the Pro Tour.
"I want to qualify for the World Championship this year," she said. "At the start of 2025, I said I wanted to qualify for my first Regional Championship that year, my first Pro Tour in 2026, and my first World Championship in 2027. But, whoops, I qualified for my first Regional Championship in two months and my first Pro Tour that same year. And, my god, after watching Worlds from the side in 2025, I want to be in that room. And I really believe I can make it."
