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The Week That Was: Back in Black at Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes

July 03, 2026
Corbin Hosler

There's been some misinformation spreading around the Magic community recently, and it's important that it be addressed.

Sam Black is not washed.

Suggesting that Black is washed (or "washed up" for the Magic boomers among us) strikes me as delusional, bordering on dangerously unhinged. But as Magic has grown in recent years, Black is one of the players who decided to test his talents in other areas of the game, even as the Regional Championship and Pro Tour circuit returned. For Black, who is considered one of the top minds to ever think about this game (there's not enough digital ink available to me to list the ways Black has influenced Magic and the Pro Tour over the last three decades), he has lent his expertise to other formats and continued his one-of-a-kind brand of innovation.

None of that means that Black, or any other longtime player, is washed or that they can't still compete and beat the best of the best at 40- and 60-card Magic. Pro Tour winner Tom Martell didn't forget how to set up a profitable combat while he was away working on other games. The legendary trios of Paul Rietzl, Dave Williams, and Matt Sperling, or Jacob Wilson, Matt Nass, and Sam Pardee, may not be at every event, or they may have traded in drafts for diapers over the last few years, but they are still the sealed sickos they were years ago.

And they were all together in Las Vegas for Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes. The event was the first premier-level team event since 2019, and it's been circled on the calendars of every old-school Grand Prix grinder from back in the day and every new-school MTG Arena aficionado who grew up on stories of legendary team events and side drafts.

Everywhere you looked, the game's present met with the game's past. The trio of Kiefer brothers, Jack, Quinn, and Lucas, were back in action together for the first time this decade, putting an adult update to three of Magic's most prolific competitive teenagers in recent memory. Pro Tour veteran (and three-time Top Finisher) Pat Cox got onto a plane for a Magic event for the first time in seven years. There were teams all the way from Japan and players from places as far flung from each other as South America and Australia. Players described the event as more than just something fun to attend. It was something that, in their opinion, was important to attend. They did not want to miss the opportunity to show that there is an appetite for team play.

In other words, the event in Las Vegas put quite the spotlight on the things that make Magic great.

"It's not about prizes, or even pride. It was just about coming to play Team Limited with my friends. We want the event to fill the hall," explained Hall of Fame member Rietzl. "We were very rusty, but once we started opening our pool and figuring out who would play what, we were very much back in our wheelhouse."

The Spotlight Series drew nearly 1,000 players from across the world. In the end, it was one of the throwback squads that won it all. Black, who can be credited for much of the engine that became Modern's Amulet Titan deck among other accomplishments, turned his attention back to Limited when given the opportunity to pair with Dyer—who was fresh off an Arena Championship Top 8 appearance—and Martell, the winner of Pro Tour Gatecrash in 2013 where he played a famous "Aristocrats" self-sacrifice deck designed by (you guessed it) his teammate, Sam Black.

Now, all three are back on the Pro Tour.

Not that it looked like it would go that way at first. The team of Pro Tour veterans lost to Mark Lemons, Robert Jackson, and Joshua Tomas, who may have only picked up one victory at the Spotlight Series but made it one they'll be able to tell a story about for the rest of their Magic lives. "Hey, remember that time we beat three Pro Tour players so badly that they went through a crisis of faith, only to turn it around and win the entire tournament? Yeah, we did that." (I have no idea how that round actually played out, but that's how I would tell the story, anyway.)

Dyer, Black, and Martell would lose in Round 7 on their way to a 5-2-1 Day One finish, finishing in 47th place and narrowly joining the 48 teams that advanced to Day Two. But with a chip and chair (or in this case, a sealed pool and a squad), the team advanced to play again on Sunday.

"We thought we were dead for Day Two," Martell admitted. "But we made it. We thought that maybe if we went 6-0, we could make it to the Top 4. We just said, 'Hey, let's not lose today.'

"And then we executed on our plan of losing no more rounds," he added with a grin.

And they pulled it off. They executed a 6-0 run and made the Top 4, where they then ran up against the Team Handshake Moxfield crew of Jesse Hampton, Andrew Wong, and Zevin Faust. And if that weren't enough of a challenge, the squad of Pro Tour champions they would face next was even more daunting: Steve Rubin, Alexander Hayne, and the unretired-for-the-weekend (and now much longer) Ondřej Stráský.

"[Tom] and [Sam] were amazing during the deck building. I would have built much, much worse decks, and we found some tricky decks," Dyer gushed.

"As in most scenarios, Sam is kind of like the mad scientist of deck building, trying to figure out how you can push a deck the furthest it can go," Martell added. "I tuned the decks, mostly, and Greg laid out aggro shells and worked on the curve."

The group touched on something there that's key to success at team events: chemistry. Working together as teammates in Magic is a back-and-forth process of challenging ideas that teammates may hold very strongly, and learning to channel that into a positive team experience is trickier than it sounds when you're also competing at the highest level. Dyer, Black, and Martell may not have decades of experience as a trio under their belts, but they are all veterans of high-level testing teams and brought their A-game to Las Vegas.

Their result puts them in the Magic record books as the champions of the premier Team Limited event of the decade. The weekend put a couple of Pro Tour legends back on the circuit and put one particularly misinformed rumor to rest.

Remember, don't ever call Sam Black washed.

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