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The Week That Was: Friends First, Team Second

April 29, 2026
Corbin Hosler

We're just days away from Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, and players from across the world are headed to sunny Las Vegas to compete at one of the biggest Magic conventions ever.

You know the drill. Tens of thousands of Magic fans will gather for one of the biggest Magic events of the year at MagicCon: Las Vegas. Part of that massive weekend of Magic includes the Pro Tour, featuring hundreds of players who have strived for years to make it to this moment. They come from all backgrounds and corners of the globe. Preparing for the Pro Tour has brought those experiences together on pre-tournament testing teams to get a step ahead of the ever-shifting Standard metagame that was just introduced to Secrets of Strixhaven.

To gain an edge on a field of the best Magic players, working with a testing team has become more important than ever. While there's no organized competition for teams at the Pro Tour, the Pro Tour always divides itself along these lines—different teams have different strengths, test different strategies, and reach different conclusions. The first thing anyone on the Pro Tour will suggest as a key to sustained success is to find a good set of teammates. Between the numerous formats, tournament structures (online and in person), and the constant change that embodies competitive Magic, the fact is that Pro Tour Top Finishes are individual achievements and team accomplishments.

But team success at the Pro Tour isn't as simple as playing fantasy Magic and drafting all the Magic players with the most Top Finishes. The reality of the work that goes into a successful Magic Pro Tour team goes beyond that. Balancing not just Magic strengths and weaknesses but also different personalities, schedules, communication methods, and so on can't be put together overnight. Rare is the Pro Tour team that bursts on the scene with major success in their first showing—in other words, it takes time to build the rapport that eventually translates into Top 8 appearances.

"There's a big difference between a roster and an actual team," explained Alan Hubbard, captain of Team Main Phase, a group of nine Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven competitors who mostly hail from the same area of Texas in the United States. "Our team really feels like a team, and this Pro Tour team has been a lot of work in the making. We're mostly all from Houston or Austin, and we would always see each other at events in the state and maybe grab dinner afterward. We eventually decided to form our team when a store sponsored us, and now people who were once my acquaintances have become really good friends."

Friends playing the Pro Tour together. It's a Friday Night Magic dream come true. While the squad may not be able to match results with some of the powerhouse groups at the PT (yet), they believe they are headed in the right direction.

"Once we started putting up some decent results, winning RCQs, playing in Regional Championships, and doing pretty well, we had this meeting as a team and said to ourselves, 'We're getting kind of good at this. What kind of team do we want to be?' We all said, 'A Pro Tour team,' and that's been working out for us the last few years," Hubbard recalled. "Our team is really unique and we've done things a little bit differently, and it has worked out very nicely. We're friends first and a Magic team second."

That last part may be underrated in today's world of massive piles of gameplay data. Magic decklists can be decoded through algorithms; matchups can be drilled down to the smallest percentages by adjusting a few variables on a spreadsheet. But at some point, all the data in the world can't replace a group of humans working together toward a common goal.

Sometimes, it's just a group of humans hanging out.

"We invest a lot of time in each other and prioritize things like helping each other level up, even if they're not on the next Pro Tour," Hubbard explained. "We aren't just grinding games or rotating players out as soon as they miss a Pro Tour. We want to make sure everyone is leveling up together."

One of the unique ways the group operates has everything to do with their team's origins. After all, if you can get together to grab dinner after an RCQ with the team, why couldn't you do the same thing for a Booster Draft bootcamp?

"Since we have the benefit of being local, we started running in-house bootcamps. These are intense weekend-long sessions of practice. That's where a lot of improvement happens," Hubbard explained. "It helps so much because everyone is locked in and you can have conversations and work through games in real time. It's like a mini-Pro Tour testing house. We've been really organized, testing as a group with our goals laid out. We have a plan for what we're trying to achieve. Everyone is brought in on the system, and the system has been working. We have a lot of high Regional Championship finishes, and we're starting to do well on the Pro Tour. The next step is to become a mainstay team on the Pro Tour and crack the Top 8 here pretty soon."

One group that does have all the Top 8s is Team TCGplayer. The longtime group of superstars and legends of the game has dozens of Top 8 appearances and closets full of trophies. Much of their success traces back to the team's strengths even as some members have rotated out. The behind-the-scenes training that produces such stars as Reid Duke and Seth Manfield has, at its core, a group that knows how to work together.

It's a process that Matthew Wright has gotten to glimpse and participate in over the last year. Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven will be his sixth event working with the team. In that time, he's gone from a naïve newcomer to a comfortable team member. It's a unique perspective for someone who grew up watching his now teammates compete.

"I'm 24, and a lot of these guys are storied players I've looked up to since middle school," he admitted. "Walking into a room and seeing Jon Finkel and Kai Budde was pretty crazy, but everyone was super nice and it's been great."

It helped that Wright had a partner in the process—literally. Reid Duke originally reached out to Wright's partner, Luna Eason. Just like that, the duo was officially testing together as part of one of the most decorated teams in Magic history. There was just one small hitch.

"Luna and I actually alternated qualifying for every Pro Tour and the World Championship last year, until Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed. It was nice to finally get to play a Pro Tour together," recalled Wright, who will enter Vegas on a heater of his own after a Magic Online Championship Series qualification, an 11-5 finish at Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed, and then a Top 16 finish in the last Arena Championship. "As I've tested with the team for multiple events, I've gotten more comfortable, and I've definitely leveled up my skill testing with them. There are still players here that blow my mind when I watch them play. There's just a ton of maturity and experience in the room and no egos. It's very cooperative. I think that's something you can risk when you have a big team of people all trying to prove themselves; you need to remove egos so everyone is able to talk freely and no one is worried about someone thinking they're stupid.

"I'm very thankful to have this team, and I'm excited to play in this tournament. As a team, we had a lackluster Limited record last time around, so that's one of the main things we've focused on this time."

In the end, putting together a Pro Tour testing team that will produce results, and an enjoyable experience on the way to those results, is as much art as it is science. But when it's working, you can tell—whether you're up late in a Discord call grinding out a few more Standard games or just hanging out with your friends.

"We've had people test with us and remark that they see us together on Discord every night," Hubbard explained. "It's mostly Magic, sure, but a lot of the time we're just hanging out playing a different game or doing something else together. It makes it so that when someone wins or makes it to the Pro Tour, it's all that much sweeter. Friends first, team second."

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