As he closes the curtain on a momentous year, Owen Turcotte doesn't know what the next year of Magic holds for him—or even what to expect. After all, how could he, after his Magic year ended in such unpredictable fashion? This was the year where he went from worrying about whether he had what it took to compete at the Regional Championship level to winning Canada's Regional Championship in Calgary last month.

Owen Turcotte is the Canadian Regional Champion. Playing Jeskai Blink he bested 380 players and is headed to the World Championship🙌🏆💫😃

Full standings here:https://t.co/FHa1F144sP@PlayMTG @wizards_magic #mtgmodern #mtgcommunity #mtgregionals pic.twitter.com/kWt2Bj0kFM

— Face to Face Games (@FaceToFaceGames) November 24, 2025

After that, Turcotte knows anything can happen. But whatever does happen, the newly crowned Regional Champion knows one thing he wants to avoid in 2026.

"My biggest regret would be if, in a year from now, I can't look back and see how I utilized a Pro Tour and World Championship invite to improve my game," the Ontario native explained. "I think my main goal for the year is to improve as a player. I know that in a little over a month, I'll be playing the Pro Tour as well as the Magic Spotlight Series event in Toronto the week after the Pro Tour, and I will definitely at least be at the Regional Championship in Ottawa as well as, of course, Worlds at the end of the year, which I qualified for by winning this Regional Championship."

That answer is more than just boilerplate language from a humble winner. It's a sentiment that reflects the change in mindset that the 26-year-old Turcotte credited with helping him level up from a self-described RCQ end boss into a player with a legitimate chance to perform well at the biggest tournament in the country.

Turcotte had been on the path for a while. He has several Face to Face Open titles to his name, along with a handful of Magic Online Pro Tour Qualifier Top 8 appearances and a finalist slot in a Magic Online Championship Series Qualifier. He's been a regular on the Regional Championship circuit for the last two years and was advancing through Regional Championship Qualifiers with every season.

Still, his breakthrough at the RC level didn't come.

"I've been playing Regional Championships somewhat regularly since the RC system started. Over the past two years I've been consistent in playing every RC," Turcotte explained. "Up to this point I hadn't done very well at any Regional Championship but had been doing very well at RCQs. I felt like I was really struggling to make the jump from the RCQ level to the RC level, and I worried I would always be stuck as an RCQ end boss type of player, but not someone that ever does well on a larger stage."

Believing he had the potential to go further but frustrated at the lack of ostensible progress, Turcotte poured more time and energy into the last Regional Championship in Montreal before Calgary. Unfortunately, what followed was the inverse of the stories you often see in this column.

"I put a ton of effort into preparing and felt a lot of stress going into the event in Montreal because I badly wanted to make that jump to doing well at larger events," Turcotte recalled. "But I ended up 0-3 and felt like I really needed to re-evaluate how I was approaching Magic and tried taking a step back in order to improve."

The path to the Pro Tour—and to success beyond just qualifying for the circuit one time—is rarely perfectly linear. While pushing harder or practicing longer is often seen as necessary to finding success in Magic, the truth is that playing at stakes as high as they are at the Regional Championship or above level is a meta unto itself. It goes beyond "just drink water and get good night's rest." Learning how to play the game is just as important as playing the game.

That was what Turcotte focused on in the weeks leading up to that fateful Regional Championship in Calgary: one round at a time, playing the game of Magic because it's a game, and because it's fun.

Turcotte is far from the first winner I've interviewed who has said the same. It sounds strange to suggest that caring less means winning more, and yet it's something that winners regularly report. The takeaway? Pressure cooks, and even the craftiest Magic players have found that playing under the figurative or literal bright lights is very different than playing a few rounds at Friday Night Magic—and every Pro Tour winner or World Champion came into their own after learning to navigate that same glare.

"Going into Calgary, I actually did very little tournament preparation compared to what I had done for Montreal. My focus was on getting used to playing larger tournaments from a mental perspective," Turcotte explained. "I figured that a big reason for why I was doing well at local events but not at larger events had to do with how comfortable I was. I just wanted to learn to be more comfortable with playing large events without worrying about the result.

"I think this mindset had a lot to do with why I won the Regional Championship. Throughout the tournament I just kept reminding myself not to focus on my record or the result and to remember that I was just there to have fun and get more comfortable playing larger tournaments. I think because Jeskai Blink is a slower deck and I had less time between rounds, it actually helped me stay in this mindset."

And it didn't hurt that the Regional Championship format was Modern, which proved to be fortuitous timing.

"I regularly play Modern and would say that Modern is my favorite format," Turcotte explained. "Since Modern Horizons 3 came out I had been playing Boros Energy, but I didn't really want to play it at the Regional Championship as I felt like the margins were quite thin with the deck as it can lack power in late games and a lot of other decks can easily go over top of it and overpower it. I did, however, know that I wanted to play a Phlage deck as I think Phlage is one of the best cards in Modern and I already had experience playing with it."

Another recurring theme from Regional Championship winners? They were playing the deck they wanted to play, not just the deck that looks the best in an aggregated spreadsheet from dozens or hundreds of players with their own individual strengths, weaknesses, and biases. Turcotte was familiar with closing games out with Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury, and that familiarity certainly doesn't hurt when you're reminding yourself that the goal is to have fun competing.

"I was heavily considering playing Domain Zoo as it had the potential to have very explosive starts while still having disruption for decks that tried to go over the top of it, but ultimately I decided that it was often too inconsistent, which led to me deciding to play Jeskai Blink," Turcotte elaborated. "I read and follow Misplacedginger's Jeskai Blink guide and Vinnie Fino/Ivan Pablo's Jeskai Blink guide, both of which were updated weekly for about a month leading up to the event. Something interesting I found was that these guides frequently contradicted each other and provided contrasting opinions on certain card choices and sideboarding decisions. Because of this, I was able to take the parts from each guide that I felt were the best reasoned and backed up by my own testing to build the best aggregate list and have the best plan.

"I think my deck performed very well throughout the tournament. I was very happy with a lot of the individual card choices I made. Multiple times throughout the tournament, I think it mattered that I had built my deck the way I had."

Turcotte's run came through an impressive Top 8 that included Aidan Mirabelli, Eduardo Sajgalik, and the Amulet Titan novelist himself, Dominic Harvey. And, hey, what's more fun that winning it all?

"This win is very exciting; it shows me that I actually can do well at larger tournaments. I am a little worried going forward that I might fall back into my previously poor mental game in an attempt to prove that this win wasn't a fluke, but I think it's good that I know this is something I'll need to watch out for," Turcotte admitted. "I'm now qualified for my first Pro Tour, which I'm approaching with a very similar mindset. I'm going to make the most of the opportunity to play against much better players and try to improve myself as a player as much as possible, and I'm ultimately not overly concerned with my result at the Pro Tour as long as I make the most out of the opportunity in terms of improving."

With that, we close the door on the Magic Pro Tour circuit for 2025. But things won't be quiet for long, as Canada's latest Regional Champion alluded to, Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed is just about a month away.