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The Week That Was: Making It to Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed

January 23, 2026
Corbin Hosler

The first Magic World Championship took place in August 1994. Ever since Zak Dolan won that first event in Milwaukee with a green-white-blue deck filled with the Power 9 and hoisted the first of now 31 Magic World Championship trophies—which now includes Seth Manfield's second trophy—the same question arose that has gripped players from the top levels of the game down to the back tables at Friday Night Magic.

"How do I make it to the Pro Tour?"

It's a simple question that has spawned three decades and millions of words and hours of video advice, and it's fair to say that some of the top players have it down to almost a science at this point. But everyone starts somewhere—I remember reading every article I could before my first "big" Constructed tournament (an old SCG States event), devouring every "Who's the Beatdown?" I could find—and everyone's path to the Pro Tour is ultimately unique.

We can start with the obvious: the various paths that qualify for the Pro Tour. From the Regional Championship to the Spotlight Series to various online events via Magic Online and MTG Arena, there are more ways than ever for players to advance to the top level of competition, and each Pro Tour is a massive mix of players from every corner of the world. The upshot is that whatever your style of playing Magic, if you want to pursue competitive play, you'll have the opportunity to do so.

Like everything else, the Pro Tour was shaken up by the events of 2020. When tabletop play returned several years later, it wasn't just a new tournament to qualify for. It was the final turning of the page for a generation of Magic players. It represents a pretty clean break between the first 30 or so years of Pro Tour play and the era that follows.

But while the technical path to the Pro Tour looks different and more varied than any of the game's first designers could have envisioned back when The Lion King was the number-one movie in the world, that same question remains. How do you qualify for the Pro Tour?

There's no singular right answer. But there are a lot of answers.

Some Pro Tour regulars advocate heavily for online play, for grinding MTG Arena events and Magic Online drafts until you think you understand things inside and out. Others will say that online play is inferior to testing solely with friends in person. A mathematically sound piece of advice offered by Arena Championship competitor and Pro Tour qualifier Juan Ignacio Godoy is to focus on practicing sideboarded games. After all, the overwhelming odds are that you'll play more sideboarded games than anything else. One suggestion I enjoyed (though I'm biased) was to watch old Pro Tour footage, pause it, and try to determine the best play. Then unpause it so you can see what the game's best players did. It's the kind of interaction with a broadcast that doesn't exist in highlight-driven games, and it's a useful tool for leveling up your own game.

Another popular suggestion was to focus on process rather than results. There's a lot of inherent variance in Magic, especially when you begin competing at a level where the focus is winning and the delta between players is incredibly narrow. In simpler terms, playing deep at a Regional Championship or Spotlight Series event is not the same as going 3-0 at a Prerelease.

And that's a good thing. That's the kind of skill-testing environment where positive results may not always follow a positive process, but a positive process is almost always required for positive results. Focus on learning and playing the game the right way and don't worry about what you could have done better. Don't think about how unlucky it was to draw two lands in a row at the end of a long tournament.

That's a lot—and it's all good advice. The truth is not every Magic player is created equal. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses that they develop as they learn and level up. What helps one player break through to the next level may not be key for the next, but every player on the Pro Tour can point to the breakthrough that took them there. I spoke with several current Pro Tour players about the singular piece of advice they found most helpful.

Jose Puglisi quoted a famous Magic player in his answer. "'Measure twice, cut once,' a legendary Canadian Magic pro once said. 'It's way better to move the moment of realization to one second before you make a mistake instead of one second after.'"Jose's own breakthrough in 2025 saw him playing in multiple Pro Tours and qualifying for the World Championship alongside his brother John in what he described as a dream come true. "The biggest thing you can do to be a better player, qualify for the Pro Tour, win local tournaments, and just play better is to stop making mistakes that you know are mistakes. Magic is an insanely hard game, and you will suffer enough from making mistakes that you don't realize they are mistakes, let alone mistakes that you kick yourself for.

"I've tried to adopt a mentality of measuring twice, counting twice, checking myself twice, asking myself if this is really the best play, and checking to see if there's anything I haven't considered, before making a play."

I have to say that this particular piece of advice resonates with me: I have a very (painfully) memorable moment from a Dreamhack Top 8 where I wasn't fully familiar with the new set at the time (Amonkhet), and didn't read Merciless Javelineer closely enough to realize that thanks to that second line of text "that creature can't block," I had the win in front of me and instead I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Read twice, attack once."I've had multiple moments where I've had my eyes opened and my mind blown as I leveled up," the Team Scrapheap member and Regional Championship finalist explained. "Maybe the most important moment was a session with our team's mysterious old wizard advisor. He and I played a match together, and at every single decision point he asked me to first consider all my possible choices then decide on one of them I thought was best and justify why I was making that play.

"He was trying to communicate to me that that level of interrogation is what my own thought process should reflect. Everything with a purpose, no playing on autopilot, find and make every possible decision as optimally as possible. That's how you raise your level and improve."

Coming from a sports background, I hear an old sports adage reflected in Puglisi's words: more games are lost than they are won. I believe that is firmly the case as you progress along the competitive Magic journey, and Puglisi's breakthrough at the same time as his brother John—the finalist at the US Regional Championship in late 2025—is a pretty good indicator that while results don't always follow process, it's not a shock when players who share good process end up sharing good results.

"My brother John and I are headed to Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed together with our closest friends, an event I'm super excited for; our goal is to put Team Scrapheap on the map," Puglisi gushed. "I think those who have been paying attention might know us by now, and getting three-fourths of the US World Championship slots this season definitely didn't hurt, so I would like to continue to support and push each other. We've had amazing results at the Regional Championship level, and some good results at the Pro Tour level, but this year we are set up to try and achieve our goals at Pro Tours and Worlds, which would be amazing to see.

"I would say that there are a lot of lessons I've only learned with experience, but the one that stands out the most and I would love to go back and beat into my own head as much as possible is that winning isn't the only goal, because when you lose you learn. Playing against people better than you and analyzing your defeats and victories alike is the best way to get to where you want to go."

And that brings us perfectly to the one piece of advice that was most consistently shared about how to qualify for your first Pro Tour, put most succinctly by the winner of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, Andrew Elenbogen.

How do you improve enough at Magic to perform well at your next Regional Championship or Spotlight Series event, or to finally break through on that Arena Qualifier Weekend? Play against players who are already performing well at that level. It's a bit like the little-brother rule in basketball: the younger brother is almost always better for their age than the older brother, because they've spent their whole life playing in the driveway against someone older and bigger than them. Find the best Magic player you can in your area and challenge them to a game.

But make sure it's a friendly one. Because as Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, Top Finisher Mason Buonadonna explained as he took a break from whirlwind preparation for both the Regional Championship and Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed in a two-week sprint to reflect on his own path to the Pro Tour, Magic is not a zero-sum game, even when invites are on the line.

"You should be really happy when people in your area qualify for the Regional Championship, and if you want to do well at the Regional Championship, then you should be trying to connect with the other players playing Regional Championship Qualifiers in your area. Magic is not an individual sport at the top level. The people you surround yourself with and work with leading up to events will dictate whether you will be successful.

"Magic is a community where investing in it will give you a lot back in the long run—it's not zero sum; people know each other for decades in this community. It's hard to ingratiate yourself into a new community, but if you show up, genuinely and kindly, people take notice of that. Be a positive force in your community, make friends, and you'll have people behind you because you've supported them the whole way."

It's a lesson Buonadonna learned as he was rising through the ranks, and now that he's established and accomplished on the Pro Tour, he's paying it forward.

The team's first big event at the last US Regional Championship was a resounding start: the team qualified Alex Wells and former World Champion Nathan Steuer for 2027's Limited Championship, while returning former US National Champion Oliver Tomajko to the Pro Tour as well.

Now all eyes turn to Richmond, Virginia, where next week Buonadonna and the rest of the Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed field will meet to kick off the 2026 Pro Tour season with a look at the new Standard. For everything you need to know about that, don't miss Frank Karsten's Metagame Mentor article this week with all the new decks from Lorwyn Eclipsed Standard, as well as the Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed Viewer's Guide.

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