When Nick Odenheimer was a child, his father watched him take his first steps.
When he was 10 or 11 years old, his father introduced him to a card game he had played back in the day—Magic: The Gathering—with some cards from the obscure 1995 set Ice Age.
When Odenheimer turned 12, his father took him to his first Prerelease, where father, son, and younger sister shared the same Avacyn Restored pool and learned the game together.
Over the next few years, Odenheimer discovered the Pro Tour—and that he could qualify for it. Before long, he was traveling from PTQ to PTQ as so many of us have, except that he was doing it before he could drive. His dad could, though, and his father did more than chauffeur. He played every tournament he could alongside his son who was hopping into his car at a time when most teens couldn't get away from their parents fast enough.
And, when Odenheimer was 23, his father watched him win the first-ever Magic Spotlight Series.
Nicholas Odenheimer (Gruul Aggro) does it, defeating Scott McNamara (Dimir Enchantments) to become the first ever Magic Spotlight Champion! 🏆#SpotlightFoundations #SCGATLANTA
— Star City Games (@StarCityGames) January 6, 2025
Join us at the next one! 👇https://t.co/d8Cg8rBT1N pic.twitter.com/sjL8Q7BTun
It was the biggest moment of Odenheimer's Magic career, and quite possibly his father's as well. Remember those road trips for Pro Tour qualifiers? His dad never played one without Nick.
"Being at the Pro Tour together was my dream ever since my dad, my sister, and I learned about it. I didn't know what competitive Magic really was, but there we were, watching every Grand Prix and Pro Tour on the TV together," the newly crowned champion recalled. "Friday Night Magic became a Friday ritual. My dad would get off work, come home, and take us to FNM. Then I learned about PTQs and brought that knowledge to my dad.
"We tried our hand. We never did well, but he was at the tournaments with me every chance he got."
You've heard the saying before, but the gathering will always be a part of Magic. And no recent gathering has been as monumental than the first-ever Magic Spotlight Series event in Atlanta last weekend. The Magic Spotlight Series is a series of weekend-long events taking place across the world, marking the next step in the return of high-level, tabletop organized play.
These public-facing events are open to anyone, requiring no previous qualification. That means you can roll out of bed one morning and decide to play a big Magic tournament that weekend. If you do well, you can qualify for the Pro Tour that weekend—assuming you can beat the field.
Longtime players might recognize that structure from their days on the Grand Prix grind. There's certainly a similar vibe, and the debut event in Atlanta was reminiscent of the Grand Prix heyday; more than 1,400 competitors signed up for the main event, a Standard tournament.
"That was the best part of this tournament: you didn't have to qualify to play in it. It felt like an old event I would go to with my dad, and I loved that aspect of it," Odenheimer elaborated. "Since COVID, it was a little disappointing that there were only three or four real premier events each year with the Regional Championships. You could spend three months preparing for one tournament, then get unlucky and have to put it away for months.
"Now with the Spotlight Series, that's an additional four or five shots at making the Pro Tour each year. For a lot of my opponents, it was their first premier event."
It's hard to top Atlanta's turnout, but we might see it happen when the Spotlight Series rolls into Utrecht on March 15–16.
So, what did the massive Standard metagame that Odenheimer took on look like? This is the largest look at the flagship format since the World Championship back in November, and things have changed drastically since then. You'll have to read Frank Karsten's column for all of the details—and he does have all of the details in his incredible piece—but it's safe to say that things are wide open.
Dimir Midrange led the metagame, coming out just a touch ahead of Gruul Aggro, but the Dimir lists of 2025 look almost nothing like the Dimir Demons deck Javier Dominguez won Magic World Championship 30 with. Despite that deck's prominence, there were still six different decks comprising the top end of the metagame, and a whopping 25% of the field bringing something that fell into the infamous "Other" category. Traditionally, when that number is higher, you have better odds of a great format.
Odenheimer took all of that in and went to work. He's been an advocate of Gruul Aggro ever since the release of Duskmourn: House of Horror. With everything changing around him in the weeks leading up to the Spotlight Series, he went back to basics of the deck. All the way back, that is, to when the deck first began appearing online, sporting a nearly unstoppable turn-three kill via
"I've been playing with Leyline since the beginning of the season, and it just kept working. I practiced with my friend Stanley on MTG Arena. We've been sharing our thoughts on the deck, and I never found a reason to switch off from it," Odenheimer explained. "I feel like people are so used to the aggro Gruul Mice deck, which isn't ever really killing you on turn three, but this deck can kill you out of nowhere.
"That's one of my favorite parts about the Leyline deck. It plays like a good Gruul Aggro deck but also has this combo aspect to it with
"It wasn't until the week before the event that we finally locked in the list we were going to play and finalized our sideboard plans," Odenheimer said. "That was a long process. You either go all-in on the Leyline package or you go all the way off it. It was fun to figure out when you want it or when you want to take those ten cards out; there was a lot of trial and error."
It all paid off in the end for Odenheimer, who started 2025 with the same energy he left off with in 2024. Last year, he began to make good on those dreams he had driving to FNM when he made the Top 4 of an SCG CON twice, earning his first Pro Tour invitation via the Regional Championship.
"The last year was incredible for me in Magic. And now I've won this tournament. It's surreal," he admitted. "Luckily, my girlfriend Julianne was able to text my parents that the event was going on, and they got to watch me win! Playing competitive Magic has always been a huge part of my life. While I'm not quitting my day job anytime soon, winning a tournament like this makes you feel like you can hang with the best of them. I've got my next set of Regional Championship invitations locked in, and it's good to know I'll have four shots at the RC even if the Pro Tour doesn't go well.
"But this tournament proved I can do it. If I prepare well enough, I can make the run. One step at a time."
Shoutout to @Stanley_2099 , @Vomer41956667 , @JulianneRice14 , and @SpitefulStrix for being my core testing team for the event, we cooked hard. Proud of Stanley for Top 8ing the 10K with our Leyline 75 and Julianne for cashing her first big event!
— Nick Odenheimer (@Nick_Odenheimer) January 6, 2025