Freshly crowned Regional Champion Joaquín Roberto Soto Castillo and his team have a special tradition when they get together to test for a tournament.

Team Hobby Mart came together last year in time for the third cycle of Regional Championships and has since become one of the best testing teams in the Mexico and Central America region, putting eight players into Regional Championship Top 8 appearances, with four Pro Tour invitations going out along with a pair of World Championship invites being earned by the team. A handful of stores also came together to support the team and Castillo's journey over the last two years. The result is another success story from the Regional Championship circuit as we close out 2024.

Congratulations to Joaquin Roberto Soto Castillo, who took Rakdos Demons to victory at the Regional Championship for Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean! 🏆

See you at the Pro Tour and the World Championship in 2025, @JoaqunRobertoS1! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/cP0gQLWZML

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) December 2, 2024

It's been a year with the highest highs, including Javier Dominguez becoming the second player to ever win multiple World Championship titles when he defeated Marcio Carvalho in the finals of Magic World Championship 30. We've also seen some inspiring comeback stories, not least of which being the player who had to overcome a traumatic event that left them physically sick at the thought of playing a Top 8. In other words, we've seen it all this year, and the Pro Tour is back in tip-top, tabletop shape.

That includes this last Regional Championship cycle that bookended the World Championship. It began with Vinicius Karam defeating Jonathan Lobo Melamed in the finals of Brazil's Regional Championship back in September, culminating last weekend with a showdown in Mexico City as 141 players gathered to compete at the Regional Championship for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Eleven events with ten different archetypes represented a diverse Pioneer metagame, setting the stage for the first Pro Tour in 2025 and seeding the field of next year's World Championship.

This brings us back to Castillo and Team Hobby Mart. Each testing squad has their own method for success, with the trade secrets of their tournament testing houses going down in Magic lore. One thing is consistent: teams seek to gather as much empirical data as they can to best inform their deck decision leading up to an event, even if many of them end up just playing their favorite deck. How teams go about gathering that data differs, as do the lessons they take away from that experience. After all, data doesn't do you any good if you are working from an incorrect set of assumptions.

And so, teams try all sorts of ways to break the mold, and Team Hobby Mart is no different.

"We have a simple testing system: we play the decks that are most likely to be present in the meta, and each member plays a different deck, covering the entire meta," Castillo explained.

It might sound unintuitive for a player to sleeve up a deck they'll probably never play in an important tournament. After all, why would you want Reid Duke testing anything other than Jund in your testing house? No one in the world will give you a better representation of that deck's strengths.

But that approach doesn't leave Reid Duke—or Team Hobby Mart—familiar with the turn-to-turn play patterns of an aggressive Boros deck. That's where covering the meta comes in; having experience with a matchup from the other side of the table can be extremely beneficial in navigating novel scenarios that are sure to arise over the course of a long tournament like the Regional Championship.

"We give a lot of relevance to the information coming out of other Regional Championships," Castillo explained. "Among the data we keep, along with deck matchups and win percentage on play versus draw, are detailed notes on interactions and important cards in a given matchup."

That was the testing process that led to the rather unique flavor of Rakdos Midrange that Castillo used to earn his invite to the Regional Championship, at a last-chance qualifier, no less. By realizing that the four-drop Demons like Archfiend of the Dross were weighing down Rakdos lists, Team Hobby Mart and Castillo performed incredibly well.

"Roughly speaking, all of the four-cost Demons died easily to the removal of the format, so instead, we relied on having more discard and removal to ensure we could snowball with Unholy Annex, the best card in the deck by far," Castillo explained. "We also concluded that Graveyard Trespasser did a better job in the three most anticipated matchups—Demons, Sacrifice decks, and Izzet Phoenix—than Unstoppable Slasher. In the mirror, Trespasser is always a two-for-one thanks to ward, and Slasher could be exiled with Torch the Tower or Anoint with Affliction. Against Phoenix and Sacrifice, it became relevant to interact with the graveyard, and Trespasser also had a good performance against aggro. It was only strictly worse against combo, which we didn't expect much of in the meta.

"So, the decision was simple."

"In the last two weeks before the Regional Championship, I won all the local tournaments I attended with this deck. In the testing sessions, the deck felt super solid; two of my teammates even changed their deck over to the same list," Castillo recalled. "I want to thank all the members of my team, but especially my brother Hector Soto, who made Top 8 in the season five Regional Championship, as well as Archi Peralta, the season three champion. It was with them that we made the most important progress in defining the decklist."

I mentioned earlier that this victory was another success story for the Regional Championship circuit, and I want to return there as we close the door on 2024 and look forward to an upcoming year of in-person opportunities for high-stakes Magic, starting with the first Magic Spotlight Series weekend kicking things off in style January 3–5, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia.

#SpotlightFoundations is just around the corner! $50,000 in prizes, promo cards, and more are up for grabs. But don’t take our word for it – Let's see what @bmkibler of @commanderathome has to say: https://t.co/QxOGznYjfz pic.twitter.com/Q5q6N6ypbG

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) December 12, 2024

The Regional Championship circuit will be back with more competitors than ever. Now, two years into this system, we're seeing more and more infrastructure develop along the way. Team Hobby Mart is just one of dozens across the world that have taken a vested interest in leveling players up from Regional Championship qualifier to Pro Tour qualifier and 31-year-old Castillo's ascent to the Pro Tour and Magic World Championship 31—all on a last-chance qualifier—is evidence that with the right preparation and the right deck, any Magic dream is achievable. It's been a steady climb for Castillo, who qualified for nearly every Regional Championship to date and has been steadily building on his appearances, including a 10th-place finish earlier this year.

But it all came together last week for the Los Mochis, Sinaloa, native, and now he's earned at least a pair of international trips. He played the game better than anyone else at the Regional Championship, and now he gets to see the world, starting with Pro Tour Aetherdrift at MagicCon: Chicago on February 21–23.

"I would like to thank the support I had after winning from the different teams and stores in the region, such as Team Hobby Mart, Senet Games, Dragon's Höhle, Yellow Rabbit, and Tao Games," Castillo said. "As well as the group of Vortex players from Costa Rica for the advice they gave us about their testing methodology. I know that in the Pro Tour and at the World Championship, I represent the entire region, and I hope to have a great performance that represents in a worthy way Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean."