It's almost here! Magic World Championship XXVI is the most exciting event on the Magic calendar, and there has never been a better time to be a Magic fan than this coming weekend.

Although I won't be competing this year, I've played in the Magic World Championship in six of the last seven years. I can tell you that for our sixteen competitors, it will be an unforgettable experience. Each of them has worked tirelessly and will be hoping to bring out the absolute best in themselves for this event. And guess what—they're going to need it.

Preparing for Worlds is unlike preparing for a Grand Prix, a Players Tour, or any other event. The field is unusually small, the competitors are unusually skilled, and the stakes are unusually high. Before we get into the decklists, let's talk about how things shaped up behind the scenes over the past several weeks, and how our competitors might have approached the event.

The Peak of Competition

The World Championship is the most prestigious and challenging event that Magic has to offer. There's not a single weak player, and there will not be a single easy match.

To prepare, the players need to seek out skilled opponents and practice under tournament conditions. Grinding the ladder on MTG Arena is a great way to learn, but even the play in Mythic ranking doesn't compare to what we'll see at the World Championship. The level of skill and focus you'll get from opponents online simply won't match what Javier Dominguez will give you at the feature match area in Honolulu.

Are you used to people making bad blocks when you have Embercleave ? Do you always seem to nab the opponent's best spell with your Absorb ? Well, when it comes time for the big show, the number of mistakes will be small, and your opponents will always find ways to make the plays you don't want them to make.

One thing I strive to do for such an event is to choose a deck with a high raw power level. "Power level" is a nebulous concept, but here are some of the intangibles that I'm looking for: I want single cards that can win the game when they go unanswered. I want a potential unbelievably powerful opening hand that's difficult for my opponent to stop. I want to be able to look at my opening hand and get that jolt of confidence that this is my game to win. Once we get to the decklists, we'll discuss which ones pass and fail this "power level test."

Knowing Your Opponents

For the most part, our competitors know each other and have played against one another before this. When preparing for a Grand Prix, you might ask yourself, "What's going to be the most popular deck?" For this event, you'd instead ask yourself, "What deck is Autumn Burchett likely to play?"

Predicting the competition and gathering information can be immensely valuable.

Gabriel Nassif loves to play control decks, is he going to bring control for this event?

Eli Loveman qualified by playing Humans in Modern. Is he in his comfort zone when he's attacking with creatures?

Increasingly each year, Magic players become more open with their tournament preparation. Most professionals supplement their income with streaming, writing, or other types of content creation. Piotr "Kanister" Glogowski is becoming famous for publishing his decklists in advance of his tournaments—and winning them anyway, of course. Seth Manfield wrote an article detailing his preparation for this event. And, by the way, the decklist he submitted is only a few cards different from one you could've found here a week ahead of time!

I'll be eager to find out what our competitors knew or suspected of one another going into the event.

Small Field, Small Teams

It simply doesn't make sense to work with a large group for the World Championship, like players might for some other events. With a team of five or six players, you'd make up a full one third of the tournament field. You'd be exploitable if your opponents could guess what deck you were bringing. Plus, these players want to be the World Champion, and playing mirror matches against teammates every round isn't exactly a smooth path to achieving that.

Instead, our players will have broken up into groups of two and three (and of course some lone wolves), sometimes reaching out to unqualified players for a helping hand here and there. Let's get into the decklists and meet some of these small-batch teams.

The Metagame

Temur Reclamation