Mike Rosenberg is a writer and gamer and has been part of the Magic text coverage team since 2011. He joined Wizards as organized play’s content specialist in June 2014.

We're less than a month away from closing out 2015, but there are still matters left unsettled. For example, we have yet to reveal the 2016 Grand Prix promo card—a card all players receive for playing in a Grand Prix main event (while supplies last)—and we still have one big event left to finish this year.

But first things first: the promo.

2016 Grand Prix Promo Card

Last year, players who registered for the Grand Prix main event received a Griselbrand promo card.

This year, a creature of a very different size is what you'll get for registering in the Grand Prix main event (while supplies last). That creature is Stoneforge Mystic.

That's right. One of Worldwake's most powerful cards is available to players who register and play in a Grand Prix main event in 2016. I wonder how many promo Batterskulls we'll see next to these new promo Mystics by springtime next year...

However, before we get to the year of the Equipment-fetching Kor, we have one last event to get through.

2015 World Magic Cup

The 2015 World Magic Cup starts one week from now, and teams from over 70 countries are amped and ready for what is one of the most exciting spectacles for Magic each year. But what can you expect?

2015 World Magic Cup Basics

Here's the deal with the 2015 World Magic Cup:

This tournament is a team event, featuring four-member teams representing 73 countries. Each team is composed of one national champion—the Professional Points leader for that country from the 2014–15 premier play season—and the winners of each country's three World Magic Cup Qualifiers.

The formats for this tournament are Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed in the morning and the exciting Team Unified Standard in the afternoon...but the tournament structure is a bit different than what you're used to.

On Friday it's Swiss, featuring three rounds of Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed and four rounds of Team Unified Standard before cutting to the Top 32 teams for advancement into Day Two.

On Saturday, the tournament switches over to pool play, where the 32 remaining teams are divided into pools of four teams each. The day starts off with three rounds of Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed action, with teams playing against each other team in their pools. The top two teams from each pool advance to a new set of pool play, narrowing the field to the Top 16 (with tiebreakers determined based on Day One records).

The final three rounds of pool play will spotlight three rounds of Team Unified Standard, with the top two teams from each of the four pools advancing to Sunday's Top 8.

The Top 8 teams are all invited to compete in Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch February 5–7, 2016.

Top 8 matches are Team Unified Standard, best two-out-of-three.

The players on the winning team each receive $12,000, for a total of $48,000 of the $250,000 prize pool awarded to the winning team.

Got it? Good. Want to know when to tune in?

When Does Coverage Start?

Coverage for Day One and Day Two of the 2015 World Magic Cup will take place on twitch.tv/magic at 10 a.m. local time (CET)/1 a.m. PT/4 a.m. ET/9 a.m. UTC. Video coverage will go on until the day is complete. As always, we recommend following our Twitch channel and turning on notifications—by doing that, you'll receive an email once we go live.

But take note! Day Three (Sunday) of the 2015 World Magic Cup will start one hour earlier than Friday and Saturday. Start times for Sunday are 9 a.m. local time (CET)/12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET/8 a.m. UTC.

As with recent Pro Tours, Nightbot will be in the Twitch chat with commands that you can call up using the proper prompts (a popular one, for example, is !standings, which will command Nightbot to post the link to the current tournament standings in the Twitch chat). The commands you can make to Nightbot will be posted on the Twitch page, and we hope you make great use of them!

Where Else Can I Experience the Coverage?

You can always find our broadcast on twitch.tv/magic while we are live, and you can also experience live video coverage on NicoNico in either English or Japanese.

And of course, the 2015 World Magic Cup coverage page will house all pairings, results, standings, decklists, and plenty of articles talking about the weekend courtesy of Tobi Henke, Frank Karsten, and Neale Talbot.

When Will Decklists Be Published?

Tournament integrity is our top priority, and because of this we cannot publish decklists so early that it jeopardizes a team's chances. That said, you will definitely find the Top 8 decklists posted before we head out for Saturday evening, along with the ninth-through-sixteenth-place lists on Sunday.

Once decklists are available, you can also command Nightbot on twitch.tv/magic to post the link to them, so when they're available, never fear! You'll find a link once they're posted.

Where Can I Find Out More?

While we'll be sad if you can't tune in to all 30-plus hours of coverage all weekend, we also understand that gluing yourself to the broadcast for three days may not be feasible and that this thing called "real life" can get in the way. That's why we'll be doing updates via @MagicProTour on Twitter, so if you're not following, do so to get the latest!

And if that's not enough, you can also use the hashtag #MTGWMC to join the discussion. We'll also be making some posts on the Magic: The Gathering Facebook page, so check us out there for photos and more!

Over 70 countries will enter, but only one will walk away from the weekend as the 2015 World Magic Cup winning team. Who will it be? Join us starting next Friday to find out!