Sebastian Anthony
The entrance to the World Magic Cup, hosted at the Fira de Barcelona.
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Sebastian Anthony
The entrance to the World Magic Cup, hosted at the Fira de Barcelona.
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Sebastian Anthony
The main hall at the World Magic Cup.
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Sebastian Anthony
For some reason, someone had painted a My Little Pony on this Black Lotus – a card worth at least a few thousand pounds.
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Sebastian Anthony
Yup, they painted ponies on the whole Power 9.
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Sebastian Anthony
Cute collectible figure things.
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Sebastian Anthony
England playing against France on the main stage, which is broadcast on Twitch. England lost this match-up, alas.
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Sebastian Anthony
The World Magic Cup does look a bit like another World Cup that can't be mentioned here for trademark reasons.
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Sebastian Anthony
England playing against the Dominican Republic. Check out those sweet hats.
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Sebastian Anthony
On day one, the Mexican team were all wearing sombreros. And one of them was wearing a rather stereotypical fake moustache…
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Sebastian Anthony
Team Ireland in the foreground. Susann Heidemueller, who is the highest rated player in Ireland, was the only female team captain at the World Cup.
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Sebastian Anthony
Look at those wonderful kilts.
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Sebastian Anthony
Team Sealed starts with each team opening a bunch of packs, and then trying to turn the (random) cards into useful decks. England is pictured here; team captain Fabrizio is the one standing up.
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Sebastian Anthony
Team USA USA USA!! vs. Northern Ireland.
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Sebastian Anthony
Note that there are four players on each side of the table (Wales vs. Latvia), but only three games being played. The fourth spot is the "coach," who is free to move around and offer advice to their team mates.
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Sebastian Anthony
England being beaten by Australia. I don't think I actually got any photos of England winning a game…
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Sebastian Anthony
I think the commentator spotted that I was taking a photo…
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Sebastian Anthony
… hmm, I think this commentator spotted me, too…
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Sebastian Anthony
Magic is huge in Japan. They had their own little commentary booth for the World Cup.
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Sebastian Anthony
Behind the scenes there's all the equipment you'd usually find at an event for live streaming/broadcasting.
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Sebastian Anthony
I thought this box, with the stencilled Wizards of the Coast, was pretty cool.
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BARCELONA—England hasn't had the best of luck when it comes to World Cups in the last few years. In the Football World Cup, England went out in the group stage, not winning a single game. In the 2015 Cricket World Cup, England won a couple of matches but failed to advance to the knockout stage. And of course, earlier this year, at the Rugby World Cup hosted in England, we didn't even manage to get past the group stage. It's all been a bit embarrassing, to be honest.
Which is why I was excited when Wizards of the Coast invited me to the World Magic Cup in Barcelona. All four of the home nations—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—had qualified for the last major Magic: The Gathering event of the year. Here was a World Cup that we actually had a chance of winning.
Or so I thought.
Team-based Magic is different
Note: If you haven't played Magic before, you might want to read our review of Battle for Zendikar, the most recent Magic expansion. It'll give you basic primer of how the game is played, which will then help you make sense of the rest of this story.
Most games of Magic are played one-on-one, with each player constructing a deck of cards from their own collection. The World Magic Cup (yes, Wizards of the Coast rearranged the words slightly to avoid possible litigation from FIFA) is quite different. For a start, instead of competing solo, there are 73 teams, each consisting of the top four Magic players from each nation. To win the tournament all four players need to play well and work together: a single strong player or deck isn't enough to carry a team to victory.
Sebastian Anthony
Two different formats are played at the World Cup: Team Sealed and Team Unified Standard. In Team Sealed, the four players open up 12 packs of cards (about 168 cards in total, once the lands have been removed) and then try to create three 40-card decks. In Team Unified Standard, the rules are identical to the normal Standard format except for one big difference.
In Standard you're allowed four copies of a single card in a 60-card deck; in Team Unified Standard, there can only be four copies of each card across all of the team's decks. This tweak results in a much wider variety of decks as players look for novel combinations of cards that might surprise the opposition.
The other big difference at the World Magic Cup is how the tournament is actually organised. In normal Magic tournaments you usually have a non-elimination Swiss stage which leads to a more conventional elimination stage. In the World Cup, the structure of the tournament is the same (a Swiss stage followed by elimination), but everything happens as a team.
So, for example, when England plays against Wales, everyone from the England team sits down at a table and plays against everyone from the Welsh team. Each match-up at the table is randomly drawn, so you don't know ahead of time which player or deck you'll be playing against. The winner of the round is the team that wins the most individual match-ups. Win enough rounds, and battle through the last-eight elimination phase, and you win the World Cup.
Sebastian Anthony
Another unique aspect of the World Magic Cup is that, each round, one of the four team members is locked into a "coach" role. So, while there are four players on each team, only three of them actually play Magic. The fourth player can move freely between the tables, offering advice on which card to play next, or pointing out something important that may have been missed. Because there are two formats being played (Team Sealed and Team Unified) the coach role is usually filled by whichever player is weakest at the current format.
IN-GER-LAND, IN-GER-LAAAAND…
At last year's World Magic Cup, England placed fourth, losing in the semifinals to the eventual winner: Denmark. "The English team is even stronger this time," my Wizards of the Coast contact told me excitedly a couple of weeks before the tournament. "They could even win it this year!"
Sadly, it was not to be. On the first day of the tournament there were eight Swiss rounds to see who would go through to day two. England needed at least four victories to be in with a chance of advancing to the second day, or five victories to guarantee it… but they only managed two. In the overall standings, England came in 61st place out of 73. Northern Ireland also didn't do very well, coming in at 66th.
To find out where it all went wrong, I spoke to Fabrizio Anteri, the top-ranked Magic player in England and also the team's captain. "It was mostly luck of the draw," Anteri said. "We tried some new decks that we thought might give us an edge, but…" he shrugged thoughtfully and fell into silence. I asked Fabrizio if blaming bad luck made him a bad loser—after all, Magic might have an element of randomness to it, but it's a known quantity that every player has to deal with. "I'm not bad at losing. I'm just not used to it," he responded rather matter-of-factly.
The US team, which was (on-paper) one of the strongest teams at the World Cup, also did poorly, finishing in 41st place—outside the money and not continuing to the second day. I spoke briefly to one of their players and he also blamed Lady Luck: "We ended 3-4. But we could easily have finished 5-2 or 2-5."
Seemingly, when there are so many variables—the players, the decks, the match-ups, and the universe's random number generator—it's quite easy for a top-seeded team to be unceremoniously punted out of the tournament at an early stage.
Listing image by Sebastian Anthony
The Magic team from Panama, wearing devil masks. Each year, in addition to the main tournament, Wizards of the Coast offers a "spirit award" to the teams that most get into the spirit of things. Panama was one of those teams.
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The Magic team from Panama, wearing devil masks. Each year, in addition to the main tournament, Wizards of the Coast offers a "spirit award" to the teams that most get into the spirit of things. Panama was one of those teams.
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Scotland, presumably for its kilts and sporrans, also won a spirit award.
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And the Dominican Republic, with their awesome national outfits, also got a spirit award.
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Northern Ireland's official team photo. They did not win a spirit award…
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Wales didn't win a spirit award, but they certainly should've!
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The winners of the World Magic Cup 2015: Italy!
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A wee dram of Magic
Fortunately, in much the same way that an English person can shift their allegiance to Andy Murray when he's doing well at Wimbledon, the UK had two other horses in the race: Wales and Scotland. Wales did pretty well, finishing just outside the money in 36th place. Scotland, on the other hand, performed superbly: those kilt-wearing bastards finished in seventh place overall.
Scotland's journey to the top eight was one of the more exciting stories from the World Cup. At the end of day two they found themselves playing against Greece on the main stage, with tens of thousands of people watching on Twitch. Scotland was right on the edge of making it through to the final eight, but only if they won against Greece and, in a separate game, Italy also stopped the Philippines from scoring any points.
The game between Greece and Scotland was incredibly tense. The game went on for so long that it was almost declared a draw—but eventually, in the last turn, Scotland managed to deliver a killing blow. The Scottish team seemed to be quietly pleased with the victory, but certainly not overjoyed—until, of course, someone told them that Italy had also won. Cue lots of hugging, cheering, and jumping around in kilts. If you're interested, the main Magic website has a full write-up of the Scotland vs. Greece game.
After the match we spoke to Scotland's captain, Stephen Murray, to discuss his team's strategy for getting through to the top eight. On day one, in the Team Sealed stage of the tournament, Murray said they focused on "finding the slightly niche decks that can win, not just decks that are quite good"—so, quite similar to Fabrizio and the England team in that regard.
Team Standard, with its four-card limit across all of the team's decks, required some lateral thinking. "We chose Abzan over an aggressive red deck, as Grant [Hislop] was much more comfortable playing that archetype, then an aggressive Jeskai deck and a Black-Red Dragons fell into place after that as having little overlap," Murray said. "A key decision was being willing to play high casting cost, but powerful enchantments (Citadel Siege, Outpost Siege), as we knew that we'd run into far fewer Dromoka's Command [a cheap card that destroys enchantments] than in a 'normal' event."
Murray also said that getting the team together before the event, "both for practise, and for teambuilding purposes, meant we could come into this event having trust in one another, and removing our egos from the equation."
I got one other fun quote from the Scottish team. On day one, Scotland knocked Ireland out of the tournament. After the match, as the team headed outside to get some fresh air, I leapt upon them like a blood-thirsty journalist. "How are you guys doing?" I asked. One of the team members quickly replied: "Sadly we just knocked out Ireland. I wish we'd knocked out England instead."
For finishing seventh each of the Scottish players took home $2,000 (£1,300/€1,800) in winnings. The Italians, who went on to win the World Cup, were awarded $12,000 (£8,000/€11,000) each. Not bad going for a weekend in Barcelona, though a far cry from the $40,000 (£27,000) that a solo Pro Tour victory would net you.
Overall, I enjoyed the Magic World Cup. While Magic the game is itself very complex and interesting, it lacks the pomp and circumstance that defines most big spectator events. The Magic World cup doesn't yet have baying crowds, vuvuzelas, pyrotechnics, or cheerleaders, but I found it a whole lot more exciting than just row upon trestle-tabled row of nameless people playing head-to-head Magic.
The next Magic: the Gathering expansion, Oath of the Gatewatch—the follow-up to Battle for Zendikar—will be released on January 22. We'll have a review of the new set in the next couple of weeks.