16 Magic: The Gathering players have been preparing for the Magic World Championship XXVI that will stream live starting tomorrow. With a $1 million prize pool and a stunning trophy on the line, this is going to be the biggest Magic tournament, and fans are excited to watch them compete in Constructed Standard and Theros Beyond Death Booster Draft.
While most of the World Championship competitors have been preparing behind closed doors, two of them have teamed-up and tested publicly in their streams: Andrea Mengucci and Seth Manfield. According to Wizards of the Coast, they're the only duo out of the 16 players in the World Championship to do all their testing in public.
"For the World Championship, I was originally going to just work on my own and stream everything, but then I got a chance to work with Seth," Mengucci told Wizards of the Coast. "He's a very good player and loves to invent new decks, so we've been sharing information back and forth and will do some more targeted testing before the tournament."
The two Magic professional players have both dominated major Magic tournaments before. Manfield won the 2015 Magic World Championship, then a few years later, he was inducted into the Magic Hall of Fame in 2018. Menugcci won the largest individual cash prize in the history of Magic— until this weekend's Magic World Championship XXVI that is— when he won the 2019 Mythic Invitational and took home $250,000.
"You may not think of Andrea as a workhorse, but he absolutely is," Manfield said. "Being a good Magic player is about working hard, and he and Javier [Dominguez] are the most hardworking players I've ever known, and it inspires me to work harder. Sure, we'll lose some value from not doing your testing in private, but we respect the competition so much—they're going to figure out the same things we are. Competing at [the World Championship] is a privilege, and I'm just trying to have fun with it and enjoy the game more."
Wizards recently revealed the metagame breakdown for the World Championship, and we already know that both Manfield and Mengucci are playing Mono-Red Aggro, a Standard archetype that makes up 25% of the tournament's meta. Hopefully, all they're testing will pay off.
Watch #1 MYTHIC???Standard-Prepping for Worlds from SethManfieldMTG on www.twitch.tv
The Magic World Championship XXVI will take place in Honolulu, Hawaii on February 14-16, and will stream live on Twitch.tv/magic. The total prize pool is $1 million with the winner getting $300,000 and a trophy.
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