Grand Prix are probably the most underprepared for events in Magic. Everyone tests for a Pro Tour because they know they should, and people test for PTQs by virtue of playing in other PTQs. But when you take away the Pro Tour level incentive and the lead in events like PTQs, you end up with an event where the average strength of the field is not representative of what’s at stake. You can easily capitalize on this.

Yes, I understand a lot of people show up to Grand Prix just to play and don’t really care about securing a strong finish. I also understand that a lot of top pros put testing time into these events. I’m talking about the average competitive player who goes to one of these events either putting in basically no work or going about things the completely wrong way.

First, the why. Are Grand Prix something you even should care about? There are plenty of events that people underprepare for where doing so is justified as the reward just isn’t there.

For the non-pros, the cash and Pro Point prize structures distract from the fact that Grand Prix are as good if not better than PTQs as avenues to the Pro Tour.

Despite common perception and Wizard’s statements that this isn’t the goal, Grand Prix have been the best way to the Pro Tour for most of the time they’ve existed.

History lesson time. Note that this is all based on North American numbers, and I’m not really counting outliers on the PTQ level. Yes, you may have played in a 45 person PTQ . Most people won’t unless they go super deep and fly to one, and even then you run the risk of getting waylaid by volcano (ask Zaiem Beg). On the flip side, you could have played in that 800 person Magic Online PTQ.

There was once a day when Grand Prix were easier targets for qualification than PTQs. Sixteen invites for 400 to 600 people was around one per 30 to 40 competitors back when Midwest PTQs were getting between 60 to 120.

Then Grand Prix exploded, but they were still good value. When I started playing in pro level events, the 1200 to 1500 person Grand Prix translated to one invite per 75 to 100 players, but PTQs in Columbus were regularly hitting 200 people and nine rounds. You weren’t triple the odds at a Grand Prix any more, but double was still fine.

Last year was the first time this wasn’t the case. Grand Prix spiked again in size while cutting invites, and PTQs got smaller with the switch to store-based events. Even then, the smallest Grand Prix were on par with the upper end of PTQs in terms of invites per player (about 1 out of 150 to 200), and with the "over 1200 people bonus invites," this number stayed fairly constant across the board ignoring Grand Prix Charlotte.

With the most recent adjustments and as people ease into the new PTQ organization system, we are currently near equilibrium. PTQs have between 100 and 250 players, while looking at numbers from last year we can expect the number of invites per Grand Prix to remain around one per 150 players.

None of these ratios include byes.

Basically, if you care about winning a PTQ, you should care more about Grand Prix. Even assuming no byes, you are as likely if not more so to get your invite there. With byes, I don’t even think it’s close. Yes, there’s the whole end boss issue, but if you want to be on the Pro Tour, that’s just life. Hell, I just played a PTQ for Pro Tour Theros that had five Gold pros in it. If you want to play high level Magic but are scared of facing those already there, you need to seriously reevaluate your logic.

If you are a pro, you need to make each Grand Prix count more.

You can still spam a bunch of Grand Prix and attempt to rack up good finishes that way. If you take enough shots, eventually one will hit the bullseye. Of course, we saw the cost of this over the past year. Burnout is very real, even for those who are 100% dedicated to the game. There is an actual dollar cost associated with this as well.

Or you can do things the efficient way. Let’s look at some numbers.

The last Magic year I played in eight Grand Prix, of which three were Limited and effectively count as two due to the split Sealed/Draft formats.

I put in the full amount of testing into three: Atlantic City (Standard), Toronto (Modern), and the Gatecrash Sealed portion of Pittsburgh. My finishes there were 4th, 13th, and 10-0. The results here should speak for themselves.

I lightly tested for four, of which three were just me rolling off Pro Tour testing from a week or two before: Return to Ravnica Draft in Philadelphia, Chicago (Modern), San Diego (Modern), and Gatecrash Draft in Pittsburgh. Results: 5-1 Draft after a 4-2 PT, 19th after 8-2ing the PT, 63rd, and 1-4 Draft after 2-4ing the PT. In short, light testing was better than none but worse than the full amount of testing.

I did not really test for three: Columbus (Modern), Return to Ravnica Sealed in Philadelphia, and both Return to Ravnica Draft and Sealed in Indianapolis (well after the PT, so Draft had evolved quite a bit). My results: 2-3 in Columbus, 4-3 after byes losing the "bonus round" in Philadelphia, 3-3 in Sealed to make the second day on tiebreaks in Indianapolis followed up by a quick 0-3 drop in the Draft portion there.

The trends should be obvious. Full effort is awesome. Light effort is something you can skate by on but isn’t a lock. Not enough work is bad. Thankfully we have results to back this obvious conclusion, and I’m sure I could extend this even further back.

If you have the time to attend everything and test for it, great. Odds are you don’t, if only because events can occur on back-to-back weekends. So, the choice is yours. More hours spent playing actual Magic, or more hours spent accumulating airline miles.

Now, the how.

Event Types

There are a lot of different points in a format that a Grand Prix can fall in. I’m going to break it down to two: open and defined. Different people tend to excel at different portions, so if you can choose what to attend, do so appropriate to your experience.

Open events come in two forms: events that kick off a season/set release or events that occur in an off-season a couple months after the last event of the format. Kickoff and off-season events tend to be quite similar apart from two aspects: size and format. Off-season events are relatively small for their region, while kickoff events are usually massive. Off-season events are almost exclusively Eternal formats, while kickoff events are usually Standard or Limited. Regardless, you need to be ready for everything and anything.

Your best bet in the Constructed versions of this is to just play a powerful proactive deck with some level of resilience. This can be a proactive control deck that has a source of definite inevitability and nearly universal answers (see: Sphinx’s Revelation plus Supreme Verdict, Cruel Ultimatum plus Cryptic Command), but those are much rarer than the simple slightly resilient aggro or combo deck. This is also known as the reason I play Storm in Legacy. In Draft, this just means finding a quick hole in the format and exploiting it. It doesn’t have to be a gimmick archetype; it can be as simple as people undervaluing a card or two and adjusting to that.

Defined events usually come after a set has been out a month or so and a few major events of the format have already occurred (or one event if it was a Pro Tour). Your deck at these events is likely much more targeted. Think G/B/W Reanimator versus full on Brad Nelson Craterhoof Reanimator. Another example is how I played Birthing Pod at Grand Prix Toronto after playing Infect at previous events. You don’t have to go full on reactive, but your choices are now "this card is good against the things I know are good (or that others expect are good)" instead of just "this card is good."

A good note about these events is that the best way to start choosing a deck is trying actual everything that already exists. While that may be virtually impossible for an open event, if you know there are five to eight decks that matter, playing with them all will help you identify not just various weaknesses and strengths but also what the obvious first level step to take is. This allows you to go "one and a half" levels ahead, where you beat not only the known decks but the decks that will rise to the top there.

Calendar Timing

Consider how you plan on obtaining byes for this event. If you can’t assure a Grand Prix Trial win or Pro Point byes but want to travel for a Grand Prix/just have one coming up, consider your ability to PTQ the previous season. For example, people trying to succeed at Grand Prix Detroit this fall should be hitting up a ton of Standard PTQs this summer to get byes on Planeswalker Points. If you are a student, this likely means aiming for a late September/early October Grand Prix that heads off midterms but lets you still use Planeswalker Point byes from over summer vacation.

Consider set releases. Even for Eternal formats, unless you are fine-tuning a combo deck that is hyperlinear, there is almost no reason to start testing until the full card list of the format is known. You can develop skewed views based on previously correct information, or your entire testing process may be irrelevant due to some new release or just general metagame shift. For example, see Deathrite Shaman. (Note to Editor: Sorry for the daggers Cedric). Determining what you should play in Modern today will not help a huge amount in determining what to play in Modern in September. It won’t necessarily hurt, but just be aware that there are diminishing returns on your time when starting earlier.

Don’t procrastinate. Once the format is ready, start chipping away at testing. Long sessions shortly before the event tend to lead to mediocre results. It’s easier to play four Magic Online Daily Events over a week for a month compared to locking yourself in a room with people and testing for a week, but both are similar amounts of time invested. Find events of the format to play in and do so in order to learn more about how full matchups play out. Use the spread out testing sessions to systematically try everything or try enough of everything that you have a full picture of the format.

Aside on "trying everything": I’ve mentioned this twice because it’s important. You can skip things due to redundancy, but it’s easy to create false comparisons. If you have a doubt about whether a deck is distinctly different from one you tried, it probably is worth playing with. A lot of making the right decisions on what to skip here has to do with finding a fundamental flaw with it via playing against it and being unable to think of a fix to that flaw or having the deck be completely analogous to something you tried without the changes solving any problems.

I’m struggling to think of a good example of the first one, but for the second the debate between Temple Garden variants for Grand Prix Atlantic City comes to mind. I never playtested Naya because I was losing with the other lists to Jace, Memory Adept and Rakdos’s Return. The red cards just didn’t offer an answer to those.

Plan for other events. If there is a Pro Tour the weekend before or after a Grand Prix this upcoming year, unless it is the same format as the Pro Tour, I can drive to it, or it’s Legacy/Team Sealed, I have no plans of attending. On the flip side, if you aren’t attending the Pro Tour, you can use this to your advantage. You can test a format that all of the top players will be too busy to prepare for as a way to close any potential skill gap.

A final note on this advice: I’m not advising you to skip Grand Prix that you can easily drive to. While there are many legitimate reasons to do so, being a bit underprepared is not one. Not being in a place in life where you want to play Magic is one thing, as is being too busy to physically be at the event site, but being busy beforehand but able to attend likely gives you a little time to squeeze in enough testing to coast through.

I spent the lead in time to Grand Prix San Diego putting a ton of work into the Pro Tour and then a job interview, but the small amount of testing I did was enough to give me at least a solid deck. At the worst, you can network with people who have tested in a way that you cover each other’s backs as needed. In the end, all I’m trying to say is that if you are picking and choosing weekends to be out of town, you can easily weigh benefits to find the right ones.

Mental Game

There is only one thing I can say here besides the usual sleep, don’t go out and get wasted before events, and remember to eat food and drink water.

Reality is (as far as I know) causal. Events only affect the events that occur after them in time.

Grand Prix are long. Mistakes are made, even by the best. You tilting will not change the fact you made a mistake. You cannot afford to fall off your game in an event as long as a Grand Prix. You are allowed multiple losses if necessary. Stop, make a new decision based on the game state or tournament as is, and carry on.

That’s all I have for now. Past this, you are on your own. As far as I can tell, everything past these fundamentals is pretty much on your play skill, and that’s beyond the scope of this article to fix. That said, even if you don’t play in Grand Prix, hopefully you can see how to apply similar event specific logic to preparing for other events.

One final aside on the new Grand Prix system: I predict an upcoming rekindling of the discussion about time related concessions. With the cut in rounds and the hard cut record for invites, a draw at a large Grand Prix is pretty much impossible to justify as better than a loss. I’ll let you fill in the blanks from here.