Team rosters before Pro Tour Theros: how testing teams worked in 2013

In 2013, Magic's Pro Tour had no official team competition. Players still prepared in teams, and fans, writers and coverage teams wanted to know who was testing with whom before each event. This page explains what a "team" meant in that era, how the groups worked, and what their rosters looked like around Pro Tour Theros in Dublin (October 11–13, 2013).

Unofficial teams, individual results

The three-player team Pro Tours of 1999–2007 were over by 2013. The team history page covers them in detail. A Pro Tour in 2013 was an individual tournament: each player drafted and played Constructed alone, and prizes and Pro Points went to individuals. Wizards of the Coast did not announce an official team format for the Pro Tour, the Pro Tour Team Series, until August 2, 2016. It ran from 2016–17 until 2019.

Before that, a "team" was a preparation group. Members shared draft practice, deck ideas and final decklists, and many teams wore a sponsor's name, usually a store or strategy website. A team's success could be measured by how many members made Day 2 or the Top 8, and whether the deck the team settled on worked.

How testing teams worked

Sam Black's first-hand report from Pro Tour Theros, published on StarCityGames.com on October 16, 2013, gives a detailed account of one team's preparation:

• Drafting. Black drafted during the set's release weekend at a house in Madison, where about 20–24 people ran three drafts at a time.
• Group housing. Part of the team stayed at Jon Finkel's apartment in New York with Reid Duke, William Jensen and Owen Turtenwald, and Patrick Chapin joined later. Black wrote that the New York sessions were often unproductive because players weren't consistently available.
• Splitting the format. Different members explored different decks. Chapin and Paul Rietzl worked on B/W, Brad Nelson and Matt Sperling on R/G, and Kai Budde and Gabriel Nassif on Mono-Blue Devotion, which most of the team played in the end.
• Final prep on site. The group met in Dublin to finish testing before the event.

Rosters around Pro Tour Theros

The following groups are named in sources from the time:

Hipsters of the Coast described Makihito Mihara, who finished 3rd–4th with Red-Green Ramp, as "apparently a free agent." Not every pro belonged to one of the big groups.

Membership could change from one event to the next. At Pro Tour Dragon's Maze in May 2013, Reid Duke wrote about preparing with "#TeamSCG," which included Brad Nelson, Owen Turtenwald, Tom Martell, Patrick Chapin, Gabriel Nassif and William Jensen. See the Dragon's Maze page for details.

From informal rosters to official teams

The informal era fed directly into the official one. When the Pro Tour Team Series began, many of the same names appeared on six-player rosters. The 2017–18 champion, Ultimate Guard, included Reid Duke, Owen Turtenwald, William Jensen, Jon Finkel, Andrew Cuneo and Paul Rietzl. Several of them had been on the StarCityGames.com team at Pro Tour Theros. Duke, Jensen and Turtenwald had also formed the trio Peach Garden Oath in 2013, as part of the larger group known as The Pantheon.

For the full event results, see Pro Tour Theros: format, Top 8 and teams.