This past weekend, 550 three-player teams gathered in Brussels, Belgium, for Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes. With 1,650 competitors in total, it was Europe's largest Spotlight Series event. There were dazzling promo cards to grab, $60,000 in prizes, a trio of trophies, twelve coveted Pro Tour invitations on the line, and an open event with a high-stakes showcase of skill and preparation for players of every stripe.

With fourteen rounds of Swiss that featured two deck-building portions of Team Sealed, a draft in the semifinals, and one more draft for the finals, it was a full weekend of high-level Magic across two days, and we broadcasted it all with live-streaming coverage. When the dust settled, the team of Jasper Grimmer, Thoralf Severin, and Oliver Rausch stood victorious.

The three friends from Germany, led by Mythic Championship IV 2019 Winner Thoralf Severin, claimed not only the $15,000 1st-place prize for the winning team but also unique Infinity Gauntlet trophies. Each collector-quality bronze trophy is set with an 18-karat gold bezel and a stunning yellow oval citrine gemstone, hand-selected by master gem experts to represent the Mind Stone. It was a fitting piece of memorabilia to cap off an already incredible weekend.

What Makes a Team Event Different?

Competitive Magic is usually a solitary pursuit, pitting one player against another, with each player working through every decision alone. Team events flip that script. Players register in groups of three, sit alongside one another throughout the tournament, and can freely talk strategy during games. The last time a premier team-style event took the stage was seven years ago at Grand Prix Ghent in 2019, which made this event in Belgium all the more exciting.

"It's the one event you don't want to miss," said eventual champion Thoralf Severin. "You're playing with your friends! You get to prepare, you get to experience the journey together. It's perfect!"

Walking the floor, every facet of competitive Magic was represented at once. Champions from decades past, families competing side by side, international friendships, teams who stuck together after MagicCon: Amsterdam, and first-timers who were curious to see what all the fuss is about. What it's about, it turned out, is a rare mix of camaraderie and complicated game states that take three heads to untangle. Six competitors huddled around a single board state arguing the merits of one play versus another is a sight you won't find at any other kind of tournament.

Much of that comes down to what makes Team Limited unlike any other format. Open a great card, and the whole team celebrates. Hit a tough deck-building puzzle, and everyone pitches in ideas. There's always another match happening right beside you, with teammates weighing in from both sides. Across the weekend, teammates share wins, shake off losses, and carry each other through every round. It's a dynamic that solo tournaments simply can't replicate. It's why Magic team events tend to leave players with stories they'll tell for years, and Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes was no exception. Everyone I spoke with lit up when talking about the weekend—win or lose, they had a blast.

Old Champions Come Out of Retirement

Team events have a knack for pulling Magic legends back to the battlefield, sometimes after years away, and Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes gave plenty of old-school players the perfect excuse to dust off their card sleeves. Among the 1,650 competitors in Brussels, at least 26 were former Pro Tour or World Championship winners, their trophies spanning four decades of competitive Magic history.

Take the trio of 2001 World Champion Tom van de Logt, 2004 Grand Prix Champion Stijn Cornelissen, and 2009 Hall of Famer Kamiel Cornelissen. Life and family had kept them away from competitive tabletop Magic for most of the past decade, but they consider Team Limited the most enjoyable format Magic has to offer and weren't about to miss this one. Magic has such a powerful history, and no one ever truly quits the game. Seeing familiar faces at the tables 10, 20, or even 30 years after a win at the Pro Tour or World Championship never stops feeling special.

Meanwhile, few things capture the spirit of team events better than families playing together, and the Cornelissen brothers are just one example among many. The Rohan brothers, Alex and Seb, are another. They finished in 16th place alongside Eduardo Sajgalik. Several teams featured spouses playing side by side. One local Belgian squad fielded a full Vieren family trio: Grand Prix Champion Pascal Vieren, his brother and Pro Tour veteran Peter Vieren, and Pascal's oldest son, Dante. They were one of roughly half a dozen teams with three matching last names, a small reminder of how much fun competitive Magic can be as a family affair.

The team lineups also showed how little geography matters once everyone speaks Magic. The 10th-place team, for instance, brought together six-time Serbian national champion Aleksa Telarov, frequent Croatian national team member Stjepan Sučić, and longtime Czech player Filip Tetera—three countries at one table. The Italy, Hong Kong, and United States trio of Marco Del Pivo, Lee Shi Tian, and Christian Calcano, all longtime friends who stayed in the area for another week after MagicCon: Amsterdam, told a similar story of the cross-country friendships Magic fosters.

The convenient location and timing, with Brussels being just a two-hour train ride from Amsterdam, made it an easy add-on for several international teams who attended MagicCon: Amsterdam. Matt Nass, Sam Pardee, and Carolyn Pardee spent the week touring Amsterdam, visiting the Efteling and even building practice decks in Brussels's historic central square. "It was a lot of fun," Sam said. Likewise, the team of Alan Ke, Andy Liu, and Benton Madsen—three friends from the New York area—stayed in Antwerp between events, testing Team Sealed every day and enjoying Belgian hot chocolate before ultimately finishing in 13th place.

Cracking the Puzzle of Team Sealed

As the main event featured Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes Team Limited, players didn't need to prepare Constructed decks or study the metagame. Every team instead opened twelve Play Boosters together on Saturday morning and built three 40-card decks from their shared sealed pool, with each sideboard card assigned to one of the three decks.

With three decks to build and register from one shared pool, the real challenge was figuring out how to divide the colors. Some teams split their deepest color across two decks to land on three two-color builds. Others built one focused monocolor deck and split the rest into two two-color decks. Each team got 60 minutes every morning to weigh their options, spot which colors needed reinforcing, and squeeze the most out of their synergies and gold cards.

The right split was rarely obvious, but by the end of Saturday, two teams had reached a pristine 8-0 record, and in both cases their color choices came down to the demands of their best rare cards:

• The French team of Thomas Mechin, Jean-Emmanuel Depraz, and Noé Fauquenoi opened a pool that they described as "very, very good: just a lot of bombs that could be split pretty evenly." They built a base red-white deck featuring Monica Rambeau and a light green splash for Storm, Windrider; a black-green deck to enable The Coming of Galactus; and a base white-blue deck featuring The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster and a light red splash for Vision Quest.
• The team of Joseph Puglisi Clark, Quinn Tonole, and Zevin Faust opened a sealed pool that they called "very synergistic." Their blue options were so shallow they left it out of their main decks entirely. Instead, they built a mono-black Villains deck around two double-black mana bomb rare cards: Elektra, Daughter of the Hand and M.O.D.O.K. Their other decks were a nearly mono-white Heroes deck splashing for Daredevil, Man Without Fear and a red-green deck stacked with big green creatures and red fight spells.

Because decks in Team Sealed are built from twelve Play Boosters rather than the usual six, they tend to look better than the average deck from a draft, often containing multiple copies of key common and uncommon cards. Joseph Puglisi Clark, for example, splashed two copies of Repulsor Blast in his deck on Saturday just to enable two copies of Agent Maria Hill. The depth and power of Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Limited was on display all weekend, and the top tables were full of powerful bombs and streamlined curves.

Once the 60-minute construction window closed, each team received three differently colored bracelets, marking each player and their deck as seat A, B, or C. Every round, players faced whichever opponent matched their seat, and the first team to win two of their three individual matches took the round.

Communication was allowed throughout the matches, and the best teams made good use of that. Joseph Puglisi Clark offered an insightful window into their team dynamic: "We started playing Magic together competitively three years ago, so we've played a million events together and know what's in each other's heads," he explained. "They know how to compensate for my deficiencies. Zevin's very good at counting. I'm not very good at counting. So ideally, and this has happened several rounds so far, one of them will finish their match then help me with counting as I have to figure out how to attack and block."

Teams that finished Day One at 6-2 or better returned Sunday morning for a fresh build in Team Sealed, while those who didn't make Day Two had a full slate of Fanfinity side events and activities to keep them busy. Over in the artist village, for instance, attendees gathered to meet ten talented artists and had the chance to get their favorite cards signed.

Meanwhile, the four-slot Limited Championship Qualifier hit its 512-player cap on Sunday, with Tim Kernke, Gabriel Souza, Michael Deckert, and Felix Ackermann emerging victorious and earning invitations to the 2027 Magic Limited Championship, taking place June 18–20, 2027, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Between the main event and the side events, there was something on offer for every kind of Magic fan.

The Top 4 Teams in Brussels

After two construction portions in Team Sealed and fourteen total rounds of Swiss, the Top 4 of Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes was set. Every member of the Top 4 teams in the final standings earned an invitation to Pro Tour Nauctis, set to take place at MagicCon: Detroit on February 26–28, 2027.

Finishing fourth, Marius Heck, Tarkan Koc, and Lev Ducenko are three friends from Germany who mostly play together online. They didn't hold out much hope after starting the tournament 1-2, with two of the three already having shed their "Dreckige Drafter" team shirts, which translates roughly as "Dirty Drafters." But then they went on an incredible eleven-match win streak to reach the Top 4.

When they won their final Swiss round, they celebrated and shouted, "Pro Tour!" It meant a lot, not just because they'd achieved their dream of earning that Pro Tour invitation, but because they did it together. "This will be my first Pro Tour," Heck said excitedly, even after losing in the semifinals. He was already looking ahead to the event he qualified for: "With friends, it's so much easier. Traveling together and testing together is so much fun! It's the best way it could happen."

Quinn Tonole, Joseph Puglisi Clark, and Zevin Faust came out for MagicCon: Amsterdam the week before and simply extended their trip to play in this tournament, too. "We've known each other for a long time," Puglisi Clark said, tracing it back to when they first came together as original members of Team Scrapheap at the United States Regional Championship in Washington, DC, in 2024. Thanks to their tournament success over the 2025–26 season, all three qualified for Magic World Championship 32.

"We've worked really hard to play a lot of Limited in the last year to two years," Tonole said, pointing to the team's strong Limited fundamentals and sharp preparation. Zevin Faust was the team's true standout, though. He became the only player to reach the Top 4 of both Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes events, having also made the elimination rounds alongside Jesse Hampton and Charles Wong in Las Vegas a month earlier.

The runner-up team featured three of the best Danish players of all time. Rasmus Sibast was a Pro Tour regular 20 years ago, reaching the Top 8 of Pro Tour Prague in 2006. Martin Dang is best known as the champion of Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir in 2015. Neither, though, had played much competitive Magic in recent years. It was Christoffer Larsen, fresh off winning Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed and finishing in 2nd place at Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, who lit a fire under his compatriots.

"We've known each other for over 20 years," Larsen said. "This is about just getting the guys together. Rasmus hasn't touched a Magic card for 15 years!" Sure enough, Sibast was practically reading the cards as he went, but his skills, both on the battlefield and at cracking jokes, were as sharp as ever. The team also had one quiet advantage: hardly any of their opponents spoke Danish, so they could talk freely across the table without fear of being understood.

Finally, the team that took the title: three friends from Germany, each with multiple Pro Tour appearances and previous Team tournament success. Together, they had previously finished in 6th place at the 2017 Team Unified Modern Grand Prix in Madrid. Of the three, Thoralf Severin had found the most success on the Pro Tour, having won the 2019 Mythic Championship IV in Barcelona, but all three had largely stepped back from competitive Magic in the years since.

The announcement of this team event relit their fire. The week before the tournament, Rausch traveled to Berlin to spend three days with Severin and Grimmer, building practice decks for Team Sealed and sharpening their teamwork. "Sharp communication is really important," Severin said, "and you can do that much better with friends." The three had come into the weekend hoping simply to qualify for the Pro Tour together, but in the end, they went well beyond that.

An Epic Team Draft Decided the Title

After battling through a field of 550 teams and winning their semifinal team draft, the finalists at Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes were set. Team events tend to minimize variance and reward skill, so it was fitting that the finals lived up to the occasion, with as many as three Pro Tour champions seated at the final draft table.

Team drafts look nothing like a standard eight-person draft. Six players sit at the table, two teams of three, alternating seats around the pod. Everyone drafts from three Play Boosters as usual, but the drafters on your left and right belong to the opposing team, so anything you pass may eventually land in their hands. That makes it critical to understand what colors the players beside you are in, remember what you've passed, and hate-draft when needed to keep powerful cards out of the other team's reach.

The final decklists reflect all of that. These were scrappier decks that look rougher than a normal draft deck. With only 18 Play Boosters opened at the table instead of the normal 24 and cards constantly getting cut from each other, building real synergy is difficult. Thoralf Severin leaned into that reality instead of fighting it, valuing landcyclers and dual lands highly so he could splash whatever he needed to hate-pick, and his three-color pile showed that approach at work.

The matches that followed were a showcase of Magic at its highest level. Severin used green and blue cards to stabilize before deploying Doctor Doom and taking his round over Christoffer Larsen. Meanwhile, Rasmus Sibast took to the skies, riding fliers to a win over Jasper Grimmer.

It all came down to the final match between Oliver Rausch and Martin Dang, which went the full three games. With both team captains pitching in on that last game, the Germans ultimately won a tight damage race, with Captain Mar-Vell, Space-Born landing the final blow.

The two teams shared the moment together in a genuine display of sportsmanship, with the Danes joining the Germans in their celebration. For teams of friends who'd spent years away from competitive Magic, it was a reminder of exactly why they came back. Congratulations once again to Oliver Rausch, Thoralf Severin, and Jasper Grimmer, the Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes champions in Brussels!