Even the Magic World Champion gets better with a bit of help from his friends.
Reflecting on an accomplishment that only two other people in history can lay claim to, that's where freshly (re)crowned Magic World Champion Seth Manfield's mind was. He could have been thinking about any number of things—about how his victory at Magic World Championship 31 was the fifth premier trophy of his Magic journey, breaking a tie with Nathan Steuer and claiming the sole position of second on that list to Kai Budde. He could have thought about how the fourteenth Top Finish of his life broke him out of a tie with the aforementioned German juggernaut for sole possession of fourth on that list (Gabriel Nassif, Jon Finkel, and Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa are still several ahead but closer within reach). Or, of course, he could have thought about how his undefeated 9-0 run in games played in the Magic World Championship 31 Top 8 made him just the third two-time World Champion in the game's history alongside Shahar Shenhar and last year's winner, Javier Dominguez. Heck, he could have been thinking about how he was going to spend the $100,000 he won for his 1st-place finish, or where he was going to display the unforgettable and inaugural Black Lotus trophy.
But he wasn't. About 3,600 days after winning his first World Championship and about 36 hours after winning his second, the Team TCGplayer member was thinking about how important his teammates had been. And not just because his squadmate Matt Nass broke the Standard format wide open (again)—and he very much did, as Frank Karsten detailed in his Metagame Mentor article this week—but because of how much the team had meant for his mental game heading into Magic's biggest stage.
"I was emotional when I won this time, maybe not quite to the same extent as 2015, but I cared a lot about this tournament because of the work we had put in," he explained. "I hadn't been able to do the testing house for the last few events and really missed it, and I think it affected my preparation. For this event, it was very nice to be able to spend the full amount of time with my teammates, and that environment helps to motivate me more."
Preparing for the World Championship is unlike preparing for any other event. From players skipping family vacations to tales of averaging four hours of sleep a night, the Magic World Championship is simply unlike any other event, and the 126 competitors who qualified for the biggest tournament of their lives knew it. Testing teams are both more important and more limited than in any other event. A handful of prominent teams stood out when the dust settled on the field, and a brand-new Standard format meant that the work these teams did in the weeks leading up to the tournament would make Magic history.
At the World Championship, Team TCGplayer was comprised of a number of the game's most recognizable players from the past two decades, including former ChannelFireball stars like Matt Nass, Reid Duke, Sam Pardee, and Gabriel Nassif. The Caw-Blade guard of old made a clean transition into the "modern" era of Pro Tour-level events in 2023 and going forward, showing up with a breakout (and format-breaking) Rakdos Vampires list at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor—an event that, by the way, Manfield won.
The testing processes have been updated for 2025, but the basic premise of a Magic testing team remains the same. Everyone starts their homework the moment they can, and it all comes together in an all-important testing house in the week or two before the tournament. Tens of thousands of Discord messages are exchanged long before flights are boarded, but plans truly manifest when the international phone plan kicks in and Andrea Mengucci starts talking about food.
Not to be trite, but it's the gathering that often makes the Magic, and Manfield considered his time in Washington with his team to be the most memorable moment of his entire World Championship season. It certainly helped that Manfield wasn't just ecstatic to work with his friends and teammates in person again; he was just as ecstatic about the work they were doing.
"It was Thanksgiving meal, straight to packing and getting on a plane the next morning for Seattle and then ready to get going," Manfield recalled. "Because of the recent bans and the release of [Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™], it was a new format—and that meant there was the potential to crack it. I was really excited about that from the start. We live in an age where information spreads quickly, and a lot of it happens online. But a week or two into a new format everyone is still scrambling a little bit, so that was exciting for us once we got together."
As always, the gathering is the best part pic.twitter.com/Kt9ByOktJV
— Edgar Magalhães (@EdgarMTG) December 7, 2025
7-7 at worlds. This was a very humbling experience and made me realize I still have a lot to work on if I want to compete at this level. Grateful for team TCGPlayer for letting me test with them again. GG pic.twitter.com/WKRxLi3AZg
— Nam Dang (@Nammersquats) December 7, 2025
Exciting for Team TCGplayer meant trouble for everyone else. To absolutely no one's surprise, Pro Tour Aetherdrift Champion Matt Nass—less than nine months removed from winning the Pro Tour with an Up the Beanstalk deck that later led to a ban (one of many on Nass's wall)—was at it again.
Manfield knew what to do.
"Matt first brought it to the table and played a set with it against one of the green creature decks, which we initially thought would be very popular. I saw him post that he thought it had potential, and I immediately trusted him and hopped on it next," Manfield revealed. "It's a similar story to the Vampires deck. We don't often say in our testing Discord that we think something is really good. The Lessons deck was actually one of the first I tried. It felt a little more out of left field, and that's normally what I do the best with."
Fast forward seven days, and the World Championship metagame was revealed. Just about everyone in attendance was shocked. Team TCGplayer was not the only team that had discovered Izzet Lessons—which had just begun to propagate across Magic Online data in the hours leading up to the World Championship—but they did have their own twist on the list. Almost everyone seemed to feel comfortable against the once feared Badgermole Cub creature decks. While no one had quite expected the exact field we received, they were intrigued to see if the Lessons lists could hold up.
Three days later, we had our answer. Not only had the Lessons decks held up, the Team TCGplayer special of
"Coming out of the testing house, this event was really starting to tick a lot of boxes. We put a ton of work in, we felt good about the Limited format, and even before seeing the metagame I knew we had the best deck; a lot of the deck felt like that," Manfield said. "Maybe we like that a little bit with Vampires, but not like this. Usually, I'm really unsure about the deck-selection process, but I felt good about our team's chances; if I were to pick any one deck that I think I had the biggest edge in for an event in my career, it would be this one. It's not like we were the only people playing it, but we were the only people playing our build of it. I had a really good feeling heading into the event."
It was a good feeling only slightly dampened by a near-disastrous 0-2 start to the World Championship. But Manfield rallied to pick up a win in the final round of Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender Draft, and then he was off to the Constructed rounds where his deck turned out to be every bit as good as advertised. By the time Manfield had swept Akira Shibata 3-0 in the finals—just like he had with his quarterfinals opponent (and Player of the Year) Ken Yukuhiro and then Derrick Davis in the semifinals—it was clear that the deck of the weekend couldn't be stopped, and neither could a now two-time World Champion and Hall of Fame member who has accomplished all there is to do in Magic, and more.
There's one other difference between this World Championship title and Manfield's first: he had some new additions to the watch party.
"I have a 10-year-old and a 3-year-old, and they were watching with my family and everyone was cheering. They said they cried when I won. My local Dungeons & Dragons group, they were all watching, too. It felt great to have all the support from home and my team at the tournament," Manfield said. "I made the Top 4 of the World Championship last year and went to five games against Javier, and I felt like maybe I had let it slip away. I had another chance this time around, and I was able to get it done."
"There's no question what Manfield's World Championship win means for Magic moving forward. Long ago, he cemented his place as one of the best to do it, and now the legacy question of where he lines up as one of the best to ever do it is on the table. But what does Manfield's World Championship mean for him; what is next for the man who has won all there is to win, twice?
"I'm still processing everything," he admitted. "I love playing Magic: The Gathering, and this tournament set me up well. I've got qualifications to all of the major events, and I'm hoping to get out to the Regional Championships and Spotlight Series events in 2026—and I want to bring my A game to every tournament."
I won #MTGWorlds!!!
— Seth Manfield (@SethManfield) December 8, 2025