Not many people are made for high-level tournament Magic.

I don't just mean the Jon Finkels and Kai Buddes (or, if you prefer, the Nathan Steuers and Simon Nielsens) of the world, those gifted with a seemingly preternatural talent for casting cardboard. The truth is, even if you take the best Magic player in your local game store, put them in a group of the best Magic players from all the stores in your city, then put the best of that group into the best from your country ... you get the idea. Even at the far end of that train of thought—the highest of high-level play at the Pro Tour—no one is Jon, Kai, Nathan, or Simon, except for Jon, Kai, Nathan, and Simon.

Everyone else, the mere mortals of the competitive Magic world? They need some talent, sure, but every player you see at the Pro Tour is there because of their hard work. Whether it was in late-night post-Friday Night Magic testing sessions or marathon Magic Online Leagues, no one makes it to the Pro Tour by accident.

Alexandre MacIsaac has that part down. The 31-year-old remembers Magic as far back as Scourge (2003), when his brother introduced him to the game, but in recent years began to seriously commit to the tournament scene. He found an especially welcoming community at Face to Face Games in Toronto, dipping his toes first into Modern and later Standard. He won a Store Championship, then a Regional Championship Qualifier, then a Magic Online Challenge while putting together multiple months of Top 100 Mythic finishes on MTG Arena. His tabletop play also went well, with strong finishes (including a Top 16 appearance) at the Canadian Regional Championship. That's a path that's preached to players coming up through the ranks, and for MacIsaac, it would truly be his path to the Pro Tour.

But when I say not many people are made for tournament Magic, I'm talking about something different. I'm referring to the rideshare-airport-airplane-airport-rideshare-hotel grind that you undertake a dozen or more weekends a year, explaining to the driver that you're not doing card tricks, paying $12 for a convention center hot dog because you planned poorly.

At times, this is the way of Magic, and sustained success at the highest levels of competitive Magic has historically required quite a commitment (or at least resignment) to these aspects of the gig. It's almost a learned skill in itself. How can you set yourself up to play to the best of your ability while managing the stresses and small indignities of the road, and the swings of the tournament itself?

It takes a special kind of competitor to succeed in those conditions—and that's exactly what you find in MacIsaac, the recently crowned champion of Baltimore's Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man.

🕸️Congratulations to Alexandre MacIsaac, winner of Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man!🕸️

MacIsaac beat the field and took home the Infinity Gauntlet trophy playing Rakdos Aggro (with a single Poison Dart Frog in the sideboard🐸) pic.twitter.com/jKTGRqBxVt

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) October 27, 2025

"I really love traveling. My parents are in international development, so I've been a global nomad moving one place to another; it comes very naturally for me," he explained. "I learned to play chess at three and played in tournament after tournament. I love the competitive element mixed with going back to the hotel and reflecting on my games."

Not exactly what everyone has in mind after a long tournament, if the crowd at the hotel bar is anything to judge by. But for MacIsaac, it works. And after his incredible run in Baltimore with a Leyline of Resonance deck that shocked the field, it's working better than ever for a player who keeps building momentum on his way to the Pro Tour that he's now qualified for.

"Even today, it doesn't feel real. The first seven days after the tournament, I woke up and had to tell myself that it wasn't a dream, every single day," MacIsaac admitted, still slightly taken aback weeks later to say it out loud. "It's just fantastic, from the cool-looking trophy to (obviously) the money, but also the sense of accomplishment at having won; it's grandiose."

Heading into the Spotlight Series event in Baltimore, there was really only one question on the table regarding Standard: how dominant would the Vivi Ornitier and Agatha's Soul Cauldron combo be? Izzet Cauldron took over Standard well before Baltimore—leading to a ban earlier this week—and it was widely expected to rule Baltimore at levels rarely seen in Magic's history. And it mostly did that, with six of the Top 8 competitors piloting the deck, and six more in the Top 16.

But MacIsaac was not one of those players. He was on a mana base of Mountains, sneaking Leyline of Resonance into play on turn zero and casting spells like Full Bore and Dreadmaw's Ire, which also helped to deal with problematic permanents like Proft's Eidetic Memory and Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

Leyline of Resonance

"Vivi Ornitier defined the meta, and Mono-Red was good against that deck, so I knew I really had to really worry about those two matchups. Since I was comfortable with Mono-Red Leyline, I redefined it in a way that could cut through the meta and fare well against both of those matchups. Because there's so much red damage-based removal in the format, Full Bore and Dreadmaw's Ire are critical to the deck's success. Normally, red decks fail because they don't have a protection piece. That's why you see people playing green cards like Overprotect. But you don't need that if they're paying to do three damage to your creature and you just pump up its toughness."

The deck came about through a lot of the hard work mentioned at the top, and many hours put in with the crew at their local game store.

"I've been mostly working on the Standard and Modern formats with my playtest group in Toronto. We participate in the regular Tuesday and Thursday night Magic events at Face to Face Games, and on some weekends meet up together where we have a giant box of decks that we use to test various matchups," MacIsaac explained. "Leading up to the Baltimore Spotlight Series, I did a lot of testing on Magic Online through challenges and Standard Leagues. I was traveling a lot between Toronto and Owensound because of a family health situation, meaning I had to practice a bit more on my mobile device using MTG Arena when away from home."

Once in Baltimore, on a Top 8 stream that was expected to be a sendoff to Vivi, viewers were instead treated to MacIsaac putting on an absolute clinic with the Leyline deck. He beat Kellen Pastore's unique Simic Aggro list in the quarterfinals—the other top deck of the event—before defeating Izzet Cauldron a final two times, over Nam Dang in the semifinals and then Etai Kurtzman in the finals.

"I got the Leyline six times in six games in the Top 8, and I only mulliganed once," MacIsaac recalled. "When you see that as a viewer, it doesn't really capture the experience I went through with the tournament. You don't want to mulligan down to a Leyline, you actually should mulligan very little so long as you have a composition of lands, creatures, and pump spells."

The Standard format that MacIsaac found a way to exploit when no one else could? Freshly refreshed, sans Vivi and Proft's and Screaming Nemesis. But Leyline of Resonance is still around, and whether or not MacIsaac is casting Turn Inside Out, he will be as well after his victory in Baltimore.

"This is the biggest accomplishment of my career," he said. "The main thing winning the Spotlight Series has done for me is highlight my absence on social media platforms. Since I've won, I've had people send me messages at my work email and try to communicate with me through Facebook and other means. I didn't really envision a formal career, but this opened up some ideas to it.

"As a result, I've ramped up my social media presence by creating accounts on Bluesky and X, as well as changing my YouTube account name to poisondartfrogguy and making a deck guide video. In the near future, as I head into the huge lineup of tournaments, I plan on making a Twitch account, streaming some of my practice sessions, and making more YouTube videos around the evolving Standard meta as more sets release. I will be going to the Calgary Regional Championship in November 2025, possibly the Atlanta Spotlight Series event in January 2026, Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed in late January 2026, the Toronto Spotlight Series event in February 2026, and the Vancouver Regional Championship in late February 2026."

That's a very busy schedule for just the next three months. And MacIsaac is going to savor every moment of those trips, from his own doorstep to the feature match area and everything in between.