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Playing a paper tournament, especially abroad, might be a stressful experience if you have not done it. RCQ seasons take place continuously and you may be one of the few powerful magicians from your area to qualify for the Regional Championship. RCs are high level events that take place just a couple of times a year and there you can qualify for the Pro Tour and even the World Championship!
Today, I want to delve into the whole prep process before an in-person MTG tournament with tips and tricks. I will go into logistics, good practices, and much more. I'll also split it into before and during the tournament.
Without further ado, let's go!
Let's first talk about all the non-gameplay issues that are better solved ahead of time.
When you qualify for an RC, you typically have a couple of weeks if not months before the actual event—and there's a ton to be done at that stage already. The main motto I'd like you to live by is 'make the experience stress free'.
First and foremost, try to find a group of people (friends?) with whom you can travel and accommodate. Going alone is fine, but it's not advisable if it's your first time. It's much more comfortable if you surround yourself with people who have attended international events numerous times. Next, take care of the two big pillars - accommodation and travelling. Not only will booking them ahead of time save you money but also headaches and stress if it's suddenly difficult to find what you need. You also have a lot options to choose what suits you (location, flight time) rather than taking whatever is available.
Once the macro travel aspects are taken care of, let's go more in depth. After all, you will have to actually go from the airport to the AirBnB and from the AirBnB to the venue. With every location known, you can pre-plan the routes and whether you'll go by bus, tube/metro/underground, or just uber your way there.
At this point, I'd suggest that you do an analysis of all the key local elements that might concern you, such as the local time zone, where you can go buy food, what time your event will take place, and by when you need your decklist submitted. I recommend checking if you have any local breakfast places along the way and if not - have a breakfast plan. One thing is to go shopping to a local supermarket, make sandwiches, and bring them to the venue. Another big thing that encompasses all of these things, is to go to the venue the day before to make sure that you know how to actually get there, what facilities are along the way, and how long it takes. Since most events take place at convention centres, you might be met with a ton of different halls and you unsure which to go to. If you go the day before, you'll have all the time in the world to figure out that you will need to go to the Hall 33.b.22 in the far north of the whole convention.
Now that we've got all the logistics covered, let's talk about actually Magic-related parts of your preparation - and there's a lot to cover.
First, it's best if you do have a team of people whose opinion you can trust. They can be your voice of reason when you are in doubt or are about to make some bad decisions. They can double-check your sideboarding strategy, gameplay decisions, and last minute changes. It also allows you to test very specific matchups 1-on-1. A single 2 to 3 hour session can really nail down the specifics of a matchup. While it might sound like a lot of time, you will need just a couple of such sessions to work out all the most popular matchups - and with weeks before the said tournament, you can prepare very very well.
If you don't play in a group, you're probably going to test on Magic Online. That's great! Magic Online will give you all the visual cues on what triggers happen, when they happen, whether they can be responded to. It also gives you the option to put the volume of games in at your convenience. What I'd particularly suggest is that you play games very intentionally, slowly and later analyse the replays - which MTGO allows. Replays are arguably one of the best ways to improve at Magic. Even better if you can get another pair of eyes to look at these games.
You also need to choose the right deck. You can choose the deck you're most comfortable with or try to learn a new one. There is an approach that you test a bunch of other decks that you think have potential and your main deck is always at the ready. What's best is that you land on a specific deck early enough in the process so you have the time to properly test and map out the matchups - for example by playing 1-on-1 versus players in your group.
When you have the deck, you need to approach sideboarding somehow. A good approach is to lay out the whole deck, think through what you'd cut and side in against which deck, and hence prepare your own sideboard guide. In the process, you might notice that you over-board against some matchups and under-board against others. Maybe you have too many slots where you play really good cards against good matchups instead of adding good cards for bad matchups. What's also great is to think through a couple of possible openings that your opponents could present and prepare for those. For instance, Yawgmoth could have dorks into Yawgmoth, Dork into t3 Grist, Undying creatures beatdown, etc. See how you fare against each and take it into account.
Even though most of your testing might come from online, you should still play a bit in paper, as the mechanics and mannerisms are very different. You need to learn how to track the tokens you create, where you should have your Companion in order not to forget about it, how to lay out the graveyard to see if there is Delirium at a single glance, etc. Even better if you have a couple of warm up games the day before to get into the mind set of operating your chosen deck in a paper environment.
Last but not least, there are some non-gameplay things to take care of such as resleeving the deck, preparing dice, tokens. You should also double-check if you have any foils or alters, and if you do - ask the head judge whether you can play with them.
Hopefully, with all that prep done you know how to arrive at the venue stress-free with everything already prepared and taken care of. There are some last things I want you to bear in mind though.
The first group of recommendations is all about your body - make sure you have eaten, you brought some proper unprocessed food (sandwiches, nuts, fruit) and water. If possible, go out of the venue to grab some fresh air to allow your brain to get that sweet, sweet oxygen.
The second group is related to the games themselves. One of the biggest issues for people is the stress that comes with playing for stakes, especially if people gather round and watch. A tip along the lines of 'if you get stressed when people watch you, don't' would be hardly useful. What I can suggest is that you physically isolate yourself a bit from your surroundings. There are two main ways I see of doing that - earplugs and a hoodie. Using either (or both) can make playing much more comfortable and focused.
With all these steps done, you can consider yourself thoroughly prepared for the tournament ahead of you. If you have any more tips that you think are worth sharing, let me know!
And as always, please remember to hold my hand and let's pass the turn together. Cheers!
Skura, also known as IslandsInFront on X and YouTube, is one of the main European Magic: The Gathering casters and Content Writers who also plays competitive Magic religiously. He loves combo-control strategies which typically on-brandly include the colour blue. Other than Magic, he loves brewing coffee and playing chess.