A Six-Week Practice Plan for Competitive Magic

You know the rules, the strategy, the odds, the tournament procedures, and the ladder. The last step is practice that looks like the event you are aiming for. This lesson gives you a six-week plan for an RCQ or a Regional Championship. It assumes about four to six hours a week. Scale it to your life, but keep every part.

Start with a date and a deck

Pick one event from the Pro Tour path lesson or the first competitive event lesson, and note its format. Then choose your deck by the end of week one and stop changing it, apart from the sideboard. Six weeks with one deck beats six weeks with three.

The four parts of every week

1. Volume. Play the format online. MTG Arena is free to download and runs Standard and draft; Magic Online covers Modern and other formats. Aim for fifteen to twenty-five games a week. Online games are fast, which makes them the cheapest way to learn your deck’s lines.

2. Real matches. At least one session a week, play best-of-three matches across a table with a 50-minute clock, under the tournament rules: life on paper, triggers announced, shortcuts clear. Online play hides the procedures. In-person practice keeps them sharp.

3. Drills. Fifteen minutes, two or three times a week:

• Mulligan drill. Shuffle, draw seven, decide keep or mulligan for the play and for the draw. Check against the probability lesson.
• Sideboard drill. Name a matchup, then set your deck up for game two from memory in under two minutes.
• Combat drill. Set up a board with a friend and solve the attack: what is the best attack, and what is the crack-back?

4. Review. After every loss, write three short answers:

1. Was I the beatdown or the control, and did I play like it?
2. Which single decision would I change?
3. Was the loss about my deck, my play, or the draw?

Be honest about the third one. New competitors blame the draw too often, and experienced ones sometimes blame themselves too often. After a few weeks, the patterns in your answers show you what to work on.

The testing partner

Find one or two players aiming at the same event. A testing partner does three things you cannot do alone: plays the decks you fear the way their best players do, argues with your sideboard plan, and keeps you honest about practice. Store regulars and online groups are the usual places to find one.

The six weeks

Weeks 1 and 2: learn the deck. Lots of games, mostly game ones. Learn every card’s best use and your common mulligans. Write a one-line plan for each of the five decks you expect most.

Weeks 3 and 4: learn the matchups. Play best-of-three against your testing partner’s versions of the top decks. Write your sideboard guide and test it. Expect to rewrite it at least once.

Week 5: event conditions. Every practice match under event rules, with a clock. For a limited RCQ, do two or three drafts a week with the current set, and practice counting your picks without notes. For an RC with open decklists, practice reading an opponent’s list and planning before game one.

Week 6: sharpen and rest. Fewer games, more review. Register your deck early. Pack your bag the night before. Sleep.

What to measure

Keep four numbers from week to week:

• Match win rate in best-of-three, online and in person.
• Game one and post-sideboard win rates, separately. If games two and three are worse, your sideboard plan needs work.
• Mulligans per match. A sudden jump can mean a deck or land count problem.
• Clock use. Matches that went to time. A draw is worth only a third of a win.

The people across the table

A practice plan can make a game feel like work. Keep the point in view. Every match is a game against someone who loves Magic too. Learn their names. Talk through the strange endings afterward. The players you meet on the way to a qualifier are a big part of why the trip is worth it.

If you are near Indianapolis, our guide to where to play Magic in Indianapolis lists stores by area, and the Indianapolis list gets first word on local learn-to-play nights as The Ludarium grows.

That is the end of the course. You started with one box. You can now play and teach, build a deck that casts its spells, win combat, draft with a plan, build a Commander deck, use the stack, put odds on your draws, find your role, sideboard, follow the tournament rules, and plan a path to the Pro Tour. The game is the reason. The people across the table are the point.