One of the largest Pro Tour fields since the return to tabletop play arrived at MagicCon: Amsterdam, and as we headed into Day Two of Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes, it was truly anyone's tournament in the home stretch of the weekend.

Martin Juza entered Saturday atop the field with a perfect 8-0 record, but what he described as "a tough draft seat" yielded just a 1-2 finish. Next up was the 7-0-1 Day One finisher Timo Bertram, and he pushed his lead all the way out to 10-0-1 record before the wheels fell off and he lost the next three rounds of Modern matches.

The results of that chaos? Three of the most exciting rounds of Modern, even for longtime Pro Tour viewers, and a stacked Top 8 bracket that emerged when the Cleansing Wildfire smoke cleared. From Boros Land Destruction to cameos from the recently unbanned Mox Opal and Violent Outburst , the fifteen-year-old tenets of Modern held true once again: you can play almost any deck and find success—if you know the ins and outs of how to pilot it.

That was the recipe for a Top 8 appearance, but at this Pro Tour, it wasn't the end of the equation. Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes features the first Top 8 draft since 2011 years, and success on this Sunday stage will be determined by 40-card prowess, not Izzet Prowess.

It came as little surprise, then, that one of the game's top Limited players was the first to punch his ticket to the Top 8.

Congratulations to Eduardo Sajgalik, the first player to make the #PTMSH Top 8!

AND that Gemstone Caverns happens to be one that he drafted at his first Pro Tour back in 2007 😮@Walaoumpa pic.twitter.com/5876QLeR46 — PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) July 18, 2026

Sajgalik was joined in short order by Bernardo Torres, the 2023 Magic Online Championship Showcase winner who qualified for Amsterdam via his consistent performances on the Pro Tour this year. He combined a 5-1 Draft record with a marvelous run with Esper Goryo's Vengeance, and advanced to his second career Top Finish.

The rest of the Top 8 filled out from there, with legends like Ken Yukuhiro—who earned his ninth career Top Finish—alongside newcomer Alex Rohan making his first Pro Tour Top Finish.

Tales from the Drafts

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Booster Draft was the highlight of this Pro Tour, and while the environment may seem relatively straightforward, there was still surprising depths for even the most experienced players. Take, for example, the kind of decision that World Championships are made of.

The scene is such: Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica winner Andrew Elenbogen was midway through a draft, knowing he needed to gain at least nine victories in this event to qualify for his first World Championship (his previous title qualified him instead for the Mythic Invitational). And after taking five straight blue-black cards to open the pack, he soon found himself with a decision none of his hundreds of Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes drafts had prepared him for.

Defense of the Heart

"I've never seen that card in a draft in my life," Elenbogen began. "But I remember a post that Jacob Nagro made in our Discord. He had offhandedly mentioned that he had once drafted the card from the Wilds of Eldraine Enchanting Tales bonus sheet, and said it was broken.

"I heard his words echo through my mind, I took it and committed to green–and it was wide open. I went 3-0 in the draft and won the last round thanks to Defense of the Heart ."

I just got my 9th win at #PTMSH. If my math is correct, this means I am a lock for worlds!!!!!! — Andrew Elenbogen (@Ajelenbogen) July 18, 2026

Then there's Mikko Airaksinen, who experienced some of the lows of Magic but some of the highs of life this weekend. The Pro Tour Edge of Eternities semifinalist brought his four-year-old son to his first Magic event. When he wasn't playing in the Pro Tour, the Finland native was opening boosters and jamming games with his kid—something he didn't expect would be quite so relevant to his Pro Tour experience.

"We were opening packs, and my son opened Thor and lost his mind because he loves Super Heroes. I told him that 'Dad hoped hopes he opens that exact same card in the draft.'

"And then, in pack 2, there it was. I took it, went 3-0 in the draft, and took the stamped copy back to him."

In the end, there were three players who lapped the Limited field: Francisco Sanchez, who went a combined 6-0 in matches with a black-red and then red-green deck; Chris Kral, who played green-white twice; and Ramon Santos, who played black-red and green-white. That doesn't come as a shock, as the white cards were universally considered the most powerful entering the format. But as always, drafts are self-correcting. When the totals were tallied, it was indeed white-based decks at the top, but it was a relatively flat mix among the many archetypes available.

2-1 draft #2 at #PTMSH with 5c ten rings control to move to 9-2!

Big thanks to @terribadmtg and @KingofTraitors for their videos on death to our enemies, the card is fantastic :) pic.twitter.com/A2jGC6y2QC — Alex Rohan (@AlexRohanmtg) July 18, 2026

Standout Stories on the Road to the World Championship

Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes is not just the third Pro Tour of the season—it's the last Pro Tour before Magic World Championship 32 in November. That meant that 220 players who returned on Day Two were all facing their last chance to qualify for the World Championship, either directly via a Top Finish or secondarily via the Adjusted Match Points they accrued throughout the season. The full World Championship field will be officially revealed later, but it was a momentous weekend for those chasing their World Championship goals.

There were plenty of victories to highlight across all levels of the event. Guglielmo Lupi headed up Team Novo TCG eBay, a group of Italian players who originally began working together for the Regional Championship but have since expanded to the Pro Tour, leveling up as they come together in what Team Captain Lupi described as the most serious attempt ever to put together a true team of Italian masters.

"I've been leading and coordinating for the team, playing 12 hours of Magic a day for the past 40 days," Lupi revealed. "I was very conflicted coming from Handshake Moxfield, who I think of as the best team in the world, but it felt like I could take what I learned and pass it on; I couldn't pass on the chance to step up the game for my country. It's been the most exhausting month of my life, but it's been really cool to lead this team."

Lupi's leadership paid off on all fronts. Not only did he finish the tournament 11-5, but his teammate Lorenzo Gruppi even made the Top 8 with one of the top decks of the tournament, Broodscale Combo.

🌟Lorenzo Gruppi is the final player to make the Top 8 in Round 15 of #PTMSH!

Three Top 8 spots remain, and they'll be determined in Round 16, coming up at https://t.co/GF4H5s6srS pic.twitter.com/APp2qQ3lcx — PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) July 18, 2026

Then there's Samuel Maher, who qualified for the Pro Tour after a Top 8 run at Australia's Regional Championship earlier this year. His motivation to chase the Pro Tour dream began 20 years ago while watching Gabriel Nassif star on the Sunday stage, and the schoolteacher's first trip outside of Australia brought him to Europe for a whirlwind two weeks he was still riding the high of as he completed a 9-7 finish. While he didn't get to compete against his childhood idol Nassif, he ended up with a heck of a consolation prize.

"My goal when I got here was just to win a match, but by the end, I beat Reid Duke in a Day Two win-and-in, and I just exploded," he gushed. "Before I finally qualified for the Pro Tour, I lost three win-and-ins in a row. We only have ten Pro Tour invites in Australia, and I was worried it wasn't ever going to happen. Now I'm here, and I'm over the moon."

Made day 2 of first PT!

Disappointed in my draft deck and my limited gameplay, deserved a 1-2.

Affinity was great, and I think I played really well for the most part. Beat Reid Duke in the last round for Q into day 2! https://t.co/BhAhMm6nXD pic.twitter.com/qP1l3lPse3 — Sam from Draft Punks (@Calm_Mirror) July 17, 2026

Closing the Curtain on Modern

Modern has never been mined deeper than this. You could pick any year of Modern dating back to "Infinity Faeries!" at Pro Tour Philadelphia in 2011, and you would never guess the two cards that defined the third game in Ma Noah and Francisco Sanchez's feature match.

Somehow, Geist of Saint Traft returned.

Geist of Saint Traft

Once a terror in Standard and Modern, the hexproof Spirit has been an afterthought for a decade. But as the Modern metagame twists, turns, Opals, and Neoform s, everything old becomes new again. In the case of this memorable game, sometimes something old must face something new.

Chandra, Awakened Inferno

Meet Chandra, Awakened Inferno . A one-of in the sideboard of the Boros Land Destruction deck that has broken out on Magic Online over the last few months, Noah showed exactly what the Core Set 2020 planeswalker is for as he slammed it down in the final turns of the game, wiping the non-Elemental Geist away and stacking up emblems to secure the game.

That's just a taste of what this Modern metagame had to offer. In what has become a genuine trend at Pro Tours this year, the most-represented decks in the tournament field were also among its weakest. To wit:

Skateboard s tapping Griselbrand s; Stolen Emrakul, the Promised End turns backfiring terribly; Storm players living the high-roll dream with Ral, Monsoon Mage —and sometimes the low-roll nightmare that is inherent to Storm; Allosaurus Rider s attacking and Hollow One s blocking; Spoils of the Vault , Cosmogoyf , and Thud ? Modern delivered on all fronts this weekend.

And now, it gives way to Sunday's Top 8 draft.

Looking Ahead

Now comes the first Top 8 draft in a decade and a half. Will players lean on the things that got them here, such as Team Worldly Counsel's mission statement that Sajgalik crafted (Let your opposition self-destruct), or will they try to upend expectations and force something different than the known powerhouse archetypes involving white cards?

It's a fascinating riddle that we'll know the answer to in less than 24 hours. You can follow all the action from the Top 8 when the broadcast begins at 10:00 a.m. CEST (4 a.m. EST)!