2015 World Magic Cup

The 2015 World Magic Cup, the fourth World Magic Cup, was held on 11–13 December 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. It featured 73 different national teams, with Malta making its debut. The tournament was won by the Italian national team, captained by Marco Cammilluzzi, which was victorious in the final against Thailand.

Pre-tournament favorites
The pre-tournament favorite teams to do well at the World Magic Cup were the Japanese national team, featuring two-time Player of the Year Yuuya Watanabe and Hall of Famer Kenji Tsumura, as well as recent Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar runner-up Ryoichi Tamada; the United States national team, which included current Player of the Year Mike Sigrist, Pro Tour champion and three-time Grand Prix winner Tom Martell, and Neal Oliver, winner of Grand Prix Las Vegas 2013; and the Canadian national team, the only team with two current Platinum-level pros: Alexander Hayne and Shaun McLaren, both Pro Tour champions in the past. Many predicted Japan as winners.

Format and schedule
2015's iteration of the World Magic Cup featured two formats: Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed and Team Unified Standard. Team Sealed is a variation of Sealed deck where the team shares a pool of twelve Booster packs, which is used to build three 40-card decks. Team Unified Standard differs from regular Standard in that all three team decks must not include more than four copies of any given card (other than basic lands). Most significantly, this meant that the teams could distribute only 20 total Khans of Tarkir fetch lands among the three decks. In both formats, teams played against opposing national teams, with the winning team being the first to win two matches (each match being best-of-three-games).

Day 1 - Friday, 11 December
 * 3 rounds of Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed
 * 4 rounds of Team Unified Standard

Day 1 was seven rounds of Swiss play, with the top 32 teams at the end of the day advancing to Day 2 of competition.

Day 2 - Saturday, 12 December
 * 3 rounds of Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed
 * 3 rounds of Team Unified Standard

On Day 2, teams were divided, according to their standing within the event (seeding), into eight groups of four teams each, where each team played every other team in the group once, the format being Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed. The top two teams in each group advanced; if two or more teams were tied, the team(s) with the highest seed advanced. The teams were then divided again, according to their standing within the event, into four groups of four teams each, where each team played every other team in the group once, the format being Team Unified Standard. The top two teams in each group advanced to Day 3 of competition; if two or more teams are tied, the team(s) with the highest seed advanced.

Day 3 - Sunday, 13 December
 * Quarterfinals, semifinals and final, featuring Team Unified Standard

The top eight teams then competed in a seeded (based on total number of points from Day 1 and Day 2), single-elimination bracket.

Day 1
The first day of the 2015 World Magic Cup contained many surprises, as pre-tournament favorites such as Canada and the United States were eliminated, finishing 39th and 41st, respectively. Additionally, several unheralded teams emerged on top of the standings after the first seven rounds, including the 1st- and 2nd-placed teams, Belarus and Macedonia. Brazil, captained by Hall of Famer Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, followed in third. Japan, considered by many to have the best team, advanced in 13th place. This was the first time the Japanese team had advanced to Day 2 of the World Magic Cup since its inception in 2012.

The top eight teams after day one:

First round of pool play
The first three rounds on Day 2, featuring Battle for Zendikar Team Sealed, eliminated three of the top four teams after Day 1, including Macedonia, who were tied for first place with Belarus. Debutants Malta were also knocked out during this stage, with two losses to start their day.

Second round of pool play
The second half of Day 2 featured Team Unified Standard. After winning their first match, Greece looked poised to repeat their unlikely performance from the previous World Magic Cup, where they as an unheralded team managed to advance from the bottom of the standings at the beginning of the second day, and make it through to the elimination rounds. However, they lost their next two matches, including a last round win-and-in against Scotland, and finished in 12th place overall. Meanwhile, Italy finished their Day 2 undefeated run to secure their first WMC top eight. Denmark and Guatemala took a risky intentional draw in the last round of their group; had Belarus won their last match against Paraguay, they would have overtaken Guatemala. But Belarus lost, and Guatemala made it through along with reigning champions Denmark. In group C, France and Japan both secured their place on the Sunday stage with a round to spare, defeating New Zealand and Latvia. Thailand and Austria also won their first two matches, and took an intentional draw in the third.

Day 3
Two of the teams in the top eight, Denmark and France, were past World Magic Cup champions looking to be the first two-time winners, and in Denmark's case, the first repeat winners. But Denmark, captained by Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir winner Martin Dang, lost unexpectedly to Thailand in the first quarterfinal. France came closer, as they managed to dispatch favorites Japan in their quarterfinal, before also succumbing to the Thai team in the semis. It was Italy, however, who would go the distance. They beat Scotland in the quarterfinal, and advanced past Austria, who'd previously defeated Guatemala, to face Thailand in the final. Italy's William Pizzi was playing a Temur-deck that had been criticized by the commentators as a questionable deck choice, but Pizzi won all of his matches in the top eight, and when Andrea Mengucci took his match against Suttipong Popitukgul, Italy became the 2015 World Magic Cup champions.