Testing and Mentorship Program

The VML Testing and Mentorship Program is back for season 8. We recognize that a large barrier to competitive play is finding people to work and prepare for tournaments with, and that this is something that has only gotten worse with the pandemic and the shift to primarily online play.

We’re hoping to give participants the experience of being part of a testing team for a tournament, as well as the chance to potentially form connections and prepare for future tournaments with even beyond this season.

How to Sign Up

The program is open to competitors in VML Season 8. At the beginning of the season we will send a survey to the competitors on which you can indicate your interest. After everyone interested completes the survey, we will match people up to form testing teams across divisions.

We will be matching up teammates who are not in the same division to avoid conflicting interests. We will also try our best to take timezones, availability, and testing goals into account when creating teams to make testing together as viable and productive as possible. The VML Testing and Mentorship Program will end at the end of division play so that there aren’t any issues if multiple people from the same team make the playoffs, however, you’re more than welcome to keep working together for the playoffs and hopefully beyond!

What to Expect

The idea behind a testing team for the VML is to help both with deck selection and matchup preparation. You should expect to spend some time each week working with or discussing both of these things with your teammates. Beyond that, you should look to discuss and set expectations with your teammates at the start of the league, to find an amount and style of testing that works for you. 

Each team will have a designated leader, who will organize and handle logistics of testing. They will set up a discord server, establish guidelines for the team as a whole, and coordinate discussions to determine the schedule and methods of testing the team will use. While the leader will be expected to organize and facilitate these discussions and subsequent testing, every member of a team is expected to be an active participant in testing.

We’ll be checking in a few times over the course of the season to ensure that everything is running smoothly, but if you have any issues, don’t hesitate to reach out to Arya through Discord (hogpog_98#7144).