I must confess I have never participated in a Team Sealed event. With the upcoming Grand Prix Utrecht next year and it's format being Gatecrash Team Sealed, I need more info.

Do the teams play against other teams, or do the players play against (random) players and just gather points for their team? How are Planeswalker Points translated into BYEs in these cases?

As far as I know, Grand Prix Trials can not be sanctioned as Team Sealed.
For this spring's Grand Prix in Utrecht, that means the trials will give out BYEs to one player per trial.
How is this then translated to BYEs in the actual Grand Prix?

(Happy holidays everyone!)

—
John Eriksson
Level 2 Judge, Turku, Finland

There's a lot of information on the GP San Jose page which I've assumed will be the same for Utrecht. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there were minor changes to the GP itself. (11 rounds day 1 is a lot!)

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Events.aspx?x=mtg/event/grandprix/sanjose12

GP San Jose (California) was team sealed. This reply is based of that event, and I expect minimal changes prior to Utrecht. Always consult Relevant Documentation <tm>* to be certain. (* Relevant documentation may only exist in theory or may change without notice, but let's pretend that we are victorious over entropy for now.)

Team Designations:
Teams designate members A, B, and C at the start of the event. In San Jose, our scorekeeper was able to adjust the player order designation prior to the beginning of round one if a team decided they needed to adjust their A-B-C ordering, but the order was locked once the first round began. This was done (if I recall correctly) during the sealed build since only one member is needed to communicate while the others work on the build.

Pairing and Draft Seating:
For each round, each team is paired against one other team–1A plays 2A, 1B plays 2B, and 1C plays 2C. For the draft portion, two teams are seated at one table of six chairs with members in alternate chairs–
1A 2A 1B
2C 1C 2B

Byes and GP Trials:
Team events give one- and two-round byes. There are no three-round byes due to the nature of team events. A player who meets a bye criteria automatically confers that bye onto whatever team he or she is a part of. Byes do not stack–if a team has one member with a one-round bye and one with a two-round bye, the team receives only the higher bye (in this case, a two-round bye). Definitely refer to the format document when it is public to find out the PWP thresholds (San Jose's were 750 and 1,500).

GP Trials for team events are still run as individual player events. The winner of a Trial confers two byes onto his or her team. Yes, this means three of the people in a given Trial could be on the same team for the GP giving them a 3/X chance of actually getting maximum byes at that Trial.

Given that the MTR doesn't support this form of team draft, is there any suggested form of sanctioned event which players can use to practice for team GP drafting?

Originally posted by Thomas Ralph:

Given that the MTR doesn't support this form of team draft, is there any suggested form of sanctioned event which players can use to practice for team GP drafting?

There's nothing really stopping you from running a practice event unsanctioned.

Originally posted by Mark Brown:

There's nothing really stopping you from running a practice event unsanctioned.

Or sanctioned for that matter.

Section 8 of the Magic Tournament Rules it titled Team Tournament Rules and should answer most questions in running the event.

Jim

Edited Jim Shuman (Feb. 24, 2013 02:04:33 PM)

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

Section 8 of the Magic Tournament Rules it titled Team Tournament Rules and should answer most questions in running the event.

The MTR doesn't currently have the specifics that were run at the last Team GP or likely the specifics that will be run at the next Team GP, so it's not technically possible to sanction the draft format that was run and is likely to be run at Team GPs.