What is Rumbling in the land of Gentry?

By Niels Viaene

There is a lot going on at the moment around Gentry. Of course people know about the Gentry Open coming up, there has been a lot of buzz around that, but lets have a talk about everything that is going on right now.

FACTS

What? Why is this here? FACTS, your Belgian Comic Con, is the weekend of April 6^th and 7th, and the League of new and Beginning Magic: the Gathering Players has a booth there. We will be teaching people how to play Magic using Welcome Decks and surfaces with Magic Arena.

But that is not very Gentry-oriented, is it?

In addition to that, we are hosting a ‘King of the Hill’ Gentry table. The concept is that people can queue for free to play a single game at the table, and as long as you win, you get to take on a next challenger. At the end of each day, there are two winners, last player in the seat at 17:00 who will win 3 boosters, and the player with the longest streak of the day, which wins a free entry to the Gentry Open.

There will also be other ways to win free boosters, and even playmats, just come by for a game and a chat.

If you are local and you want to help out in exchange for a free entry into FACTS, fill out the form as soon as possible.

Gentry Arena Challenger

See the Arena March Update for more info.

Cardmarket Series Ghent

On Saturday April 13^th, there is a Gentry tournament at Cardmarket Series Ghent. The winner of this event will win a bye in the Gentry Open in assition to the prizes the event is paying out. Currently it seems like very few people are registered so it will be the easiest way to win a bye, that is a free win in round 1 of the event.

Gentry Leaderboards

People at the top of the different Leaderboards get a bye in the first round of the Gentry Open. If there are 32 people or less on the board, only the winner gets a bye. For every 32 players there is an extra slot, meaning two players get a bye when there are between 33 and 64 players, and so on.

Gentry Metagame

A lot of attention has gone out to decks based on Guildgates, Gatebreaker Ram, Gate Colossus, Gates Ablaze and Guild Summit. They are a format defining set of cards that demand a lot of attention. In addition to that, they are very flexible and allow for different decks, with Temur, Jeskai and 4 color variants currently making waves. There are also Wilderness Reclamation versions that play completely different.

But that does not mean the format is broken or ‘solved’. Mono Red has been the best performing deck for people in the Leaderboard, with Alan leaping bounds ahead of the competition on the back of his trusty deck choice for this season.

And there is more, both Niels Vandevelde and myself have brought Orzhov builds to the last Leaderboard event that managed to meet undefeated in the last round of the event. The best part? They were two completely different decks. One was based around Afterlife and keeping an army up after a Gates Ablaze while the other aimed to dismantle an opponent’s hand with discard before deploying a big finisher, based on the monoblack deck Mats brought to the Invitational, proving there are a lot of other ways to attack the metagame.

Gentry Open

By now every Gentry enthusiast should know the Gentry Open is back with its next edition on April 20th, but just in case you managed not to have read it a hundred times already, below is the prize pay-out of the Gentry Open. It is a record breaking amount of support and I hope everyone of you will be there to enjoy our format.

Every participant gets a goodie bag consisting of the following sponsored items:

– 1 Tote Bag (tournamencenter.eu)
– 1 deck box for 80 sleeved cards (tournamencenter.eu)
– 1 pen (tournamencenter.eu)
– 1 pack of sleeves (tournamencenter.eu)
– 1 Mana 5 Deckbox (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Mana 5 Life pad (Ultra Pro)
– 1 pack of sleeves (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Gentry playable promo card (Outpost Gent)
– 1 Life Pad (Cardmarket)
– 1 Pen (Cardmarket)
– 1 Die (Cardmarket)
– 1 pack of sleeves (Channel Fireball)
– some random dice (the League)

We only have 60 of these packs that we can guarantee completely, so come early to make sure you get yours. Should we go over 60, we will do our best to give you items of comparable awesomeness.

During each round we will also give away a Cardmarket series playmat and a League Playmat. Everybody with a break-even record or better will receive extra booster prizes.

Should you be fortunate enough to make it to the top 8, you will be playing for the following:

5th to 8th

– 1 Pack of Eclipse Sleeves (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Playmat (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Metal Water Bottle (tournamentcenter)
– 1 GP Birmingham Mox Amber Playmat (Channel Fireball)
– 16 Booster Packs (the League)

3rd & 4th

– 1 Pack of Eclipse Sleeves (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Playmat (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Metal Water Bottle (tournamentcenter)
– 1 GP Birmingham Mox Amber Playmat (Channel Fireball)
– 24 Booster Packs (the League)

Runner up

– 1 Pack of Eclipse Sleeves (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Metal Water Bottle (tournamentcenter)
– 1 GP Birmingham Mox Amber Playmat (Channel Fireball)
– 1 Kaladesh PRO Binder (Ultra Pro)
– 36 Booster Packs (the League)
– 1 Special Surprise Care package (the League)

Champion

– 1 Pack of Eclipse Sleeves (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Metal Water Bottle (tournamentcenter)
– 1 GP Birmingham Mox Amber Playmat (Channel Fireball)
– 1 Alcove Deck Box (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Promo Backpack (Ultra Pro)
– 1 Golden Ticket to a Magic Fest of your choice (Channel Fireball)
– 36 Booster Packs (the League)
– 1 Champion Trophy

This is by far the craziest sponsoring support yet and we want to thank tournamentcenter, Outpost Gent, Ultra Pro, Carmarket and Channel Fireball for their Generous support!

Media

Are you excited for the Open, but you can’t make it? Tune into the stream over at twitch.tv and enjoy coverage of the best Gentry event ever!

Do you want a taste of what it is like? Go check out the Youtube channel first.

Are you excited?

You should be, we have the most Gentry-action-packed couple of weeks coming up. What are you planning on attending or checking out? Besides the Gentry Open, of course…