By Niels Viaene
Before we get started, I want to take some time to let you know about a change to this leaderboard! With Episode 10, we are resetting the leaderboard. This happened because the current sseason is really long (it would last for 16 or 17 episodes) and the leaderboard is sort of locked in place due to a few peak attendances in the middle of the season. Restarting the Season should give people new incentive to play for standing. That also means more rewards, with the top 5% players ow getting a bye for the April Open already. Who those people are we will see below.
4-0 Thijs Weytens
Grixis Control
Thijs went undefeated using Grixis Control, the marquee Control deck in the metagame currently. It has enough pressure to punish slower control decks, can be tweaked to have better aggro match-ups and accidentally has the Exile suit to disrupt graveyard interaction decks. The key? It can’t do all at the same time. Thijs shaved a little off the creature removal and improved his control match-up while dropping Ugin in favor of Shark Typhoon. A flexible archetype and a good choice for people that are good at sideboarding and understand match-ups well.
3-1 Jelle Lauwers
Rakdos Midrange
Weaponize the Monsters is a card that has been talked about and tested quite a lot lately. The mono red deck I played (that went 3-1 again but won’t be featured a third time in a row) ties to optimize that card but staying on 1 color AND playing Obosh, the Preypiercer really restricts what is possible, especially from the sideboard. Jelle added black in his deck choice, bringing the Aristocrats archetype back to life. It comes with more awkward interactions but really opens options up a lot. It this the future of the archetype or will it morph into a different deck altogether?
The Leaderboard
Currently at the top are Teddie Anderssen and Jelle Lauwers, the only person that can mathmatically catch up with them unless events suddenly grow is Robbe Schildermans, while both the people ahead of him have the some opportunity to grow their lead a little bit.
So we are closing it here instead of risking the leaderboard becoming irrelevant. The nature of it, the top 5 events counting, makes it that going beyond a certain events will always have this effect and now we learned about that. Congratulations Teddie and Jelle on securing your bye 4 months before the event!
See you all on MTGMelee next week for a new season of Gentry!
