By Niels Viaene
13 players ended up in the pairings for round 1 after dropping 3 people that brought standard decks to the event despite the warning in the title (yes, I am salty about it). In the end, we had a surprising leader in the top slot, but not a completely unfamiliar one.
4-0 Joseph Rygaard
WUG Ramp
In episode 5, Joseph surprised with an earlier version of this deck, he went 3-1 with the ramp/value strategy. I questioned whether this was to be a new player in the metagame or just a flash in the pan.
I tried a modified version of the deck in the tribal special episode and did abysmal with it, but that was a different version, pilot, and metagame. Joseph played it twice, to a combined 7-1 record.
The deck is definitely fun to play, gives you a lot of options and can bring enough beef without the ramp plan to put pressure on opponents sittoing on counter magic for your big threats. Lategame, it has the same issues as many ramp decks in that you become dependant from wildly varying topdecks to carry you through the game. It does need to be stressed that this deck’s lategame arrives later than in most ramp decks due to all the accidental card draw you get from Sarulf’s Packmate and Llanowar Visionary.
3-1 Peter Jönsson
Yorion UBG Midrange
Peter brought this slightly creature heavier version of Sultai Midrange to the party and slapped on a Yorion as an excuse to play 80 cards. Besides offering the opportunity for me to make that joke, it gives him a lategame trump card his decks ynergizes well with and as such it will often be more than just an 8th card to start with.
The deck plays very much in the same way as a Sultai midrange deck, but has that extra latgame oomph to push you over the top which will be a great way to give yu a path to victory in grindy natch-ups, especially in the mirror match.
The rest of the decks
A WBG deck centered around mutate/counters by Niels Viaene and a classical UBG deck in the hands of Teddie Anderssen were the two other 3-1’s in a field of different UB decks, with Control and Rogues (with and without Lurrus) all represented. The bottom 3 decks were the creative choices for the event so it does look like the metagame has settled in a state where a bottom threshold for power is needed to play along. This is of course problematic for new and untested decks as they do not get the time and opportunity to come to their optimal configuration.
The Leaderboard and the Open
Not much has changed on the leaderboard besides Jens Alden reaching his 5th event and taking his rightful place. The Open, which will be announced soon, will take place in the weekend of April 10 or 11. That means the next episode, the one with special restrictions, will wrap up the leaderboard, with 2 people getting a bye for the Open.
Noa Munther seems locked in, barring over 20 people showing up and Noa doing not managing a top 50% finish. That story does not count for Karl, in second place currently. A moderately sized event where he struggles could still see him getting overtaken by any of the 6 people below him.
Next event
The next event is the season closer, and it has an extra restriction, allowing you to play cards from only 2 expansions, so people will really need to dig down and look for a deck to play. Hopefully it will also motivate a lot of our players to come back and give Gentry a try just before Strixhaven coomes in and promises to have quite the impact with some highly influential commons and uncommons.
See you on Tuesday!
Niels
