Feb 2, 2013

Season V.4: 25th of January 2013 - Winter Qualifier!

And that is four successful tournaments in a row! Although the Gatecrash prerelease madness was in the same weekend as our first qualifier of the season 16 people showed up to fight for assured participation of the Peasant Groningen Invitational at the end of the season. After four straight wins, Johan Rots can now rest assured knowing that he has secured his place, congratulations!

Piloting a White Weenie version that finds its strength in the sheer value of each of its cards, Johan illustrated that white is very powerful. He knew he would have a weak match-up against storm combo, but expected no one to wield that considering its weakness to faeries and in particular the discard oriented decks that have been skulking about recently. Against those two archetypes specifically, this White Weenie is quite strong.

As promised, I have given you all the decks that were played this tournament (and will keep doing so in the future) and among them we see not many new faces. Elves, Faeries, MBA, WW and Sepp's 'Can't Touch This' have all seen play quite often this season. The noteworthy new face here is Walter's 'Teaching Posts', the deck is a proper old school control deck featuring tons of tricks, card advantage and removal. Win conditions are few and far between, so protecting those is vital. However, with counter magic and ghostly flicker at your disposal this should be managable.

Another thing I find noteworthy about the decklists in this tournament is the predominance of monocolored decks. It seems that the guildgates have not yet been able to open up the way for more multicolored decks, but considering the speed of the format this is not too shocking I guess. Perhaps with the full complement of guildgates people will be able to break the metagame open? I personally think that the Dimir, Simic and Orzhov Guildgates might be able to achieve what some of the other guildgates could not yet do. Our opinions on the other two gates and the rest of Gatecrash will be up for your reading pleasure before the next tournament in a review of the set's top cards, but maybe you already have ideas a plenty with the new set and its mechanics? I am curious to find out what impact Gatecrash will have on the format, as well as that of Skeletal Scrying!

See you all in February, maybe with a new metagame?


Rank
Player (click * to see decklist)
Deck
Colors
P/W/D
1.
Johan Rots *
White Weenie
W
4/4/0
2.
Rob de Jonge *
Black Fish
B
4/3/0
3.
Siebe van der Veer *
Faeries
U
4/3/0
4.
Sylke Gosen *
Elves
G U
4/3/0
5.
Walter Fuglistahler *
Teaching Posts
U B
4/3/0
6.
Niels *** *
The Rack
U B
4/2/1
7.
Andre Pannekoek *
Faeries
U
4/2/0
8.
Sepp Jansen *
Can't Touch This 2.0
W G
4/2/0
9.
Allard van der Made *
U/W Blink
W U
4/2/0
10.
Danny Sardjan *
Faeries
U
4/2/0
11.
Niek Ottens *
Shrieking Rats
B
4/2/0
12.
Desmond Scholtens *
UR Tempo
U R
4/1/0
13.
Maarten Jacobs *
NeoTE
B R G
4/1/0
14.
Mathijs Hoogeveen *
Sensei's Erasure
U
4/1/0
15.
Jan Rigter *
White Weenie
W
4/0/1
16.
Marius Hollenga *
MBA
B
4/0/0