I got qualified for the Pro Tour in Minneapolis playing standard Mono Red Aggro. A lot of players were also asking if the tournament report and sideboard guide for Mono Red will be posted at Mystical Teachings. Even though I don’t usually create Standard content, I decided to write it as my way of saying thank you for all your support.
If you haven’t checked part one of the report, I strongly recommend checking it out before you read a tournament report! I wrote down why I ended up playing Mono Red, how my testing process looked like, and added a mini primer and sideboard guide for all of you who are interested in playing Mono Red in the current Standard format. Enjoy!
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Going into the Regional Championship, I didn’t have high expectations – my deck wasn’t broken by any means and the field wasn’t as easy as it could be one week earlier (I wrote more about the evolution of the metagame and how I expected it to adapt in the previous article about Mono Red). But at least I liked my testing process and the decklist I registered. My plan was to beat the most popular deck in the field – Grixis – and have a bit more play compared to regular Red decks against Esper Legends and Toxic. That’s why I had four Furnace Punishers in the maindeck and more Strangles than any other Red player in the room. Adding two Falkenrath Pit Fighter was supposed to improve my Grixis matchup even further – it got sideboarded out quite often when facing non-Grixis decks, but it did its job and I liked the change. The only thing I regretted was not ordering Rending Flames on time, so I had to play a slightly worse version of a card. Thankfully, it didn’t punish me throughout the tournament.
It’s important to note that the Regional Championship is an open decklist event. Even if in theory it should be disadvantageous for aggro decks (because they always want to do their thing while the opponent can mulligan into good cards in the matchup), I liked it a lot. No one had an advantage over the rest of the field because they knew more about what the opponent plays, so from this perspective, it was fair for everyone. I also wasn’t worried about something off-meta, like strange sideboard options. The atmosphere before starting each round was also much more friendly compared to for example GPs before COVID era, where the tension around scouting and trying to conceal your deck was a significant factor. Now all players could fully focus on playing good Magic and in my opinion, that’s a change for the better.
My list. If you are curious why I built it that way, check part one of the report.
Day 1
Round 1 – Benjamin Marchand, UW Soldiers
I won the die roll and had the perfect start in game one: Swiftspear into two drop into three turns of removing the blockers they kept playing. The moment they started stabilising, a timely Lightning Strike from the top ended the game.
Game two was quite strange. I kept a slow hand with three lands, including one manland, three burn spells and a Raiju. In the first few turns of the game, it looked relatively fine – I was controlling the situation and had a finisher ready to take over the game. The problem was that I kept drawing lands – my starting hand had three, and by the end of the game I’d drawn eleven in total. I was still in the game because four of them were Mishra’s Foundries. Sadly, the opponent drew two Extraction Specialists and eventually was able to grind me out.
Game three was a one-man show starring our MVP, Furnace Punisher. In the early game I had a slight tempo advantage, but we ended up trading most of our resources. I was thinking that I’m in trouble, but Furnace Punisher from the top stopped their anaemic aggro and dealt more than ten damage to the opponent. Even though it was an aggro mirror, the games were so intense that we ended in extra time.
2-1, 1-0 in the tournament
Round 2 – Francisco Moreno Morales, Grixis
Round 3 – Giuliano Benincasa, Grixis
In my memory, both of these matches are basically the same encounter that happened twice in a row. I won both die rolls. Game one was a quick victory, games postboard I won were centred around Furnace Punisher. I even had a game when I overpowered Sheoldred that was in play for several turns.
2-0, 2-0 in the tournament
2-1, 3-0 in the tournament
Round 4 – William Pizzi, Grixis Atraxa
I lost the die roll. In game one I had to mulligan and my hand wasn’t exciting at all – it had zero one drops and wasn’t terribly exciting overall, but at least it had lands, so I kept it because going down to five in this matchup feels abysmal. My opponent had a good draw and reanimated Atraxa on turn five, so at least I was happy that my worse draw happened when I couldn’t win anyway.
Game two I also mulliganed, but being on the play helped me set up the pressure. My opponent was close to stabilising the situation, but a timely Koth from the top killing Corpse Appraiser let me push final points of damage. In game three, the opponent drew only removal and lands and I eventually was able to finish them with what was left on the battlefield. Mishra’s Foundries helped a lot there.
2-1, 4-0 in the tournament
Round 5 – Wojtek Kowalczuk, Grixis
Wojtek Kowalczuk, also known as Xerk is not a Yawgmoth one trick (and an MT writer, you can check his Yawgmoth content here), as some people might think – he’s a really good player overall. I know it because we play in the same LGS and we were in the same testing team for this event.
I lost the die roll. Xerk demolished me in our games, mostly because he chose to pay a lot of respect to aggro while building his deck. He had three Cut Downs and one Flame-Blessed Bolt in the maindeck, and even more anti-aggro cards postboard. The final nail in the coffin in game one was when I landed Furnace Punisher to negate the lifegain from Sheoldred, but once I wanted to announce the trigger, Wojtek showed me two Swamps he had on the battlefield. He said he refused to play Takenuma and opted to play a second Swamp instead because I was hyping Furnace Punisher for the past three weeks!
Game two wasn’t exciting either – we traded our resources and when I was drawing my fifth and sixth land, Xerk played Gix’s Command and killed my two creatures and made Corpse Appraiser a 4/4 with lifelink. It was enough for me.
0-2, 4-1 in the tournament
Round 6 – Dominik Aspernig, GW Toxic
To be honest I don’t remember the first game all that well, aside from the fact that I won with the help of Furnace Punisher. But I was very proud of how I played game two. It was a tight race and it ended when I was at two life and nine poison counters. I was behind due to being on a draw, but made some bold attacks and represented stuff I didn’t have in hand, and it won me the game – without being aggressive, I would’ve lost the long game to Mirrex creating tokens and many good topdecks the opponent could have.
2-0, 5-1 in the tournament
Round 7 – Arne Huschenbeth, Esper Legends
When I got the notification that the next round had started, I sighed. Arne is a great player, so I knew I won’t get anything for free. Then I saw their decklist and instantly felt I won’t be likely to win this round. I was playing against Esper Legends, which is a bad matchup to start with, and Arne’s version had everything you would want to have in order to beat red – full playsets of Thalias, Dennicks, Wedding Announcements and Sheoldreds, as well as seven three mana x/4 creatures, so I can never set up significant pressure. The list felt so clean and well-balanced that once I realised how good it was, I knew it would be the deck of the tournament. Just analyse it – it’s a masterpiece. It turned out exactly like that – Arne’s team (four players) got two people in the top 8 and had an incredible win rate.
All the games we played were extremely one-sided. In game one fast Dennick into blockers stopped my aggression and Ludevic, Necrogenius copying a lifelinker was a game-ending play. In game two, Arne kept a two land hand with Dennick and a few cheap removal spells and never saw a third land, so I was able to win quickly. In game three, the double Adeline draw was too much for me to overcome.
1-2, 5-2 in the tournament
Round 8 – Alex Campbell, Esper Legends
Another round, another Esper. I knew how bad the matchup was, but had to win this one to lock day two. Luckily for me, Alex played a more stock version of the deck, so there weren’t that many problematic cards to deal with. We were playing in the feature match area, so you can watch the match here, starting from 2:47:37.
In game one, I couldn’t do much. I was on the draw, and my opponent had Thalia into Raffine into Adeline into Sheoldred. Before Sholedred came in, I had a plan to chump with Sokenzan tokens and other creatures in later turns and finish the game with Punisher triggers and burn spells, but with a repetitive source of lifegain on the other side of the board that couldn’t happen.
In game two I got lucky – I had Kumano into Feldon with a lot of removal spells in hand. I haven’t seen anything with four toughness on the other side of the board, so I could still apply pressure. Fast Raiju into Furnace Punisher tempoed out the two copies of Ao, the Dawn Sky Alex had in hand.
Game three I also had Kumano into Feldon again, but this time the opponent had Thalia into Raffine. For some reason, Alex wanted to pressure me instead of setting up defences. It was great news for me – Red has better tools to race than to play a longer game . Because of the Thalia’s tax and Raffine’s Ward, my removal spells were quite clunky. My turn four was quite interesting – I had a Rebel Salvo ready to take down Thalia, but the opponent had one mana open. I didn’t want them to use it to cast Cast Down, so I decided to let the opponent untap, even with Plaza of Heroes ready to protect Thalia. I came to the conclusion that if the opponent wants to spend a whole turn to protect it from my removal, I’m fine with that, as this would mean no Sheoldred or Adeline. At this point, I had a lot of good topdecks, Strangle killing Thalia among them. I was able to attack for seven and Strangle in the second main phase, to play around Cut Down targeting my attacker (which happened later on). After this combat, Alex drew a card and conceded. I think that if they played more defensively, I would have a much harder time.
2-1, 6-2 in the tournament
Round 9 – Alessandro Lippi, Grixis Atraxa
Game one went according to my plan – early pressure and tempo advantage thanks to Strangle killing Corpse Appraiser and the opponent not presenting a fast Atraxa was enough to take down game one.
Game two showed why Chandra is a great plan versus Grixis strategies. My opponent drew many different cheap interactive spells and Brotherhood’s End, but thanks to Chandra I had tons of card advantage, and the threat of ultimate forced my opponent to go for a bad Brotherhood’s End – it killed only one creature and put Chandra down to four loyalty – obviously, it was not even close to stopping me from winning the game.
2-0, 7-2 in the tournament
Day 2
Round 10 – Batuhan Gencay, GW Toxic
I won the die roll. In game one, we both had good starts: I had Kumano into Feldon into Furnace Punisher, and my opponent had a lot of cheap creatures. Thanks to winning the die roll I was able to deal enough damage in the early game so I could engineer a gameplan around Punisher’s triggers once the board was flooded with creatures to block. I was extremely scared of Tyvar’s Stand, so my attacks were conservative – my plan was to not let them activate Corrupted and win with burn spells. When the opponent was at four, I attacked with 3/3 Feldon, which forced the block. Opponent decided to block with a 4/4 instead of chump with Venerated Rotpriest, so I could exile four cards looking for final points of damage, and a second Punisher was enough to win the game.
In game two I had Monastery Swiftspear into Adversary, but I was stuck on two lands with one of them being Mishra’s Foundry, so I couldn’t play my spells as efficiently as I’d like. On the other side of the board, my opponent played Skrelv into double Venerated Rotpriest into even more creatures, so my one spell per turn wasn’t enough to keep up. In hindsight, maybe I should not play a 2/2 and go for removal on turn two too.
In game three, I kept Swiftspear, Strangle, Play with Fire, Raiju and three lands. The hand wasn’t the fastest, but it had enough action early on to warrant keeping it. The early game was good for me – I had the pressure and killed Rotpriest and Jawbone Duelist, but a turn three Contaminator into Annex Sentry stopped me for a bit. I played turn four Raiju and attacked for four. The opponent played yet another Contaminator and attacked with the first one. I had a huge decision – do I trade here? I decided against it because without Raiju I wouldn’t be able to get back the initiative. I also had a few good topdecks to come back to the game. Bloodthirsty Adversary was probably the best one since I was able to flashback Lightning Strike targeting the opponent and had another attacking 4/4 creature thanks to Raiju’s trigger. The opponent went to four life (the opponent had a very Brushland-heavy draw), so they had to trade with Contaminator and chump with Sentry (so I got back my Swiftspear). From this point I had the momentum, so my opponent couldn’t attack and I had many good topdecks to finish the game. I didn’t brick and ended the game with Feldon into Play with Fire from the top. The game was quite intense and I was lucky that the opponent didn’t draw Hive when it would win the game on the spot.
2-1, 8-2 in the tournament
Round 11 – Fabrizio Campanino, Mono-White Midrange
I won the die roll, but also had to take a mulligan. In game one I had an early aggression – Swiftspear into Feldon – but my opponent was ready with two removal spells. My turn three didn’t look great – it was just a 3/3 Furnace Punisher against a mono-coloured deck. Thankfully, the opponent did nothing on turn three and my turn four Raiju was able to beat down. The counter went onto the Punisher, so if the opponent played some blockers, I would be able to attack through the first one. Opponent played the fourth land on their turn and passed, which telegraphed The Wandering Emperor. They also had Field of Ruin, so I decided to go for an attack with Mishra’s Foundry and Monastery Swiftspear. The opponent didn’t go for the Emperor though – instead they used Field on Foundry and Fateful Absence to deal with Raiju. The Emperor came down on the next turn and exiled my Furnace Punisher, but Play with Fire and Lightning Strike with Prowess triggers were able to deal with the planeswalker and put my opponent at four life. On the next turn, they played Serra Paragon and passed, and I finished the game with another hasty guy, Mishra’s Foundry and Strangle to get a Prowess trigger.
Game two was very one-sided – despite my Kumano into Adversary start, I couldn’t do much. The opponent had turn two Bankbuster into Steel Seraph, attacked for four with lifelink and it was virtually over – I lost the initiative and was more and more behind with every passing turn. Serra Paragon replaying Steel Seraph followed by Wedding Announcement sealed the deal.
Game three was extremely close – I had some early aggression, Lightning Strike to kill Seraph and Obliterating Bolt to deal with Serra Paragon, but eventually, my opponent dealt with everything on my side of the board. We traded resources and went into topdeck war. The opponent was at two life for some time, but I drew two Mountains in the row. The final moment of the game – the opponent was at two and had Steel Seraph while I had two 2/2s. We both had zero cards in hand. 3/3 lifelinker attacked, the opponent went back to five. I drew a Mountain and attacked for four. They attacked again (back to four life) and played Wedding Announcement. I drew Mishra’s Fourndy, attacked, the opponent chumped, they were at two. Another turn, another 3/3 lifelink attack, they went back to five and got a 1/1. Finally, I topdecked Lightning Strike, attacked for six, and finished the opponent with a burn spell.
2-1, 9-2 in the tournament
Round 12 – Robert Steiner (also known as Bob49), UW Soldiers
Bob had a unique take on Soldiers. Instead of going full aggro and having access to Thalia, Bob went in another direction – more instant speed approach with three Zephyr Sentinels, three Protect the Negotiators and one Spell Pierce. Having to plan around so many potential plays was definitely tricky, and open decklists made it even trickier.
I lost the die roll, had to mulligan and ended with a mediocre hand. The opponent on the other hand had Dennick, lord and some other creatures, so I got run over rather quickly.
In game two I got my perfect draw for the matchup – turn one Kumano into turn two Feldon into Swiftspear and three removal spells played turn after turn. Bob tried to combine Resolute Reinforcements and Zephyr Sentinels to create enough creatures to chump and survive, but it wasn’t enough against my wall of removal.
In game three I had to mulligan once again and kept an interesting hand: two Kumano, Swiftspear, Strangle and two Mountains. A lot of aggression, but only one removal spell. All I needed to draw was more burn spells (post sideboard I had fourteen of them) and then I had a chance to win. Sadly, I drew a third Kumano and lands. I was able to set up some pressure and kill a Skrelv, but I didn’t have another removal spell for the real threat on the other side of the board – Skystrike Officer. Combined with Resolute Reinforcements, it quickly created a great card advantage engine. After three turns of drawing extra cards, there was no way for me to come back, especially with Siege Veteran giving counters to key creatures.
1-2, 9-3 in the tournament
Round 13 – Wojciech Radosz, Mono-White Midrange
Wojciech Radosz, also known as Laplasjan, is a Polish player and MTGO end boss (and a writer for Mystical Teachings, you should check his articles about Hammer!). Because we are both from the same country and are known for being Modern specialists, we’ve already had many chances to compete and play important matches against each other. This round was crucial for both of us – the winner would lock the PT invite and could fight for a top 8, while the loser would have to win the next round to hopefully ID into an invite. I knew I was already quite lucky a couple times that day already, but I was calling my ‘one time’ yet again.
Sadly, the most important thing in the matchup – the die roll – didn’t go as I planned. We both mulliganed, and I kept a risky hand with three lands, including Mishra’s Foundry, Feldon, Play with Fire and Falkenrath Pit Fighter – a card that can deal a lot of damage if it’s not stopped by a blocker. I kept it because going to five feels almost like giving up. Laplasjan obviously punished me hard for that keep and started with turn two Spirited Companion. My whole aggression stopped and instead of playing a turn two Feldon, I was forced to kill the blocker and hope they won’t have more creatures nor removal spells moving forward. Wojtek played The Restoration of Eiganjo into Serra Paragon into more creatures, and I couldn’t do much. I’m curious if the game could be won if I was on the play.
Game two went according to the plan. Kumano into a two drop, followed by even more aggression was enough to create a snowballing advantage. Laplasjan also got unlucky because he drew a lot of lands when any of his three or four drops would have stopped my aggro.
In game three I was forced to mulligan once again, but I had a nice curve: three creatures on the first three turns and Raiju. Sadly, Laplasjan also got a good draw with The Wandering Emperor into Depopulate. I lost all my resources and he still had a lot of gas, so the defeat was inevitable. Tough beats, now I had to win the next round.
1-2, 9-4 in the tournament
Round 14 – Carlos Sousa, Grixis
This was the culmination of the weekend. The winner goes to the Pro Tour, the loser is out of contention. I got paired against Grixis, so it was a good start. I won the die roll, so I felt quite confident moving forward. I kept a hand: two Mountains, Kumano, Adversary, two Feldons and Raiju. It wasn’t the best hand ever, but on the play against Grixis it should be enough to win. The problem was my draws: the first two cards I saw were two additional Raijus. My opponent had a reasonable start with two mana removal spells and Corpse Appraisers. I killed the first one, but the second one stopped my aggression. I decided to attack with a 3/3 Feldon, so I could find a land. I didn’t – the trigger yielded Monastery Swiftspear, Furnace Punisher and Strangle. I chose the greedy approach and went for Punisher for some reason, thinking that I’ll definitely draw a land. I obviously didn’t, and saw Pit Fighter instead. Then the opponent played Sheoldred and passed. I drew Play with Fire and was one damage short of finishing the game – or maybe I should say one decision short, because Monastery Swiftspear instead of Furnace Punisher from Feldon would have been enough. I decided to not lose my board, played more conservatively and I was unable to deal final points of damage.
Game two went very smoothly, at least for me – Carlos got stuck on two lands and I could do wherever I wanted. I had a triple Kumano draw, so even a topdecked land into Brotherhood’s End wouldn’t be the end of the world for me.
Before we started game three, I was quite nervous – being on a draw in your match for the Pro Tour is not where I wanted to be. Luckily for me, the opponent had some problems with mana again and I had a great opening: Monastery Swiftspear into Adversary into Chandra into Koth. My planeswalker package carried the game hard and never let Carlos come close to winning – I was drawing two cards per turn, had pressure, and Koth was ready to kill whatever they played, so the opponent couldn’t catch up and stabilise with their draw engine.
2-1, 10-4 in the tournament.
Round 15 – Antoine Lagarde, Grixis
ID
Finishing with a 10-4-1 record was enough for 21st place in the tournament, 1200$ and an invite for the upcoming Pro Tour in Minneapolis. Coming back to the Pro Tour was my goal for this tournament and I did it. I also wanted to point out that most of the writers for Mystical Teachings who were in Napoli (four out of five to be exact) ended up qualifying for the Pro Tour as well:
- 8th place: Wojciech Radosz “Laplasjan”
- 9th place: Wojciech Kowalczuk “Xerk”
- 21st place: myself
- 31st place: ArchaeusDota (played Esper Legends)
The results speak for themselves. I’m glad that this website can truly be a hub for high-level Magic content and players creating it are competent players who really know what they are doing.
Mono Red moving forward
If you are a Mono Red fan, I have bad news for you – a deck didn’t perform that well during the second week of RCs. If you want to read my analysis of it, check out my first article on the deck and on how I was preparing for the event.
As per usual, Frank Karsten posted combined results from four Regional Championships that took place in week two.
Compared to week one, Mono Red fell from 55.4% win rate to 49.3%. It was expected since the deck got a target on its back and every archetype got tools to combat it. But it’s not the worst part for Red – much scarier is what else got better. Esper Legends went from an already good 55% to an insane 60.9% – in my opinion, it’s clearly a deck to beat. Another deck that got better and it’s a challenging matchup for Red is Mono White midrange – a jump from 47 to 50.3%. So unless you want to play maindeck Obliterating Bolt (who knows, maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds?), I would not recommend playing Red moving forward. Furnace Punisher was good for the RC I played, but I doubt it will be good enough against the sea of Espers. Still, the deck has potential and there’s a new set – March of the Machines – releasing in near future, so who knows how the metagame will evolve?
After my good RC showing, I have to play even more Standard. Some of you would think that I, a combo specialist, suffer when playing something that looks more than a ‘real’ Magic, not solitaire. That’s not the case however – it’s a somewhat new world for me, but my results show that I’m good at playing regular games of Magic. It’s also quite enjoyable – in my opinion Standard is in a good place. I would obviously make a few changes, for example, make midrange decks a bit worse and aggro a bit better, and maybe add an interesting combo deck to the mix, to punish midrange players for going over the top of each other. Overall, I liked playing regular games of Magic and I’m looking forward to doing it again. I still don’t see myself playing and enjoying midrange mirrors, but maybe this Pro Tour will change my perspective on the topic. For now, I know that my goal for PT preparation will be to find a good proactive deck and tune it for the expected metagame. I hope it will be good enough to carry me like Furnace Punisher did at a Regional Championship.
