Player’s Championship 2 Qualifier #1 Recap
With the start of the new year, we have our very first Player’s Championship 2 Qualifier! 28 players came out to battle in the Standard format, with 4 Regional Championship invites up for grabs as well as the invite to our end of year tournament. We ended up with quite a diverse Top 8, representing basically all the different archetypes of magic! Whether you like Control, Aggro, Midrange, Combo, or Tempo, there’s a Standard deck for you. The room seemed to be full of different red aggro variants. Multiple copies of Gruul Aggro both with and without Leyline of Resonance was in the room, as well as the Mono-Red version of the deck, which may have led to the success of our first Champion Chris Brackley! Chris piloted a controlling Mono-White Tokens deck full of different ways to gain life, which can push you towards the overpowering end game of the deck. Let’s look at the cards Chris chose to enact that game plan as well as the rest of the decks in the Top 8!
Chris Brackley – Mono-White Tokens (1st)
Zachary Nauffts – Dimir Midrange (2nd)
Tim Foley – Zur Overlords (3rd-4th)
Tim Goodine – Esper Pixie (3rd-4th)
Cody Leblanc – Gruul Aggro (5th-8th)
Sam Somers – Mono-Red Aggro (5th-8th)
Patrick DeMone – Dimir Midrange (5th-8th)
Adam Joyce – Azorius Omniscience Combo (5th-8th)
No novice when it comes to winning our events, Christopher Brackley was nice enough to yet again give me some information about his winning deck!
T: Well, you know the drill at this point! So, why did you pick the Mono-White deck for this tournament?
C: I played Mono-White mostly for the tokens, such as the bunny rabbits. It also has a lot of favourable matchups against a lot of decks you tend to see at RCQs. I got lucky to dodge the slow matchups in the swiss until I faced 4c in top 8, but as long as you can play the deck fast it can do pretty well.
T: Would you consider this tokens deck to be one of the best decks in Standard right now?
C: I think it can be amongst the best decks, but it’s bogged down by it’s plan to win being so slow that it’s at risk of making matches draws. It does really well against the best decks, but against the mirror or 4c decks it struggles. Depends on the meta.
T: One more question for you! Any tips for someone looking to pick up the deck?
C: It requires a lot of dexterity to play it, so if you can practice with it and play fast, keep track of triggers, play fast, know the sequences, understand how to win in certain matchups, and pay fast, then you can do well with it. It’s just a little bit to get over the learning hump.
The key to winning with a grindy, attrition strategy: Play Fast! But if you want to end the game fast, maybe even all in one turn, you might want to pay attention to another one of our Top 8 lists. A less established deck also made it into the Top 8 after the Swiss was said and done. In the hands of Adam Joyce, we see an Azorius Omniscience Combo deck! If you’re anything like me, you had to read half of the cards in this deck and had no idea how it wins, so I caught up with HFXGames mainstay Adam Joyce to teach us how this crazy deck wins.
T: Okay, you’re going to have to explain to me how this deck does it’s thing and wins the game because I can’t put it together.
A: The easiest way to explain is you need Omniscience in the yard and a copy of Abuelo’s Awakening to reanimate it as a 1/1. Cast Invasion of Arcavios to get Season of Weaving from the sideboard and then cast it making a token copy of Omniscience and bouncing all nonland permanents to owner’s hands. This makes a token of Omniscience and brings Invasion back to your hand. Then cast Invasion again and grab Unnerving Grasp from the sideboard and bounce Invasion again and make a 2/2 manifest. You then can make infinite 2/2s with Invasion getting Season back from yard over and over.
T: SHEESH. So, Season of Weaving starts copying the manifest token to make infinite 2/2s. So what made you want to play this crazy combo deck?
A: I’ve thought it looked cool since I originally saw it and have been playing it on Arena with good results.
T: That’s awesome! What matchups do you think are slam dunks? And what matchups do you think are unfavourable?
A: I want to play vs all the midrange decks, GB, Zur, White Mid. Dimir little harder but still not bad match. Esper Pixie is a bad match, they have so much interaction.
It’s fantastic to see so many players out playing Standard again! The format seems to have returned to it’s former glory! So many viable options in multiple archetypes, and room to brew! Congratulations to Chris on becoming our first Qualifier Winner of 2025 and to the rest of our Top 8! We’ll see you again for our 2nd Player’s Championship Qualifier on February 1st where we’ll be battling it out in Modern!
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Written By: Travis Benedict Pro Tour Competitor, Cat Lover |
