We were finally able to push it through. It happened. The first Magic: the Gathering Iloilo community Pioneer tournament was held yesterday at Pro Reis Place, Iloilo City. We scheduled it at 1:30 pm and about fourteen players arrived in battle with top tier deck archetypes in the format. It was more than the number that we tallied in our group chat were we listed around 10 ten players only that are sure to join this tournament. We only announced on the prizes to be regular Theros Beyond Death boosters and one foil promo pack.

In our card pool, we already had four ready-to-play decks thanks to my teammate Ace for taking the time to build them. He opted to play Sultai Control while Oliver piloted Dimir Inverter Combo. I wanted to take it easy since I did not playtest so I went with Mono-Red Aggro.

After four rounds of gameplay, we have the following players in the top rankings.

First, Christian – Bant Spirits
Second, Mark T – Lotus Breach
Third, Rico – Mono-Green Stompy
Fourth, Oliver – Dimir Inverter
Fifth, Ace – Sultai Control
Sixth, Mark Ian – Mono-Red Aggro

My record: 2-2. I lost the last round to the Green stompy deck with a critical misplay on Game 3. What happened is I allowed his two 4/4 creatures as I was confident of my first striker Goblin Chainwhirler combined with a burn spell. He then top-decked Ghalta and the total of power of his creatures plus his lands was exactly enough to cast it. Anyhow, I needed to take note of those soon as we already identified the current local metagame.

Overall, the event was a success and we are hoping to hold another tournament again this March just before the big event in Bacolod. Just to prepare the players going there and increase their game knowledge of the decks and metagame.

Here are some pics during the course of their games.

That is a wrap for now. Until the next blog post.