I am trying to recap the Iloilo metagame from last weekend and here it goes. The recent tournament results in the Magic: the Gathering community in Iloilo showed the domination of Selesnya Aggro deck in the field of the usual Devotion decks. I piloted a similar deck myself on FNM but failed miserably to bad matchups.

Friday’s FNM tournament saw a variation of decks, wherein the players are testing their play styles in certain deck archetypes. The recent Esper Midrange from GP Shizouka is still showing as a powerhouse deck with a finish in the top 4. Here are the top finishers:

Friday Night Magic (January 10, 2014)
Top 4:
1st, Emerson (Selesnya Aggro)
2nd, Herbert (Boros Aggro)
3rd, Ericson (Esper Midrange)
4th, Justine (Devotion to Black)

12 players, 4 rounds gameplay

Saturday Standard was for the Prerelease Pass for Born of the Gods and 18 players showed up to battle. That means five rounds of gameplay. The field flooded with Devotion to Black decks, a few of which splashed Green for Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm and the beater Reaper of the Wilds. It was the people’s deck of choice for that day. Red based creature decks led the aggressive archetypes.

After five rounds was a cut to the top 4 & followed with single elimination playoffs to determine the winner. The top 4 decks are: Selesnya Aggro, two Devotion to Black, and a Devotion to Blue. The finalists were the two non-Black decks wherein they just split the prize. Both decks won their matchups in three games, with an action packed third game.

Here are the final top four of that tournament:

Saturday PR Pass Tournament (January 11, 2014)
Top 4:
1st, Emerson (Selesnya Aggro)
2nd, Rei (Mono Blue Devotion)
3rd, Tonton (Mono Black Devotion)
4th, Oliver (Mono Black Devotion)

18 players, 5 rounds gameplay

The rest of the top 8 (numbers 5th-8th) decks were Devotion to Green, RG Monsters, Devotion to Naya and Orzhov Control.

To conclude, the weekend’s results still show the Iloilo players’ love for Devotion based deck strategy whereas it looked like a shift from Blue White Control decks in the previous weeks. This trend will probably continue in the next two weeks prior to Born of the Gods prerelease.

Thanks for reading and until next post.