I expected an increase in attendance for the Saturday tournaments with the Wizard’s special Magic: the Gathering Saturday Showdown event and I was not disappointed. The first wave gathered around 16 participants, which was just one player short for a five-round of Swiss.

I was the head TO this time as Rei went to Manila to attend a family gathering. I required the players to print their decklists. This is because I wanted to show my friend Asai who was a mentee for the Judge mentorship program how the deck checking works in competitive events like what I’ve practiced at the WMCQ.

As for the Standard metagame, it was the same Tier 1 deck archetypes that the players: UW Flash, BG Delirium, RW Vehicles and the like. Based on the decklists, the metagame breakdown was as follows:

6 BG Delirium
2 RW Vehicles
1 Esper Control
1 UR Colossus
1 RG Energy
1 UB Control
1 UW Flash
1 Jeskai Control
1 UR Dynavolt
1 BR Aggro

The most dominant deck and I should say a play-safe one was BG Delirium and no surprise that after 4 rounds, 3 copies of the deck finished in the Top 4. The other deck that made it was Jeskai Control.

The deck checking went well and I was able to demonstrate it to Asai, along with the time extensions given to the players selected. I might have her to assist again in the future big tourneys in the community.

Here are the pictures I took during the course of the event: