Saturday evenings under a community quarantine status have become a Magic Arena tournament session for local MTG Iloilo players. Since the start of this weekly online Magic: the Gathering tournament, the players had already accepted this as a “new normal” kind of gameplay. Good thing that they have already invested enough cards in their respective Arena accounts so they can instantly build the Top tier Standard decks in the metagame.

As for the recent MTG Iloilo Arena tourney last Saturday, there were ten participants to battle Standard. I’ve discussed their deck choices in the video below.

You’ll notice that 4C-Omnath is still the deck to beat before the banning announcement was done last Monday. I would expect this metagame to slightly change though Ramp-type of decks is still of the Tier 1 category.

After four rounds of gameplay, we have the Top 4 finishers and they are:

Tonton – Mono Green Aggro
Ralph – Gruul Adventures
Mark T – Sultai Control
Oliver – 4C Omnath

The Omnath menace was initially stopped by Sultai and beaten by Mono Green before it can stabilize. For a local setting, this is somewhat possible. It is not the same case with major Arena tournaments with big cash prizes. Pro players would prefer to go with the popular deck rather than risk it with late brews with questionable consistency.

Congratulations to the winners!

This coming Saturday will finally have the Zendikar Rising Prerelease so the Magic Arena Standard tourney that night might be rescheduled to Sunday. I will check for updates from our local game store TO Rei.

Until the next blog post.

Last Saturday’s Magic: the Gathering Iloilo Arena weekly Standard tournament got the attendance of local players who are having this event as their training ground for major Magic Arena tournaments scheduled in the coming weeks. With Zendikar Rising legal to play, we saw a new batch of deck archetypes with new card components utilized.

Ramp type decks are probably on the Tier 1 bracket along with several decks that keep them in check. Omnath has opened a whole new level of gameplay and which can now be considered as the elephant in the room for Standard metagame.

The tournament was set at 8:00pm so as the players have their vacant time to join. Here below are the Top 4 finishers along with the decks they played:

1st, Mark T. – Sultai Control
2nd, Ace – 4-color Omnath Ramp
3rd, Ralph – RG Adventures
4th, AJ – Mutate combo

12 players, 4 rounds gameplay

Each will receive the M21 Promo packs along with the regular boosters which they can claim at Pro Rei’s place game store. Congratulations to the winners!