The three Modern decks I own in paper are Boros Energy, Domain Zoo and Dimir Murktide, so I figured I would just play one of these three decks. I quickly ruled out Dimir Murktide as it seemed I’d need to have deep format knowledge to play the deck adequately, and I was high on Boros as my teammate Mogged had won the MOCS Showcase a few weeks prior with the deck and believed that the deck was still good, and he could help me a bit with piloting the deck.

On Monday, I made a last ditch effort to try Domain Zoo as it was the other deck I owned the cards for. I went 4-1 in a league, and beat Temur Breach along the way. However, in my match against Breach, even though I won, sitting on the other side it was just clear that my opponent’s deck was ridiculously good, and I would be making a massive mistake not to play it.

What convinced me was that my opponent played quite poorly in the match and was still very close to winning, and I realized that Breach was so powerful that even if I play it poorly due to lack of experience and practice time, it would still be better than any other option I had, especially as I didn’t have experience with any deck, so I was going to likely play any deck at a beginner level.

In the evening, Oscar, William and I sat down to finalize our list before the 6pm decklist submission. We agreed on almost everything.

We still liked Alex’s list a lot from the European Regional Championships a few weeks prior, but we made some key changes like adding a second Soul-Guide Lantern as the mirror was a lot bigger now, and we swapped the manabase around so we had thirteen untapped blue sources on turn one and added a basic Mountain to hedge against White Orchid Phantom.

Adding the basic Mountain meant that we could swap Hedge Maze for Commercial District, as we still had two untapped red lands we could fetch.

There was a massive cyclone in Queensland, which meant that many players couldn’t make the Regional Championships as all of the flights were grounded. This included two of our teammates, who had to cancel their trip last minute. This meant that the event was only 154 players – generally for a Modern one it would be over 200 players.

In the first round, I got paired against an Eldrazi Breach deck that was based around Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine. I had never seen the card before, and had to re-read it about three times to figure out what it did. In the first game, he won the die roll and cast the Yggdrasil on turn two, flipping over an Ulamog, the Defiler, which he then returned on turn three.

It turns out that Ulamog, the Defiler can see cards exiled with Ugin’s Labyrinth, which happened to be another Ulamog, so he put into play a 17/17 Ulamog with haste, and I was dead. While there wasn’t much I could do about it, it did show my inexperience with the format as I didn’t know what any of his cards did. 

Shuffling up for game two, I assumed my tournament was going to be over quickly, and I mostly pondered about what I planned to do for the rest of the day.

However, game two played out how Alex told me these matchups would go post-board, which is we morph into a control deck based around Consign to Memory and trying to ultimate Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student. This is exactly what I did, and I won comfortably.

In the third game, he mulliganed on the play, and I had a good hand with Aether Spellbomb, which is just fantastic against him. I managed to eventually find Emry, Lurker of the Loch, which combined with the Spellbomb, locked him out of the game. At that moment, I was extremely grateful about not cutting the Spellbomb. 

Over the next three rounds, I played against three mirror matches and didn’t drop a game.

I felt that my testing session the day before with Oscar paid off a lot here, but also as mentioned before, I felt comfortable playing the mirror match because it felt a lot like Living End mirrors from back in the day. My gut instinct is that my opponents generally went for the combo too aggressively, especially post-board, as there’s a lot more interaction to stop them. Often on these turns they would force the combo too hard and spend most of their resources and tap out just to fizzle, which then meant I could untap, and it was pretty trivial for me to go off at that point.

In round five, I got paired against Mono Blue Belcher in the feature match, which you can watch here.

I didn’t know any of the cards in his deck, so I had to read them before the match, which you can see in the video, and this took a long time since many of his cards were double-sided (although I was kind of dumb here, as I should have figured out that the back was always a land).

At some point the judge came over while I was still reading the cards and said that the decklist review time was now over, and so I didn’t actually get a chance to look at his list properly and completely missed that he had Spell Snare in his deck, and I ended up walking right into one in game one. Thankfully, it was fine as I expected him to have some counter spell anyway, and I had a Shifting Woodland in play, so I just needed an Underworld Breach to land in the graveyard. I was able to combo off the following turn.

In the second game, similar to my first round against the Eldrazi Breach deck, I played a control game with Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and ultimate’d her to win the game. I actually didn’t resolve an Underworld Breach, but simply milled myself enough with Grinding Station to cast a Thassa’s Oracle from my hand with a bunch of counterspells to back it up. 

On his turn he cast a Malevolent Rumble and sacrificed an artifact to Grinding Station but still failed to find the Underworld Breach. He was then forced to cast another Rumble, which did find a Breach, but now he didn’t have enough mana to win that turn, so he had to pass back to me and hope I didn’t have another Breach as he could win the following turn.

Fortunately for me, I did in fact have another Underworld Breach in hand already, and he didn’t have a counter spell. Just like that, I was back on the Pro Tour! 

In the second game, I kept a risky hand on the draw where Urza’s Saga was my only land and I had a Mishra’s Bauble and a Mox Opal without a third artifact, but I did have Spell Pierce, Spell Snare and an Underworld Breach in it as well so I kept it.

I immediately drew a Mox Amber so I could turn on my Mox Opal, and I got to Spell Snare his Psychic Frog. The following turn, I drew a land and played it, and then was able to Spell Pierce his Stony Silence. From there I made a Construct token, then fetched a Pithing Needle with the third chapter of Saga to name the Relic of Progenitus he had in play.

After that, the game became very grindy, as I drew a few more Sagas and was able to make some Constructs, but he had a Psychic Frog that he could give flying and so was drawing two cards per turn.

However, at some point he could no longer attack with the Frog as my Constructs were pressuring him too much. Eventually I was able to out grind him as he had to spend his resources to manage the tokens, and I went for the combo in a spot where he just had one card in hand, and thankfully it wasn’t a counter spell. Just like that, I had gotten through the matchup I was most worried about in the Top 8, and was now just two wins away from qualifying for the World Championships again!

In the semifinals, I got paired against Hollow One in the feature match, which you can watch here. This was another deck where I didn’t know many of his cards, so I had to read through them prior to the match.

In the first game, the Detective’s Phoenix was brutal, as I thought I had the ground locked up with my big Construct tokens, but the 7/7 flying creature was too difficult to answer. I actually messed up here, as I thought you could only bestow the Phoenix from the graveyard, and so I think I had a window to crack my Soul-Guide Lantern to prevent him from bestowing it from hand but had missed it.

In the second game, I made another massive mistake due to my unfamiliarity, this time with my own cards.

I fetched a Haywire Mite with the third chapter of Urza’s Saga, completely forgetting that it couldn’t exile creatures.

So my plan was to chump block one of his Hollow Ones, then sacrifice the Mite to exile the Detective’s Phoenix (which wouldn’t be able to come back). Obviously, this line didn’t work as it was quickly pointed out that Mite can’t exile creatures, and then I lost easily from there. I should have instead got Aether Spellbomb with the Saga, though with what my opponent had in hand, I think I would have lost the game anyway.

I would have loved to compete in the World Championships again, and I thought I would be gutted falling just short of another invite, but honestly I was just delighted to have qualified for another Pro Tour!

This time a week ago, I was busy getting destroyed with Boros Energy against Temur Breach and didn’t know what most of the top decks in the format did, but here I was now finishing in third place after playing just one league and about twenty games before the event! I couldn’t be anything but grateful and felt extremely fortunate by just how lucky I had gotten all weekend. 

The next Pro Tour is in Las Vegas in June, and I am very excited to work with Worldly Counsel again for it!

However, before that, there is going to be another Regional Championships in May, and both events are going to be Standard. I plan to take a break from Magic for the next month or so as it’s been very full on since mid-December, but after that, I’ll be right back into the thick of things! 

Till next time!

Zen Miyaji-Thorne

@mtgzen on X