“The Gathering” part of Magic has officially returned here at RIW Hobbies & Game! One way we’ve sought to foster weekly play is through the establishment of monthly leagues for weekly events which started out in October. Essentially, beginning in the first week of October we tracked each player’s weekly progress throughout the month and the two top point earners played-off in a League Championship Match live on Twitch.
First prize for the League was the choice of free entry to all the weekly Pauper League events in November or free entry into the RIW Hobbies Pauper 1K on November 12th and their name and deck immortalized on the League plaque.
It was a fun month of Pauper play here at the store. We averaged between 15 and 22 players each week who came out to duel Pauper on the tabletops. Our attendance has also been trending up each week as more people learn about the event which is a great sign of the ‘Paupularity” of the format with players and fans.
In the studio, we also observed a ton of diversity of archetypes and a dynamically evolving metagame here at RIW Hobbies as the month, and league unfolded.
I would describe the meta as particularly aggressive with decks like Affinity and various flavors of Kiln Fiend setting the pace. We saw a lot of aggro decks on camera over the course of the month, specifically red based aggro.
Brad Tinney also sat atop the leaderboard for the first three weeks playing a Mono Black Aggro deck to consistently positive finishes. Brad’s deck was based upon a list a player from Denver had run the table with the month before, dubbed Mono Black Burn.
Week two we had a short-lived Boggles Hexproof invasion (led by yours truly, who went 2-1 and defeated League Leader Brad!) with four copies of the deck in the field. The Boggles then went back into hiding.
Black and Red Aggro consistently sat at the top of the pack throughout the weeks, with decks like Affinity and Jund Cascade also making consistently strong showings in the event.
While Affinity and Jund did post 3-0 runs in more than half of the weeks of League play, the archetype seemed to struggle to overcome the frantic pace and clock of the popular red decks which were consistently atop the leaderboard.
Going into the last week of play we had a four player race for the Championship game: Brad Tinney, Monroe Stephens, David Polzin, and Ryan Piel.
Ultimately, Brad was able to expand upon his lead and qualify for the Championship match by switching things up, audibling to Mono Blue Faeries, and going undefeated into the Championship Match.
David Polzin, playing the powerful Kuldotha Red deck was able to squeak in on tie-breakers past Ryan Piel.
David and Brad had faced off in the Swiss with Brad taking a close three game match, but it went the other way in the League Championship match with David’s well tuned Kuldotha list defeating Brad’s Fae to claim the title.
CONGRATULATIONS DAVID POLZIN, RIW HOBBIES OCTOBER 2022 LEAGUE CHAMPION!!!
