RIW WEEKLY MTG TOURNAMENT REVIEW AND EVENTS
Welcome to RIW Weekly MTG Tournament Review and Events, the column where you can read about the metagames for our weekly events as well as learn about our upcoming tournaments and in-store MTG play.
8-9 WEDNESDAY NIGHT PAUPER (6PM – $5 ENTRY)
We run a Weekly Wednesday Night Pauper event every week and it’s been a lot of fun to watch the metagame grow and evolve over the past months.
3 Terror (2 Dimir and 1 Mono Blue)
Great turnout this week, seeing a wide range of decks being played. Really cool to see some unique brews as well as some new ones using the downshifted cards from Commander Masters and new printings from Lord of the Rings.
The landcyclers from LOTR continue to be really strong. They see play outside of this format but I think Pauper is where they really shine. Your options for mana fixing and deck thinning are a lot more limited in a format made up of commons.
Russo went 3-0 this week with Mono Red Kiln Fiend Hotdogs and Jason G. also put up a 3-0 with Golgari (Swamps Matter)” –Kayla
In other exciting news we finally saw the 1-Land Spy Combo deck show up on the RIW Twitch Stream (twitch.tv/riwhobbies) and do a deck tech in the hands of Nick Norman.
“This is the One Land Spy list I played Wednesday (2-0-1 Record). There are two popular Spy versions: One Land, which was popularized by Bryant Cook and is more explosive and can win on turn two (or turn one with a great hand) and Three Land which is slower but a little more consistent.
The goal is to fetch the one land out of your deck with Land Grant, Generous Ent, or Troll of Khazad-dum, then resolve a Balustrade Spy or Destroy the Evidence which mills your entire library. That same turn you also need extra mana to unearth enough Dregscape Zombies to Flashback Dread Return to return the Lotleth Giant to the battlefield, winning the game.
The deck is weak to graveyard hate and counterspells but the tons of mana it can produce lets it play around Spell Pierce and there are plenty of copies of Pyroblast in the sideboard. Ingot Chewer can also help protect against Relic of Progenitus and Nihil Spellbomb, and Haunting Misery lets you win even against Graveyard hate.
Pauper is in a great spot. The meta is wide open and every set seems to add playable cards that give existing decks something new or create entirely new archetypes., like Dread Return and All that Glitters. I’m considering playing one land spy in the upcoming 1K!”–Nick Norman.
8-17 THURSDAY NIGHT PIONEER (6PM – $5 ENTRY)
“14 Players
3 RW CONVOKE
2 FIRES OF INVENTION
9 OTHER
Large variety of decks despite there being no changes to Pioneer from the Banned List update a week ago, players are both saying that mono Green is the best deck in the format while refusing to play the deck anyways. If you caught our Round 1 Feature Match, you’d notice a spicy card from Standard past – Aetherling!
Who knows if it’s actually good enough for the format, but certainly looked powerful.
Bryan Kinnel is our 3-0 winner with UW Lotus Control.” –Gabe
Here’s a shot of Bryan’s 3-0 Brew featuring Aetherling!
Our weekly events calendar for the upcoming week:
WEDNESDAY NIGHT PAUPER (6PM)
THURSDAY NIGHT PIONEER (6PM)
FRIDAY NIGHT MAGIC (Booster Draft and Standard) (6PM)
SUNDAY COMMANDER OPEN PLAY (Noon)
And, in addition to our regular weekly events we also have a Pauper 1K coming up this Saturday! So, be sure to mark that date on your calendar for some Pauper action.
It was another exciting week of events here at the store and we look forward to seeing you all again this week!
