The Cub has been caged.

That's the headline coming out of Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed after two days of competition. The much-feared Badgermole Cub, which led the way in deck submission, fell flat against a handful of decks designed specifically to dethrone it. Along the way, we were treated to five more incredible rounds of Magic on the way to a diverse Top 8 that's now set to return to the Sunday stage to settle things for the title and trophy.

The first Pro Tour of 2026 brought high expectations. With a recently refreshed Standard format that has seen significant churn since even Magic World Championship 31 last month, more than 300 players turned up through the snow to Richmond, Virginia for three days of competition. And after two days, sixteen rounds, and hundreds of high-leverage Standard games later, a picture has emerged: this weekend belonged to the challengers of Cub.

The Top 8 contained a mix of first-time and returning Top Finishers. Here's how we got there.

The Top 8 is Set

On the weekend where Ken Yukuhiro was awarded the Kai Budde Player of the Year trophy, it was a former Player of the Year who punched the first ticket to the Top 8. Luis Salvatto earned his spot early on with a win in Round 14 over Day One's undefeated player, Marco Belacca. It comes at a fortuitous time for Salvatto, who had to miss a last Pro Tour in 2025 and was looking for at least eight wins to secure invitations for the year.

But after a 5-1 draft record and a pristine 7-1 Standard record with the out-of-left field Dimir Excruciator deck, Salvatto no longer has to worry about stringing together invites—his Top 8 appearance here sets him up for every Pro Tour for the rest of the year.

A massive roar from the crowd accompanied Salvatto's win—and the crushing hugs from his friends on Team Cosmos Heavy Play unofficially ushered in the first Pro Tour Top 8 competitor of the year. Team Double Infinity (fittingly for their name) had a pair of captains: Hall of Fame member Willy Edel and two-time Top Finisher Francisco Sánchez, who was the second player to qualify for the Top 8.

That left things wide open for a sprint through the final two rounds, with a wide-open metagame and the rest of the Top 8 in front of the challengers. When the dust settled, here's how the final Top 8 shook out.

• Luis Salvatto (Dimir Excruciator)
• Francisco Sánchez (Izzet Lessons)
• Toni Portolan (Temur Harmonizer)
• Eduardo Sajgalik (Izzet Elementals)
• Cyprien Tron (Bant Airbending)
• Guglielmo Lupi (Five-Color Rhythm)
• Christoffer Larsen (Dimir Excruciator)
• Marco Belacca (Jeskai Control)

Seven different archetypes in the Top 8, with the only repeat being a fringe deck that no one saw coming in the snow. That's an all-timer of a Top 8 surprise, and it sets up a memorable Sunday stage.

Looking at Lorwyn Eclisped

Coming into the event, the draft format for Lorwyn Eclipsed stood out as being unlike other recents sets. Rather than ten straightforward two-color pairings, the set featured five supported kindred themes. One of those (Elementals) encouraged players to splash as many colors as possible. The result was a skill-testing draft that played out very differently from other "creature types matter" sets like Bloomburrow.

While most successful players stuck to the straight and narrow, several players broke from the mold, including Day One standout Alexey Paulot, who was proud of the five-color vivid deck he used to go undefeated in his Day One draft. There was also Top 8 qualifier Luis Salvatto, who piloted a mono-white to a 3-0 finish on Day One, along with just-crowned Player of the Year Ken Yukuhiro, who surprised everyone by piloting red-green deck to a 3-0 finish.

In the end, here's how the archetypes broke down among the 3-0 finishes in the Draft rounds:

• White-blue Merfolk: 15
• Black-green Elves: 14
• Blue-red and multicolor Elementals: 11
• Black-red Goblins: 8
• Green-white Kithkin: 7
• Other: 6

This was perhaps a bit of a surprise—Elves was known to be the most consistently powerful heading into the tournament, but the always self-correcting Draft format saw a surprisingly strong performance from the white-blue Merfolk lists. There's also an interesting dichotomy where black and white were a part of both the best and worst-performing archetypes and all in all the Lorwyn Eclipsed Draft environment challenged Pro Tour players in a way that many sets don't.

Congratulations to the four 6-0 drafters at #PTECL: Christoffer Larsen, Alexey Paulot, Ken Yukuhiro, and Stefan Schütz! If any of them have an eye on the first Limited Championship next year, they're off to a fantastic start!

See their decklists below:

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) January 31, 2026

The Draft rounds set the table for Standard, and in this tournament, the battle lines were clearly drawn coming into the event: Badgermole Cub against the world.

Cutting Down Cub

Badgermole Cub [LerH8gGFQprXZ5n6Qbelh]

Opinions before the Pro Tour kicked off were varied, to say the least. Some players felt that the Nature's Rhythm deck that broke out at the Regional Championship in Portland last week was the best deck in the format by far. Thanks in part to new addition, Wistfulness, the deck successfully dethroned Izzet Lessons over the last month, with the World Championship-dominating list falling largely by the wayside by Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed and green-based decks taking down the last several major Standard events.

Nearly half the field in Richmond registered a Badgermole Cub decklist, confident in the old adage of "play the best deck." The other half registered a deck they were confident could keep up. And the results?

Chaos. By the middle of Day Two, the Top 10 players in the tournament were piloting nine different distinct archetypes. Rhythm decks put up some all-time disappointing numbers, while on the flipside teams like The Boulder–where every single member registered the same decklist—excelled with their breakout Izzet Spellementals list that boasted a combined win rate of over 70% on Day One. Those numbers came down a bit on Saturday, but still was enough to place a number of the team's players high into the standings.

Final Boulder tally:
15/15 in day 2.
12/15 requalified.
Me personally? 10-6.

What a goddamn Pro Tour!

— Andrew Elenbogen (@Ajelenbogen) February 1, 2026

And they were far from the only team to find holes in the green decks' plans. Only seven players in the room registered Doomsday Excruciator, and two of them (Salvatto and Larsen) advanced to the Top 8. And Team Sanctum of All once again brought a rogue deck and found success, with Mightform Harvester starring alongside Icetill Explorer in the squad's Temur deck. That was enough to send Toni Portolan into the Top 8, his second career Top Finish after making it to the semifinals at Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™.

The biggest change to the texture of the format? The evoke Elementals from Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Wistfulness [bf7maGG21Ilk1tdFxrK1s]
Deceit [6DJVTbHjtUcIy6iKynro6t]
Vibrance [iM0hSuiLCndly0LE7gFlo]

The flexibility of the Elementals was key to filling in holes for nearly every deck that was lagging behind Lessons. With the improved mana bases brought by the completion of the shock land cycle in Lorwyn Eclipsed, players were free to experiment. And that they did—with some players going so far as to play Roaming Throne to double up on their Elementals' triggers. Other teams turned to Sunderflock to top their lists, and even traditional Jeskai and Dimir Control lists found success by wrathing the board this weekend.

The end result was a wildly open metagame that gave us seven different decks in the Top 8 and fifteen distinct lists in the Top 16.

Venturing into the Top 8

With that, the Top 8 is set—with a series of matchups that no one could have predicted or tested extensively for. While it may be a late Saturday night of preparation for the Top 8 members, it leads us to one of the most anticipated Sunday stages in ages. Coverage kicks off at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday, February 1! Tune in on the Play MTG YouTube channel or twitch.tv/magic.