More than 200 players qualified for the Kaldheim Championship, and they arrived ready to battle it out on Day One with seven rounds of Standard and Historic play. Both formats featured surprises and, unsurprisingly, big Emergent Ultimatum-fueled moments.

When the dust cleared, two players stood out above the rest. Arne Huschenbeth led the field with the breakout Historic deck of the weekend in Orzhov Auras, but Andrew Cuneo wasn't to be outdone as he put on a show to finish Day 1 a perfect 7-0.

Arne Huschenbeth

Andrew Cundeo

Opposite Approaches to the Top

Let's start with Huschenbeth. The German is a veteran of the Grand Prix circuit and amassed seven Top 8s there, then added his first career Top Finish at Players Tour Online 4 last year.

He came with Dimir Rogues in Standard, which he felt had a strong matchup against the popular Sultai Ultimatum ramp deck and other slow decks, at the cost of not matching up as well with the aggressive decks in the format.

"I was expecting less Mono-Red and Cycling because those decks have not performed well lately," he explained. "Sultai would have been my second choice in Standard, but I didn't want to coinflip the mirrors, so I ended up playing Rogues beating Sultai twice today. And Rogues was nice because it did not have a target on its head."

That allowed Huschenbeth to get off to a strong 3-0 Standard start, but it was his excellence in Historic that truly paved the way. The Orzhov Auras deck was the upstart Historic pick of the weekend, especially in a field dominated by Jund Sacrifice decks.

"Auras is amazing, proactive and resilient," he gushed. "Me and my team, especially Johnny Guttman, worked on it a lot. We figured a way out to have 50/50 against Jund Food and we are basically preying on all the other decks that are tuning their 75 to beat Jund Food."

His undefeated run even included a Round 5 match where he had control of the game but was forced to draw through his entire deck to beat his Bant Ramp opponent's lone Platinum Angel. But in the end, he knocked off all challengers and now finds himself needing just five wins on Day Two to lock up the Top 8.

Where Huschenbeth chose to attack, Andrew Cuneo did what he's always done best: control the game. While he's struggled in the Magic Pro League this season, now fighting his way out from the back of pack, he was firing on all cylinders on Friday. Perhaps he described his playstyle the best: "Inexplicable yet intractably tedious." Which is a good thing (we think). It certainly was on Day One as he was the only player piloting Dimir Control and rode his Torrential Gearhulks to victory—plus a well-timed Thought Distortion or two.

All Eyes on Sultai

The Magic world is soon to move on to the university at Strixhaven: School of Mages, but the current format wasn't quite done. It's Emergent Ultimatum's world, and the rest of us are living in it.

When there are powerful cards to ramp to, players will find a way to do just that. And there's nothing better to ramp to than Emergent Ultimatum, which allows for a devastating combination of spells and extra turns to follow. It often ended games on the spot with pure power.

Of course, the field did their best to prepare, and players found success with decks like Dimir Rogues.

"The meta has been shifting toward beating Sultai since the last League Weekend," explained 2020 Season Grand Final champion and Rivals League member Austin Bursavich, who brought Dimir Rogues. "Mono-Red did really badly at the last League Weekend. It's been picking back up [and] I was surprised to see it as the third most-played deck, but the matchup isn't that bad. Red and Cycling decks were the hardest matchups for rogues, but I'm happy to play against Sultai."

One of the Kaldheim additions that have made aggressive decks viable is Faceless Haven, which completely changes the ways opponents are forced to interact with an aggro deck.

Faceless Haven

Going for an Adventure

After three rounds of Standard on Friday, here's how the 26 undefeated decks shook out:

A small sample size to be sure, but all the focus on Sultai seems to have paid off for testing teams. Temur Adventures was by far the most successful of the bunch, and competitors piloting the deck included Luis Scott-Vargas, Chris Kvartek, and both former World Champions Javier Dominguez and Shahar Shenhar.

Players will return for four more rounds of Standard Saturday. With the Sunday Top 8 being played out in Standard as well, all eyes will be on how the top decks match up.

A Check-In on a Refreshed Historic Format

Historic has become a fan favorite format since its arrival on MTG Arena, with its unique card pool and variety of styles, with 80-card Yorion, Sky Nomad piles just as likely to find success as convoluted Sacrifice decks, grindy Azorius Control decks, or even tribal Goblins and, now, Elves.

Jund Sacrifice was the talk of the tournament before play began, but anyone who didn't come armed with Witch's Ovens came with a plan to combat the deck.

"We knew a month ago that Jund would be the best deck," Bursavich explained after going undefeated in Historic en route to his 6-1 finish. "And the field turned out mostly as expected. I couldn't make [Azorius] Control beat Jund while beating everything else, so we looked elsewhere."

Like much of the field, Bursavich's team ended up on Orzhov Auras, vaguely ported from Ken Yukuhiro's breakout Pioneer deck of Players Tour Nagoya, which put multiple players toward the top of the standings even in a diverse Historic metagame that saw rogue decks like Cuneo's Dimir Control rise to the top.

"We got our deck to where we think it beats Jund [Sacrifice] 55-60% of the time," Bursavich added," but the real benefit is that Auras crushes the random decks in general."

Another deck on the rise was Cycling, with Zenith Flare as the finisher. A solid deck in Standard, the Historic version of the deck is even more explosive than its Standard counterpart.

"Javier was the first one to start working on this deck, and it ended up being what five [of] us on the team chose. It's really good," explained Rivals League member Luis Salvatto. "I think the best cards in the deck—and it's hard to realize this—[are] the cycle lands. In Standard, this deck gets stopped due to the lands, but eight extra cycle lands and Hollow One is pretty good."

Another standout performance came from Rivals League member Mike Sigrist, whose Niv-Mizzet Reborn Historic deck regularly took the train "to valuetown and back" by casting its namesake card on turn five.

It led to the match of the day in Round 5, when Sigrist and Pro Tour Fate Reforged champion Antonio Del Moral León squared off in a battle of powerful midrange decks. Both players were undefeated at the time, and the back-and-forth three-game match was one of the best seen today.

Looking Ahead

When coverage resumes on Saturday, March 27 at 9 a.m. PT Saturday, Cuneo and Huschenbeth will have the inside track to the Top 8: they stand just five matches away from the 12-win Top 8 threshold. Just behind them include World Champions, Players of the Year, incredible challengers and the best MPL and Rivals League members.

We'll see who makes Top 8 then!