Skip to main content Download External Link Facebook Facebook Twitter Instagram Twitch Youtube Youtube Discord Left Arrow Right Arrow Search Lock Wreath icon-no-eye caret-down Add to Calendar download Arena copyText Info Close
Magic: the Gathering | Esports Magic.gg Logo
Magic: the Gathering | Esports Magic.gg Logo
PLAY ARENA NOW

Roy's Red Deck Cancels Cauldron's Weekend

September 01, 2025
Corbin Hosler

With Edge of Eternities came Standard rotation, and with rotation came Magic Spotlight: Planetary Rotation. More than 650 players traveled to sunny Orlando, Florida, to play competitive Magic for invitations to the Pro Tour, and all of them knew what the weekend would look like.

More on that later, because as important as the Standard main event at the Spotlight Series is, it's not the only thing happening. Open-field events like the Spotlight Series give entire groups of friends, teammates, and LGS acquaintances an excuse to go on a Magic adventure together—one that might just end with a Pro Tour invite.


That's the story of Brennan Roy, the Magic Spotlight: Planetary Rotation champion. He traveled with friends from his hometown in Louisiana and lived out the storybook Magic experience. He spent the day before the tournament enjoying the camaraderie that comes with a Magic road trip, was paired against one of his friends deep in the tournament, and ended up making the Top 8 of the tournament with that friend before winning it all.

Roy wasn't the only one who traveled with a group of friends. A contingent of Japanese players, including four-time Top Finisher Riku Kumagai, made the trek to Florida. Players like Lucas Fernandes came from Brazil, and while some have made this trip before, it was Fernandes's first time without his parents on an international Magic trip, and an unforgettable one. Even old-school fan-favorite Antonino De Rosa was in attendance, having spent the previous fortnight learning all he could about Standard and parlaying that into a Top 50 appearance.

Whether players are arriving from across the world, across the country, or even just across town, one of the biggest draws of the anyone-can-enter Spotlight Series is that, well, anyone can enter—and that means there's a lot of friends traveling and playing together.

And once the tournament started, all bets were off. You could play against anyone, whether that's former World Champion Nathan Steuer, Hall of Famer Edel, inaugural Magic Spotlight winner Nick Odenheimer, or one of your favorite content creators. The simplest way to put it is that you could wander in from your LGS and play against Reid Duke a few hours later, but in this case, you couldn't—Duke commentated at the event.

Of course, at the heart of the Spotlight Series was the main event, and at the heart of the event was the heart of Standard: Izzet Cauldron.

Day One: Standard Showcase

Vivi Ornitier
Agatha's Soul Cauldron

These two cards represent the face of Standard. The Izzet Cauldron deck first showed up at Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ in the hands of Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, where it put up a very healthy winning percentage. Since a wave of bans and rotations shook things up, the metagame has settled with red and blue cards again resting decidedly on top.

That much was clear following the conclusion of Arena Championship 9 last month, where roughly half the field was on the breakout Cauldron combo deck. In a nutshell, Vivi Ornitier's ability has the potential to generate a ton of mana if you can grow its power large enough. Or, rather than growing Vivi Ornitier's power, you can simply exile a Vivi Ornitier with Agatha's Soul Cauldron to give every creature with a counter you control Vivi Ornitier's activated ability.

This results in an intense combo turn that lets the Izzet player draw heaps of cards with Winternight Stories, ending with a massive attack from Proft's Eidetic Memory, or simply with enough Vivi Ornitier pings to win. To support that, the deck plays the best draw spells and cheap interaction in the format, including Into the Flood Maw. The resulting deck defies traditional labels, but the combo finish that can come as early as turn three puts the list over the top.

Still, the Day One metagame in Orlando reflected how many directions players were, and are, still exploring in the format.

Cauldron Combo lapped the field as expected, but a whopping 23% of the field came armed with archetypes played by less than seven players. And while, as expected, most of these experiments failed to break through, several players found success with other decks. At the start of Day One, there looked to be three tiers of decks:

  • Izzet Cauldron
  • The other top decks (Azorius Control, Dimir Midrange, and Mono-Red Aggro)
  • Anything else

But after the first few rounds, players started to notice that a powerful legendary creature was taking down the field. Not Vivi Ornitier, but Yuna, Hope of Spira.

Yuna, Hope of Spira

Bill Lightcap employed this green-white legend to great success early, bringing back cards like Overlord of the Boilerbilges or Overlord of the Mistmoors. Like many three- or two-color decks, Starting Town was a key piece of a tricky mana base.

You can find all the Standard Spotlight decklists here.

Elsewhere, Simic Omniscience was one of the sleeper decks that performed well. Players across archetypes explored the uses of Station lands added with Edge of Eternities, tapping cards like Kona, Rescue Beastie to dump some obnoxious things into play like Summon: Bahamut or some other nightmare. Ever seen Valgavoth, Terror Eater hit the field out of a Selesnya deck? Well, there was some of that in Orlando.

Gruul Landfall took the father-daughter combo of Adam and Dana Fischer to Day Two finishes. This was more than just one of the event's coolest decks but one of the coolest stories. Dana has famously played Magic since she was a small child, but several years ago, she stopped needing assistance with the cards. That allowed Adam Fischer—a player with a competitive streak stretching back decades—to play competitively again, this time alongside his daughter. They often play the same deck so they can help each other prepare, and they went a combined 18-11-1 at the Spotlight Series with Tifa Lockhart and Mossborn Hydra.

"I was playing this before rotation and was doing well; green combo also fits my playstyle," explained Dana Fischer. "During the Magic camp we did over the summer, I was playing with the Landfall deck and decided I don't care how good it is, I have to play it in Standard. So I stuck with it and made the Top 8 at two RCQs in a row."

The Fischers felt good about their matchup against anything that wasn't Omniscience (they did well against Cauldron all weekend), and their strong results at this tournament could be a preview of what's to come for the duo.

Cauldron Combos Out

As ambitious as Day One was, when Sunday morning rolled around and the field cut down to 159 players, the headline was clear:


Everyone knew Cauldron was the deck to beat—and not very many people beat Cauldron on Day One. With the deck's dominance not overstated, the field narrowed to those ready for a plan for the mirror, or a plan to beat it—which mostly involved playing Mono-Red.

"The mirrors can be really fun," explained Nicole Tipple. "Some games, one player stumbles and the other just combos them, but the games that don't go that way are some of the better back-and-forth games I've played recently; it's been a fun tournament."

The result of all that back-and-forth? The best players inevitably rose to the top, and while Cauldron players worked through their own various sideboard plans, one Mono-Red player took a key late-round match with a forgotten Duskmourn: House of Horror common.

When the dust settled on fifteen rounds of Standard play, Brennan Roy and his Mono-Red Aggro list stood atop the bracket. The rest of the field consisted almost entirely of Izzet Cauldron players; Marco Cammilluzzi also made the Top 8 with Mono-Red. And since those two would square off in the quarterfinals, the storyline was clear: could the hottest of the Mono-Red players burn out the Cauldron players?


Roy emerged from that mirror, and after weeks of vigorous testing on Magic Online and MTG Arena, he was ready. In fact, he was more than ready—he didn't drop a game as he defeated Josh Moscoe and Jack Potter on his way to winning the trophy and the title of Magic Spotlight: Planetary Rotation champion.

With his run through a Top 8 that included friend and fellow bayou native Jody Keith, Brennan burned his way through Izzet Cauldron all weekend en route to the title.


3 Lightning Strike 4 Razorkin Needlehead 4 Burnout Bashtronaut 4 Emberheart Challenger 1 Abrade 4 Burst Lightning 18 Mountain 4 Rockface Village 3 Scorching Shot 4 Hired Claw 2 Soulstone Sanctuary 2 Sunspine Lynx 3 Nova Hellkite 4 Screaming Nemesis 3 Obliterating Bolt 2 Chandra, Spark Hunter 1 Abrade 1 Nova Hellkite 2 Vengeful Possession 2 Magebane Lizard 2 Sunspine Lynx 2 Fire Magic

"I never thought I would be here," he said, awestruck in the moments after the finals. "It's unreal. I've been grinding hard, but I haven't had any huge finishes. I've been one of the few people working hard on Mono-Red, and I believed more in myself this time around. It's very good to have it pay off. I'm queued for the next Regional Championship, and I can't wait to start testing for the Pro Tour."

Congratulations to Brennan Roy, who won Magic Spotlight: Planetary Rotation with Mono-Red Aggro!

Share Article