A few weeks ago, I wrote that anyone could win a Regional Championship.
It's more than just a sports reference—it's the state of play across the world right now as players compete in Pioneer showdowns with Pro Tour and World Championship invites on the line. That column two weeks ago turned out to be a preview of things to come: relative newcomers rising to the top of the Regional Championships. That goes for both players and their decks, as the stretch run en route to Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings has delivered surprise after surprise.
Like Modern before it, Pioneer has become a format that rewards those who are thoroughly familiar with their deck and its matchups, oftentimes giving them an edge in a wide-open format where it's simply not feasible to become familiar with the wide breadth of the metagame in a short time of testing—which means those who live and breathe a particular deck (let's say ... something like Merfolk) break through more often than not. While something like a Standard Pro Tour is likely to yield a Top 8 full of recognizable names as the pros take aim at a particular target, we've seen a lot more variation among the Pioneer events this year.
Barcelona is Modern, which hasn't been played at the Pro Tour level since 2019—and a lot has happened both in and outside of Magic since Thoralf Severin won that event with Tron. These days, it's an entirely different Karn that's terrorizing the competitive circuit, as
Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings kicks off five weeks from now, and if the results from the last several weekends of Regional Championships are any indication, competitors should start practicing with one deck, because it was the same Pioneer story across Regional Championships at LEC Athens and the Western Canada Face2Face Tour.
Let's start with Robert Anderson, and the rare deck spanning enough formats that it can reasonably be considered a lifestyle.
"I've been playing Phoenix for a while, though its positioning is very niche; I really just jam leagues," explained Robert Anderson shortly after defeating Robert Smith on Azorius Spirits. "The last Pro Tour I played was for Theros Beyond Death, but I play in RCQs when I can. I love the community; everyone is great and seeing people genuinely happy to see me win is the best feeling in the world. I'm honestly just happy to play the Pro Tour and ecstatic to play Worlds. I don't think I'm good enough to win a Pro Tour like my good friend Alex Hayne, but I'm still going to test, play tight, and do my best. I've surprised myself before."
With a background in helping to organize events for Face to Face Games, Anderson is no stranger to the tournament stage. This win is more than he ever saw for himself, even as he celebrated the Magic successes of close friends like Pro Tour Avacyn Restored champion Hayne, but now Anderson has joined the ranks of Canada's most accomplished players and will represent the country at the World Championship later this year.
It's unclear if he'll be running back the same training regimen.
"I hang out on Discord with some friends from Ontario to test—Dan MacDonald and I jam various leagues while Sammy T rides [the stair machine] and yells at us when we misplay," he recounted. "As for Phoenix, the general consensus is that Black-Red is not a great matchup which is enough to kill a deck, but it's actually not that bad if you understand it and since the Rakdos decks cut most of their graveyard hate this weekend it actually made Phoenix favored, in my opinion."
I'll bet that after reading the first half of that quote, you weren't expecting it to end with some genuine insight into the metagame. But who am I to argue with two-time GP Top 8 competitor Samuel Tharmaratnam's methods? The proof is in Anderson's dominant weekend, where he dropped just two matches out of 16 at the Regional Championship.
Next stop? Pro Tour Lord of the Rings in Barcelona, and the World Championship in Vegas in September. And he'll have an enthusiastic cheering section.
"I first met Rob in 2006, about a year after I started playing Magic. He's always been a super nice guy and a strong player, but he hasn't been fully able to dedicate himself to playing Magic, having a fairly important position working for Face to Face Games," Hayne recalled. "He is definitely one of the many people I credit in my long and continuing journey to get good at Magic and has taught me many lessons. I'm super stoked to see him qualify for the World Championship, and he won't be one of the top players there, but I consider him one of the people with a realistic chance to hoist the trophy."
Really hyped to see my buddy @randersonmtg back on the PT and going to Worlds! Used to help him test for them before I finally qed for one https://t.co/GKcWKvI4Ca
— Alexander Hayne (@InsayneHayne) June 19, 2023
From Canada to the other side of the Atlantic. Another Regional Championship, another first-time champion, and another deck enthusiast demonstrating mastery. In this case, the self-described "
"About two weeks into testing for the format, I was convinced by
"It was love at first sight. From then on, I played it everywhere and tried every single version, mixing them to find the best combination."
Gleeful Demolition
Venerated Loxodon
Reckless Bushwhacker
Look, Standard is really fun right now, and March of the Machine Limited is (as Luis Scott-Vargas put it) an all-timer in terms of quality. Pro Tour March of the Machine in Minneapolis was a lot of fun, and I'm sure champ Nathan Steuer remembers his Rakdos Midrange deck fondly. But I didn't hear a single person describe anything at that tournament as "love at first sight," and I don't think I ever will. That's the appeal of non-rotating formats like Pioneer, Modern, and Legacy, and it was that affinity for the newest
"If someone had told me on the first day of the tournament that it would end like this, I never would have believed it," he reflected. "The goal for this event and the year was to qualify for the Pro Tour. Qualifying for the World Championship is a dream. The tournament was fantastic, and I will remember it for a long time. On top of that, two of my friends also qualified for Barcelona, so we're preparing for that next! My plan is to put a lot of effort into the tournaments I'm qualified for, look for a good team to test with, and work hard to get the best result in every single one I participate in."
Time to realize that soon I have to go to Vegas, but before that, i have to thank you all my friends and my family for this huge achievement. Basically a god mode week-end, everything goes in the right way.
— Federico Vuono (@vuono_federico) June 13, 2023
Big thank you to @bb155lm for helping me to choose the deck. pic.twitter.com/iGMdaposZk
Looking Ahead
There are just two weekends of Regional Championship events left for players to join Anderson and Vuono. Japan/South Korea and Australia/New Zealand play this weekend, and things turn to Brazil and South America to wrap up the cycle the following week.
That will finalize the field and set the stage for a reinvigorated Modern format, one hot off the influx of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™. It's been a Regional Championship season of newcomers taking home trophies, which sets up a series of storylines heading into the Pro Tour where the super-squad Team Handshake has dominated recent events in a run rarely seen in Magic's 30-year history.
Will the next Pro Tour look like the last, where Handshake lived up to their self-appointed nickname "team 50%" based on representing at least half of the Top 8? That depends. Do they have stair machines in Barcelona?