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The Week That Was: Lopez Prepares to Make Landfall at the Pro Tour

March 20, 2026
Corbin Hosler

The Regional Championship season rolls on. The Standard season that kicked off with the release of Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™ and Magic World Championship 31 refuses to be tamed, even as new sets and strategies upend the metagame week after week. From classic Izzet Prowess builds to Mono-Green Landfall decks, this Regional Championship season has filled the Pro Tour field and been one of the best in recent memory.

We can go back to Tristan Wylde-LaRue's win at the US Regional Championship in January with Four-Color Nature's Rhythm to see how far things have come in two months. At that tournament, Badgermole Cub broke through the metagame. Izzet Lessons had been the dominant strategy at the World Championship in December, and Landfall decks made up just four percent of the metagame. From there, the Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed metagame looked even more diverse, as the evoke Elementals from Lorwyn Eclipsed made their mark on Standard and Doomsday Excruciator took down the whole tournament.

Fast forward six weeks, and Standard is more diverse than ever—which is quite the feat considering that previous seasons have trended in the opposite direction. But with Mono-Green Landfall's rising numbers over the past month and the onset of new decks like Momo White, the field for the quartet of Standard events earlier this month reflect that. As Frank Karsten covered in this week's Metagame Mentor, there are a lot of ways to win in Standard right now. All of them have qualified players for the Pro Tour and Magic World Championship 32 later this year.

"Right now, Standard is great, explained Jorge Lopez, who took down the Regional Championship for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean playing Mono-Green Landfall earlier this month. "There are plenty of options to choose from, and there is so much fun in diversity. I played against seven different decks in the Swiss portion of the Regional Championship."

Mono-Green Landfall—a deck that was on no one's radar two months ago—has turned out to be the new best deck in Standard, capable of regularly winning as early as turn four. The deck can rush opponents down or grind them out in a long game with Esper Origins and Ba Sing Se. But last weekend's events—Regional Championships in Australia/New Zealand, Japan/Korea, Southeast Asia, and China—had only one Mono-Green winner (Simon Linabury at the ANZ Super Series). The other events were taken down by a pair of Izzet lists (Prowess and Elementals) and Ma Noah's Bant Nature's Rhythm, a build not all that dissimilar from Wylde-Larue's format-defining list from months ago.

The wide-open metagame has created a kind of old-school Modern style of play, where no deck is dominant in the format and there are so many viable ideas floating around. Mastery with your chosen deck seems to matter more than simply breaking out the latest pro deck tech. That's the mindset with which Lopez went into the biggest tournament of his fledgling competitive journey.

"I chose my deck because I consider it the most efficient aggro deck right now. Landfall triggers are basically free, and if there is no response, the value gets really high, really fast. Midrange decks feel a little below average on response speed and value. While I do enjoy control decks, in formats as open as this one it is very hard to tune [a control deck] properly against most matches. There is a really big chance to end up underprepared against low-tier decks that may end up winning the match. So, aggro felt like the right choice."

With his strategy locked in, Lopez turned to what has been a more recent addition to his Magic hobby time: playtesting for tournaments. Formerly a Magic judge familiar with the circuit but not a dedicated grinder, Lopez decided that it was time for a new challenge when tabletop play returned, and he attacked the Regional Championship circuit with dedication. Thatdedication that finally paid off when the 43-year-old tore through the Top 8 at the Regional Championship with clean 2-0 sweeps of Edgar Emmanuel Rangel Paez (on Dimir Excruciator), Carlos Martinez (on Dimir Midrange), and finally Ivan Saenz in a Mono-Green Landfall mirror.

3 Promising Vein 4 Earthbender Ascension 4 Mightform Harmonizer 3 Archdruid's Charm 3 Escape Tunnel 4 Sapling Nursery 4 Sazh's Chocobo 3 Ba Sing Se 2 Mossborn Hydra 4 Icetill Explorer 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Badgermole Cub 4 Fabled Passage 14 Forest 3 Meltstrider's Resolve 2 Origin of Metalbending 2 Surrak, Elusive Hunter 1 Pawpatch Formation 3 Torpor Orb 1 Mossborn Hydra 1 Soul-Guide Lantern 2 Keen-Eyed Curator

With that, the longtime Magic player had the biggest accomplishment of his career, a span that includes a Top 8 appearance at Mexico's National Championship in 2005 and a Grand Prix Top 16 that same year. But neither of those ever converted to a Pro Tour ticket, and when he competes in one later this year it will be the culmination of a Magic career 20 years in the making.

"Since the Regional Championships were created, I've always tried to qualify for them," said Lopez. "I really enjoy competitive Magic, so in 2025 I was chasing the Secret Lair Showdowns at MagicCon and playing in the Regional Championship Qualifiers. Magic has been the constant for me. In 2025, I made it my mission for the year to win a play set of Secret Lair Showdown Lightning Bolts—and I won five. That built up my confidence and helped me to learn the important lesson of focusing on one game of Magic at a time to play my best Magic in it."

As Lopez reaches new heights and prepares for Magic to take him to places he's never been, that's the lesson he's trying to keep in mind. Whether he's playing in his hometown of Mexico City at Friday Night Magic or competing in Amsterdam in a Pro Tour thousands of miles away from his own bed, the Magic remains a constant—and so too does the approach that has opened up so many new doors for Lopez.

"I am excited to play my first Pro Tour and my first World Championship," he said. "And my goal is to keep playing at the highest levels of the circuit, so I will focus on playing my best Magic one game at a time so I can be at the top in a consistent way!"

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