When it comes to the highest levels of competitive Magic, Pedro Perrini has seen it all. At 22 years old, his Pro Tour count is already in the double digits. He competed at Magic World Championship 30. And he's even got himself a trophy, having won the South American Regional Championship last year.

His Pro Tour breakthrough hasn't come yet—his best finish was 10th place at Pro Tour March of the Machine—but Perrini has proven time and again that he can hang with the best Magic players from across the world. And if there was any doubt to that, Perrini just accomplished a first-time feat in Magic history. He's not just a two-time champion but two-region champion after an incredible run through the City Class Showdown last month.

The 2025 tabletop Magic season kicked off in earnest over the last several weeks, with a trio of Regional Championships held across Europe, Canada, and Brazil giving us our first Pro Tour and Magic World Championship qualifiers of the new year. While Perrini was making history in Brazil, Simon Piché was taking down the title in Canada and Alex Rohan Breached his way to Regional Championship victory in Europe.

Making the Top 8 of a Regional Championship can be a career-defining achievement; winning one certainly is. But to win two RCs in two years at two different dots on the globe? Perrini has created a new class of player.

pic.twitter.com/4Idg8cUJRL

— Pedro Perrini (@Schiaveto_mtg) January 26, 2025

And he didn't see it coming at all.

"Honestly, I didn't expect to win. This was my first tournament after a three-month break," he explained. "I didn't have a team, and I had one week of testing, so I am just happy that everything worked out."

It's not the ideal setup leading up to a Regional Championship, but Perrini has devoted enough hours to the Pro Tour grind to know that sometimes the best thing you can do for your win rate is to take a step back from the field. The mental break did Perrini wonders, but it did leave him with a particular challenge to overcome when he arrived in São Paulo.

"I qualified by playing in the Last Chance Qualifier on Friday, like I always do," he said.

Sometimes the secret to winning more can be caring less, but leaving your Regional Championship invite up to a LCQ on Friday afternoon is a risk that would terrify me. The Piracicaba native Perrini thrives under that pressure and did so again at the City Class Showdown. After qualifying at the last moment, he turned back to the deck he had gotten in as many reps as he could with over the previous week—far less than his preferred testing time.

So how did Perrini cram for the test he planned to ace? Like many Magic tournament grinders in need of a spicy decklist, he turned to his friends. And in Perrini's case, his friends happened to be very good people to ask: William Araujo, who had made the Top 8 of the previous four Regional Championships, and Thiago Saporito, who has two career Top Finishes and a Grand Prix title. By the way, Araujo would go on to keep up the streak and advance to the Top 8 of an incredible fifth straight Regional Championship, punching his ticket back to the Pro Tour.

"I asked them what decks they were considering," Perrini recalled. "With a week of testing before the event, I picked a deck with a straightforward game plan, one that didn't rely too much on interaction like removal or counterspells. Throughout the event, I kept thinking that I would run into a bad matchup twice and get knocked out of the Top 8, but fortunately, it only happened once!"

That came in Round 4, when Goblin Charbelcher belched Perrino out as it is want to do. But that would be the only blemish on Perrini's record on the way to the Top 8, defeating local legends and former Regional Champs like Vinicius Karam along the way.

Perrini just kept chugging along with his Temur Eldrazi list. Once he advanced to the Top 8, he proceeded to beat three very different decks in those elimination rounds. First was a mirror-match victory over Diego Eneas Garcia, followed by a rematch against Karam in the semifinals on the scariest breakout deck of the Regional Championship weekend: Temur Breach.

Two up, two down for Perrini, as he rolled into the finals against Gabriel Lopes and the Orzhov Blink deck that posted the highest winning percentage of any major deck across the three Regional Championships. On the line was more than just another piece of hardware for Perrini's case: the winner would earn an invitation to the Magic World Championship later this year, a tournament that Perrini qualified once for already and did everything in his power to get back to.

Though it took the full three games in a gripping final, the outcome was the same: a win for Perrini and the Eldrazi and another milestone in his quickly expanding resume.

"My games with Eldrazi were straightforward. I was always aiming to destroy a land on turn three and buy time for Emrakul, the Promised End," Perrini explained. "From there, Emrakul will usually win the game on its own."

As the Modern format shakes out over the coming months—and the first weekend of Regional Championships raised more questions than it answered—Perrini's win along with the archetype's performances across tournaments made one thing clear: Kozilek's Command is a new pillar of Modern. While format holdover Boros Energy enjoyed a successful weekend and Underworld Breach combo was the scariest brew floating around, old-fashioned Eldrazi Ramp with World Breaker is still quite viable.

For Perrini, this victory hits different.

"Honestly, I'm really happy to win a Regional Championship in my home country," he admitted. "I won one of the South America Regional Championships last year, but winning one at home just feels different. I'm excited to play another Pro Tour and the World Championship again. I've done it before, so it won't be a completely new experience for me this time."

As you would expect, Perrini is busy planning his travel for the season and now looking to assemble a sponsor for the slate of events laid out before him. But like the weeks leading up to his latest Regional Championship victory, Perrini is making sure that he keeps the Magic balanced.

"What really excited me is that I already had plans to start a YouTube vlog channel, which is something I wanted to do before but never got around to," he explained. "Now I'll have the chance to document my travel and events, and I'm grateful that God has given me another opportunity to make it happen."

The Regional Championship and Pro Tour circuit rolls on, and Perrini has guaranteed himself a seat on the ride.

Next stop? Pro Tour Aetherdrift at MagicCon: Chicago February 20–23. It will be Aetherdrift Draft and Standard Constructed on display for that weekend, but fear not, Modern fans. The Regional Championship action will return with more Modern. Keep your eyes peeled for Splinter Twins.