Raffaele Mazza just started screaming. It was the middle of the night, and the noise was deafening in his cozy home. Shocked into action, Mazza's wife sprinted down the hallway to check on her husband and see if he was okay; there are few things scarier than a scream from your partner in the middle of the night.
But Raffaele Mazza was just fine—he was just playing MTG Arena. Now, many of us have been known to shout at the shuffler before, but Mazza's exclamation occurred for a much different reason. In the dead of night, while the world slept around him in his hometown of Napoli, Italy, Mazza won Arena Championship 9.
And we have a winner! Congratulations to Raffaele Mazza, who defeats Jan Merkel to become the champion of Arena Championship 9! pic.twitter.com/pDwoxj60S2
— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) August 10, 2025
"When I won, I was incredulous at first. I truly felt happy. I couldn't believe it, and I started screaming so loudly that my wife ran to check if I was okay," he reflected on those wild midnight moments that etched his name into the Magic history books. "Immediately after I called several friends to celebrate. It was incredible."
It was an incredible ending to Arena Championship 9, the ninth iteration of MTG Arena's premier tournament series. With a $250,000 prize pool on the line, the event represents the final goal of all competitive MTG Arena players. While it's the Arena Direct events on weekends that usually grab my attention, this is a competitive path that can lead all the way to the World Championship, where we'll now find both Mazza and his finals opponent, the estimable Pro Tour champ Jan Merkel. Those two, and thousands of others, have carved out their home in Magic through MTG Arena.
We back baby!
— Ondrej Strasky (@OndrejStrasky) June 29, 2025
Love these Arena tournaments, absolutely love playing from my living room in just an underwear.
Will do a longer deck writeup later today / tomorrow.
Big props to the testing team, especially @MtgNosferatu and trollasceticftw.
See ya at the Arena Championship! pic.twitter.com/49ER95Kpqq
Their journeys led them to Arena Championship 9, where 37 qualified players battled it out in Edge of Eternities Standard. With some key players rotating out along with a set of "early rotation" bans, the open question heading into the event was if the small field would converge around a few decks or try to break things wide open. As they had limited time with Edge of Eternities before the Arena Championship began, the competitors scrambled to understand this fresh format.
There are many types of tournaments, featuring various formats and levels of metagame understanding. And then there are those rare events—like with Team Channel Fireball and Rakdos Vampires at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor—where something truly unexpected and wonderful happens. These events shock the Magic world and are exceedingly rare; they put our data tools to the test and surprise us with fresh decks.
Not every tournament is like that.
Agatha's Soul Cauldron
Arena Championship 9 was one of the other ones. More than half of the field registered Izzet Cauldron as their deck of choice, with
Small, online events are notorious for slanted metagames. With such a small group of competitors predicting what you will play against becomes a defining aspect of deck selection, and that can lead to some wonky-looking fields, especially in a few past events that were dominated by one or two cards from Alchemy releases.
But even with these factors in mind, Izzet Cauldron's dominance was striking, especially because the deck today doesn't look fundamentally different than it did when Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa debuted it several months ago. But with the metagame shifting around it and other decks losing much, Izzet Cauldron seemed to have it all. While navigating those tense mirrors can sometimes be a slog, Mazza was ready for those matches. He knew what was needed to do well in this tournament and went to work from there.
"I chose Cauldron because I believed it was the strongest deck after trying out the others," Mazza explained. "I don't think I brought any innovation to it, but that's okay. I prepared myself for the mirror matchup by playing against a lot of other Cauldron decks. I want to thank Adriano Moscato and Luca Biondi, the two people I tested with. Without the help of those two good players, I don't think I would have won!"
Mazza's prediction paid off. Seven of the Top 8 players in the event played Izzet Cauldron. Mazza ended up knocking out the lone non-Izzet player—Marvin Chiong and his innovative Temur Ferocious list—before beating Daniel Goetschel in the semifinals mirror to earn his seat at World Championship 31 later this year.
What's next for the Standard format Mazza so thoroughly mastered? You'll have to check out Frank Karsten's Metagame Mentor for more, but it's safe to say that the biggest target possible has now been painted on Vivi's back. With holdovers like Dimir Midrange and Esper Pixie putting up some numbers, they're falling short of Izzet Cauldron's dominance. Players are going to have to get creative to compete with Izzet Cauldron. Chiong's Temur Ferocious list showed that there's some hope out there, and plenty of players are experimenting with
What's next for Mazza, a player with some impressive regional finishes but without past experiences with Pro Tour success? He's got his eye on Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, and he has big plans.
"My goal is to make the Top 16 of that Pro Tour and go on to win the World Championship!"