One of my favorite radio voices has a saying that always stuck with me: "Sports are the greatest unscripted drama there is." It's why the television ratings for big games outperform critically acclaimed dramas. You never know what's going to happen.

That's one of the many reasons I love covering Magic tournaments, and after over 50 Pro Tours and 100 events, no two events are ever the same. There's no predicting what will happen—anything can and anything will happen. Once the cards are shuffled up and the decks are cut, it's all up in the air. Resumes, records, trophies, and titles; it all boils away to the players, their cards, and some of the best unscripted action you can find online on a Sunday afternoon.

And it's a good thing, too—because you couldn't script it better than this.

Jesse Robkin is your Magic Regional Champion! 🏆

From a Last Chance Qualifier on Friday to leaving Charlotte with an invite to the Pro Tour and Worlds, along with a bunch of cash. 💰

What a weekend at #SCGCHARLOTTE for the architect of Grinding Breach!

Make plans to join us at… pic.twitter.com/psnIkKBfNW

— Star City Games (@StarCityGames) March 10, 2025

Jesse Robkin qualified for the Regional Championship via a Last Chance event the day before the tournament. She played—or rather, defined—the best deck in the format and completed an arc three years in the making. Jesse Robkin's United States Regional Championship victory at SCG CON in Charlotte last weekend had everything you could ask for in a storybook Magic saga: a grinder working in the background to develop a deck who then breaks through to put it on the map, championing it as it slowly grows in popularity before finally winning a major event with it in what they expect may be one of their final opportunities to play the deck.

Move over Zac Elsik and Codex Shredder, you've got company. Robkin punched her ticket for Worlds with Underworld Breach, and this is just the beginning.

"I mean, this is all I could possibly have asked for. This is the best possible sendoff I can imagine for a deck that's brought me so much joy, success, and literal career opportunities," she explained. "My first published piece as a writer was my original Breach article on TCGplayer, which directly led to my work for Tolarian Community College, ChannelFireball, and the personal Patreon I ran for a while. My success as a Magic player and writer has led to friendships and professional relationships I would never have made otherwise. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say my life looks the way it does now because of the card Underworld Breach.

"I love this deck with all my heart. Winning with this deck feels like nothing else I've experienced in Magic. This weekend was truly the highlight of my Magic career. I'm immensely grateful."

Underworld Breach has been the dominant Modern deck of this Regional Championship season, and it enjoyed a particularly strong weekend in Charlotte. The latest Modern powerhouse combo deck's origins can be traced back to 2022 when Robkin made the Top 8 of an SCG CON event with what was then a spicy new deck. Three years later, Robkin's content and range have expanded beyond Breach—a deck I myself once described as her "pet deck" because that's what it was at the time—there's no one better with Breach.

That's why, after winning an LCQ to make it into the Regional Championship in Charlotte, returning to the Magic grind, and working with Team SystemMagic to prepare, there was no question what Robkin's plan would be.

"I have a lot of mediocre Regional Championship results; I have found it hard to maintain the requisite focus in RCs to put up good results over the course of a long day. I figured I had about an 80% chance of qualifying for the main event given my experience with the best deck in the LCQs," she explained. "I thought if I qualified, I had a decent chance of making the Top 32, which would be the best results I've had. I did have a vague whisper in my head that it was maybe possible I'd win the whole thing, but I didn't allow myself to take that thought seriously; I'd never come close to winning an event this large before."

That whisper grew louder and spread throughout the tournament hall and the internet. Everyone knows how good Breach has been in Modern, and everyone knows how good Robkin is with Breach.

"I'm not sure what I can say about Opal Breach that hasn't already been said a hundred times over in the past few months. The deck is extraordinarily powerful, cohesive, and resilient," Robkin explained. "It's not only capable of turn-two wins, but winning fast is the norm for it, not something exceptional. I believe I had two or three successful turn-two kills this weekend, plus several more that would have been turn-twos if my opponents hadn't interacted with me—very rudely, I must say—I also had several more turn-three kills.

"I played so many hard and fun games all weekend, but there were a few games that particularly stood out. The first was a game against Boros Energy. I was down a game, at 3 life, and facing down an Ocelot Pride and a Goblin Bombardment. I'd lost all my Breaches and my Shifting Woodland. Jace was in play, as was Grinding Station. Through the power of Brainsurge, the deck's excellent interaction suite post-board, and a strong read of what was in my opponent's hand, I was able to delay my opponent's assault just long enough to manually deck myself with Jace and Grinding Station to win the game."

Those kinds of backdoor wins are the resiliency Robkin mentioned; the deck's primary gameplan is so strong that decks can exhaust themselves overloading to stop Breach, losing to random Urza's Saga Constructs or Jace's self-mill abilities. It's also an example of the kind of corner-case games that even proficient pilots of the deck won't win but the Breach masters among us pull out on the way to putting six copies in the Top 8.

"The deck has gone through a lot of iterations over the years," Robkin elaborated. "The addition of Ledger Shredder from Streets of New Capenna was a big deal, helping [the deck] filter away its many redundant legends and combo pieces while providing an alternate-win condition in the face of graveyard hate. The One Ring in 2023 was another big get, as the deck could Grind away overly burdensome Rings and loop the protection trigger using Emry. Modern Horizons 3 brought both Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and Malevolent Rumble, two cards that feel like they were made for the Breach archetype. And, of course, the unbanning of Mox Opal, the card that made the deck work way back in Theros Beyond Death's preview season, was by far the most important addition to the deck in its entire history."

With Breach unlocked this season, it's been gaining steam for months. In Charlotte, the best deck's best players were hard at work—and the crowd, in person and online, only grew when Robkin finished Day One at 8-1 with the deck. But it wasn't until a serendipitous moment in Round 11 that Robkin let herself finish the thought that maybe the story of Underworld Breach winning an RC was her story.

"I would say as early as a month ago I felt confident that I was playing the best deck and that I knew it as well or better than everyone else's in the room, but the first time I thought 'This could be my tournament' was in Round 11 when I was playing against the only remaining undefeated player in the mirror," Robkin recalled. "He turn-two'd me on the draw in Game 1, and then in Game 3, I turn-two'd him back on the draw after topdecking the mismatched Breach a friend had lent me.

"When she gave it to me, she told me 'This is going to be your lucky Breach,' so anytime I drew it all weekend, I used it as an opportunity to ground myself and refocus. When I drew it in Game 3 to go to 10-1, I felt like the stars were aligning."

The stars were very much aligning, and after a pressure-filled Top 8 run that included three game wins over Jake Stine and Joe Leo in the quarterfinals and semifinals, it was PT champion Corey Burkhart awaiting in the finals. But nothing could stop Robkin, and now she's going from hoping to qualify for the Regional Championship to instead qualifying for not just for Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ but also Magic World Championship 31.

"It's a very surreal thing to have come to terms with not accomplishing something you'd wanted for a long time, in this case making the Pro Tour, only to suddenly leapfrog the thing you wanted and find yourself achieving something greater that you hadn't even considered might happen one day: winning an RC and qualifying for Worlds," Robkin said. "Trying to process all that, as well as the prize money and the overwhelming outpour of kindness from friends and community members, has made the past few days feel like a dream.

"Now that I'm back to my normal life, I've finally started to feel like 'Yes, this really did happen. Wow.'"