Welcome everyone. I’m Stefan, a member of Handshake Ultimate Guard, winner of the recent Magic Online Champions Showcase: Season 1 2024 (known as the MOCS in short). Today, I will tell you about my engagement with online tournaments, how I managed to throw away a good Vintage Cube draft seat and why I chose Yawgmoth as my Modern Deck to battle with.

Prologue

My Journey with Magic: The Gathering Online up to this point in time has been a long one. I have always liked and played the game via that platform, but I haven’t been deeply engaged with its tournament circuit as constantly. For most of the time it was more like an off and on thing on the side, depending on if I found time/was motivated enough or where I was at with life. The last three years have been different: I am now a member of one of the best Pro Tour teams and have dedicated myself to mostly playing MTG competitively full-time. Things have changed. As soon as I started being continuously surrounded by players that I deeply respect, I felt the need and motivation to take everything a bit more seriously and level up. This Included not only paper Magic but my mindset and schedule for playing online as well. All that includes being able to balance preparation time and actual tournament time, for example trying to make an estimated guess as to how many tournaments I will be playing for the goals I’m trying to achieve. I believe that having goals in general is a good thing, even if they are far away as long as they are not super unrealistic, so being conscious of that and knowing how to handle defeat or failure are important things to improve at since they will make for a healthier grind. This article will focus on the MOCS specifically.

Preparation

For anyone who doesn’t know, the MOCS is a tri-annual 8 player tournament with a $70.000 prize pool and two invites for the MTG World Championship on the line. It is also regarded as a relatively prestigious event to play in because it is so hard to qualify for.

Over the course of those last three years I have played in countless Qualifiers, Showcase Challenges and more which eventually led me to qualifying for this tournament not only once, but three times! Sometimes I can’t even believe it myself. Finally getting to win it is definitely one of my dreams come true. For this specific iteration of the tournament I barely got there on leaderboard points within the very last two seasonally relevant tournaments. The rush of noticing the screen change to elimination rounds and seeing that I made the top 8 of a sealed open to clutch the last few points lead to one of the biggest relief feelings I ever had, if that illustrates how close it was. At this point I had also played in the MOCS two times already, so not only qualifying but getting to play in it again was the important part. Being able to put my experience from the meantime as well as my knowledge about what matters to do well in the MOCS itself to the test was a sweet cherry on top. I have told people that third time’s a charm and now I got two warm-up rounds so who would be able to stop me other than myself? Yes, exactly! I very much can get in my own way.

Since there are only 8 players in the tournament there are not many rounds to be played which makes the structure a bit swingy: Three rounds of Vintage Cube draft and three rounds of constructed (this time: Modern). The way it works is that to make it to the finals, a player has to win all three rounds of one of the two formats. This can be especially unfortunate if a player managed to win two out of their 3 rounds in both formats! A result which I had the first two times to barely not make the finals but good enough for 3rd or 4th place. The big money is in the finals. For the last two instances of when I played this tournament, I did try to metagame quite a lot. Due to this structure, I am incentivized to pick a constructed deck that does not have any glaring holes against what I expect my opponents to bring. Also there is a huge upside in out-metagaming the other players since if you get all good matchups, you are a favorite to 3-0 constructed and make finals because of it and it’s easier to predict what is being played when there are fewer opponents. Oftentimes, format specialists qualify for the MOCS and they will somewhat predictably bring the deck they have the most experience with so they become an easy target to be metagamed against. The best example of recent memory was an UB Mill player doing badly because everyone else in the tournament played Emrakul, the Eons Torn in their sideboard. I do not metagame this much in other tournaments as I think over-metagaming can lead down rabbit holes and narrow paths that don’t always pay off compared to when I could just play one of the generically best decks or a deck that has solid matchups across the board. Empirically, I have been rewarded for bringing the right deck in the MOCS because of that, but this third time now was different. The qualified players were stronger, even for this level of tournament which is already arguably the highest level of competition on Magic Online. People didn’t really have many holes or narrow ranges. I was able to pin down an assortment of decks that each of them could potentially bring but there were too many possible outcomes. There wasn’t anyone who qualified with their pet deck and could be easily taken advantage of at all. I almost fell into the trap of spending too much time on figuring out what deck I could play to attack the field, which crazy sideboard cards I could add to gain potentially large advantages. Eventually, I realized that I would likely just hinder myself by going too deep. Sometimes you have to know when to give up.

Even in such a small field, it is usually good to have someone to work with instead of being all by yourself. In this instance, I was working with Sam Rolph, a player who’s ability of playing the game I respect pretty highly. We talked about various (and arguably way too many) different decks that we possibly should or shouldn’t play in this field and how that was supposed to play out with the idea of hopefully registering the same decklist. At some point close to deck submission Sam was considering so many different decks that I lost track. There were good ideas and not so good ones, with most of them having a caveat. Nothing was clearly a great choice. The Esper Goryo’s Vengeance deck seemed like potentially the best deck to play but since Sam qualified for the tournament with it we were worried that people would bring too many hatecards for it to be a good choice.

Since I was still sick from my recent travels I was mostly theorycrafting instead of playing games, but the closer it came to the deadline the more I felt the need to actually get a feel for what I really wanted. My fellow teammates Karl Sarap and Simon Nielsen from Handshake Ultimate Guard were crucial when it came to helping me out to jam a couple matches to orientate myself a little better. I personally was considering quite a bit more than a handful of decks too, not as many as Sam Rolph maybe but enough that I won’t list all of them here. From stock Yawgmoth and Rakdos Scam over Aspiring Spike’s Red Green Crime Valakut deck, a Martyr of Sand’s build to Four Color Omnath, UWx Control and Four Color Creativity, all sorts of things were being looked at. The more I got conscious that there wouldn’t be any easy to find leaks in my opposition's deck choices, the more I would start thinking that I just have to play the generically best deck.

On the last two days before submission day, there were only 4 decks left for me: Creativity, Yawgmoth, Amulet, and Blue Zoo. All of them were close and I couldn’t quite feel like anything stood out specifically, but when I actually played some matches the Yawgmoth deck often was able to sneak wins on pretty small margins when it seemed like it should have lost. The main deck silver bullets I was playing like Scavenging Ooze, Haywire Mite and Fulminator Mage also meant that even the problematic game one matchups were somewhat winnable. The MOCS is an open decklist tournament so mulliganing and making sure to be able to Chord of Calling for the right creature (which often still is Yawgmoth, Thran Physician) was very useful. Given that I had played the deck a decent amount before I decided that venturing further in trying to find the optimal deck was not worth it so with 4 hours left until the deadline, I started tuning my list:

The good thing about the current Yawgmoth is that there are not many flex slots to toy with which made this part a little easier. It is debatable if you want to run a Fulminator Mage, a Scavenging Ooze or a Gilded Goose in the main deck as are some of the land choices, but all in all there isn’t much to tinker with the main deck. The sideboard was more interesting: I used love Liliana of the Veil as a way to help combat Scion of Draco + Leyline of the Guildpact to diversify my answers from just Pick Your Poison vs the Domain Zoo’s non-Scion threats. I was a bit disappointed to realize that if I really wanted to win the tournament, Liliana was a bit too cute in that regard since it’s an expensive sorcery speed spell and doesn’t necessarily help much in other problematic matchups like the Prowess deck with Slickshot Show-Off. Eventually I decided on Sheoldred’s Edict and a 3rd Fatal Push instead which would later come in handy when I played vs Jan-Moritz Merkel also known as JMM, arguably the best player in the tournament. With only 5 minutes left I sent in my deck files as I’m notoriously late at registering but felt reasonably happy with my choice. I wasn’t expecting to have the best deck in the tournament, but I was feeling comfortable and confident. Sam Rolph ended up consulting some of the best Amulet Titan players and specialists in the end and audibled into that deck whereas I tanked on my decision on what deck to play for so long that our plan of playing the same deck didn’t pan out. Still glad I shipped a solid list, I fell into my bed and slept like a stone awaiting a week that would include a bunch of Cube drafts to practice for the Vintage Cube portion.

The Tournament

The MOCS always starts with a sweet Vintage Cube draft, the most exciting part of the event for me and many others. Since I felt very familiar with previous iterations of the Cube I didn’t need a lot of practice to keep up with what’s new. I knew that artifacts were better in this version than before and that the red 3 drops nowadays are plentiful and powerful. Combo decks would also have some additional support.

I started my draft with pack 1 pick 1 Tolarian Academy over Mana Drain. Many might disagree here but I think in the current but also many other previous versions of the Vintage Cube that Academy is one of the most powerful cards that enables you to draft around it very aggressively. At the same time it is less color-committal than Mana Drain, obviously a worse standalone card but you can use the mana it proves in any deck, you don’t have to be blue for Academy. P1P2 I made a mistake by taking Karakas over Retrofitter Foundry when the latter matters much more for my deck already. I don’t generally like forcing archetypes early on in a draft but Academy just gives you so much context, also Retrofitter Foundry and Academy just play exceptionally well together. My instinct of taking Karakas because it might still be better in this UW Artifact type strategy while also being a much better rated card by my pick order than Foundry kind of led me astray here. Trusting your instincts is important when it matters, but sometimes you shouldn’t follow your heart and follow your brain instead! I ended up doing okay in pack one and making a couple more suboptimal picks towards the end but it looked fine so far since I wheeled a Shorikai, Genesis Engine and some artifacts. In pack 2 I ended up getting pick 6 Solitude! This is something I would usually only expect to happen when drafting in leagues and not in the MOCS. White was open in my seat so I definitely was supposed to be blue white artifacts. The problem was that I ended up making further suboptimal picks and wasn’t going hard enough to become the deck that Tolarian Academy really wants to have. In pack 3 I opened Time Walk which is one of the best cards or arguably the best card in Vintage Cube. Now getting to add that to my pile of cards, I thought I might end up in something powerful but as a consequence of my previous mistakes I had to take a few mediocre cards in pack 3 so my curve would work out and my deck was functional. After the draft I looked at my deck and realized it was really not good. What had I done?

At first glance this deck might not look bad since it has some powerful cards like Solitude, Time Walk, Mystic Confluence and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. The reality of the situation is that even though I do have somewhat of a curve, some of my cards are aggressive creatures whereas a lot of my other payoffs are slow, grindy and reward defensive play patterns. The strategy is very disjointed. I have barely enough artifacts for Tolarian Academy and Akal Pakal, but I can’t use the mana from Academy that well outside of my three expensive blue cards. Kappa Cannoneer also is a bit too hard to cast given how few artifacts I have, but it’s powerful enough that I played it anyway because it goes well with Phantasmal Image and Three Steps Ahead. In short: this deck is a mess. I ended up in a pretty favorable but tough seat to navigate and made some serious blunders that derailed my draft to effectively end up with a trainwreck.

But here I was, having to look at this disaster of a deck that wasn’t very likely to 3-0 at all. This already made it feel like I had to win all the Modern rounds to have a chance at the finals. I was mentally jumping around between a defeatist and a warrior perspective.
It obviously hurts that after all the hurdles I had to go through to get to this point, I was basically throwing it all away in one go. Nevertheless, the matches hadn’t even started yet so I brushed it off as best as I could and was ready to jump into the ring to give it my all.

My round 1 pairing was Sam Rolph on a Gruul deck with a lot of fast mana and a somewhat aggressive plan. In game 1 I was very aware that I couldn’t beat Pest Infestation if he ever drew it and he did. Game 2 I was able to stabilize for a bit on a low life total and managed to finish him off by tapping his creatures with Cryptic Command and attacking for lethal. Game 3 was very close again but I eventually lost to Sentinel of the Nameless City which after it came down on turn 2 was returned to hand and put beneath the top 2 cards of his deck multiple times to survive. I wasn’t very successful in that last part. Even though I was defeated in round 1 with a bad deck, I was still trying to play my best so I could at least repeat my previous records from the two other MOCS I played: 2-1 in both formats. Unfortunately both my other matches against the players bennybo and PintuMTG went in a similar fashion. They were all close 3 game sets where I fell behind too much due to the dysfunctionality of my deck to eventually lose the match. I 0-3ed the draft. I didn’t know what to think of it at the time, but clearly in terms of the tournament structure it wasn’t that bad. I could still possibly get there in Modern, even though I had somewhat of a defeatist mentality already at that point. You might think that it already influenced me along the way and was the reason why I ended up 0-3 which is reasonable to assume. Though, I think I played some of the cleanest games I have played in those 3 matches, the deck just wasn’t good enough and that’s not going to cut it when you play vs some of the best Magic Online players.

Ultimately, I pulled myself together and awaited the round 1 Modern pairings. I still had this nice and solid Yawgmoth list that I put hours of thought into late at night. I wanted to make it worthwhile. My mentality changed from disappointed and defeated to wanting to make the best of it. I had also already looked at my opponent’s decklists for the tournament and it seemed like my choice was well positioned. The only matchup that seemed tough was ecobaronen’s Prowess list. JMM was playing the same archetype but made his list worse vs Yawgmoth by adding Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and cutting Soul-Scar Mages.

My first opponent was duke12, a recent Pro Tour Top 8 competitor and someone who was able to make the MOCS two times in a row! You could say he is a menace. His deckchoice was Urza’s Saga Jund with Jegantha.
Looking at his deck list again made me raise an eyebrow: What was he trying to beat with this? I didn’t really understand why you would play Jund in this tournament, but I must have missed something. Thinking about it a bit, I realized this was probably the best matchup I could have gotten. Maybe I can get a little lucky today?

The games were not very close, game 1 was a landslide victory for me. I figured I could only really lose to an early Tarmogoyf accompanied by an Urza’s Saga or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, since his other threats (Orcish Bowmasters, Ragavan and Wrenn and Six) didn’t really do much vs my deck. This led me to bring in some Fatal Pushes  and Sheoldred’s Edict which actually made him sacrifice his Tarmogoyf in game 2 and reduced pressure greatly. A clean 2-0. There was hope after all.

Round two I got paired vs JMM. Normally I’d expect this to be a tough matchup when it’s him on Prowess, not necessarily an easy time for Yawgmoth since Slickshot Show-Off is hard to interact with early in the game for me in game 1. But as I mentioned before it seemed like he tuned his deck in a way that would skimp on the matchup a little.

The first game was quite close in the way that I made a mistake and could have easily died because of it but luckily didn’t. I started taking control of the game with Grist, the Hunger Tide and other  creatures, killing his only Slickshot Show-Off in the process while I was still at 16 life. During the final turns I was very aware that I only could lose the game to his 2-of Underworld Breach which would then make him able to Burn me out with a singular Lightning Bolt. I then drew a Boseiju which made me think that I got the game in the bag, since I can respond to the first Bolt cast by destroying Breach. I totally missed that I could have exiled Slickshot Show-Off from his graveyard that I killed way earlier in the game with my Agatha’s Soul Cauldron (which was now tapped) so I got a little heart attack when he went Breach into Show-Off on the next turn. Luckily I could also just respond to that by using Boseiju on Breach so Show-Off wouldn’t grow from any of those shenanigans. I proceeded to draw Yawgmoth and he scoops. The second game he starts off with Ragavan, a card that is usually not that good vs Yawgmoth due to Orcish Bowmasters, Young Wolf and Wall of Roots. It seemed like he was trying to steal a game that way since I wouldn’t expect him to leave it in his deck post-sideboard but I had an immediate Young Wolf. To my surprise, he just cast 2 removal spells on it and tried to ride Ragavan to victory. At some point I chose not to use Fatal Push on the monkey since I thought I had enough blockers to put in front of it so that I’d be able to save my removal spell for Slickshot Show-Off  but I got extremely punished by a topdeck Veil of Summer and eventually ended up losing the game because of it. In game 3 I had a timely turn 2 Bowmasters which saved me a lot of trouble and then he somewhat flooded out later in the game so I won 2-1.

All of a sudden I found myself at 2-0 in Modern and ready to play a win-and-in for the finals of the tournament, that’s crazy!

My third round would turn out to be PintuMtg in the Yawgmoth mirror. I don’t really like this matchup even though I usually like playing mirrors when it comes to competitive MTG. This one is kind of an exception to my rule. And also now this one was for all the marbles, including a worlds invite on the line. I have to try my best anyway so I took some deep breaths and went ahead.

Game 1 there is not much interaction so it’s mostly about who gets an active Yawgmoth and enough other creatures into play to kill all their opponent’s creatures and deny them from doing anything relevant for the rest of the game. I had a hand with some creatures and a Chord of Calling but was a little constrained on mana while he ended up putting a Grist into play and controlled 2 Orcish Bowmasters. After that turn I found myself in a very difficult spot: I could either play Grist and -2 to kill his Grist, play Wall of Roots + Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons or play Wall of Roots + Scavenging Ooze. It took a long time to figure out my line but I think I eventually chose correctly since playing Wall + Ooze sets me up for Hapatra + Chord next turn while it leaves up a green mana for Ooze and also doesn’t expose Hapatra to the on board Grist. I got to Chord for Yawgmoth on the next turn as planned and a very important detail here was that initiating the Yawgmoth activations on his turn was a lot better than on my turn: The way the rules work triggers from the active player are put on the stack first, which means if triggers from both players simultaneously are put there the non-active player will have their triggers resolve first. Since I’m the active player on my turn the problem here would have been that PintuMtg’s Bowmaster triggers resolve before my Hapatra trigger, effectively making it impossible for me to use my Snake token and re-initiating the loop before Hapatra dies. By initiating on his turn it was possible for me to respond to all the Bowmasters triggers on the stack with the Hapatra + Yawgmoth Loop so he wouldn’t get to stop the Snake generation.

Up a game is a good feeling, but I have lost in very similar spots before. Especially when it was for all the marbles. I just treated it the same as if I was down a game or 0-0 mentally.

In game two I’m on the draw which is rarely a good spot to be in these manadork combo mirrors but I get to have 3 Fatal Pushes and Thoughtseize to interact a little. I mis-sideboarded slightly, because I wasn’t supposed to cut 2 Cauldrons, just one. Grist is generally worse in the mirrors, because it’s bad when it dies so your opponent get’s to use cauldron on it. It’s a way of falling behind even when it’s nice to have a turn 2 Grist, but it’s not really what the games are about. With all that in mind, I open my 7 and it’s just manadorks and lands, but I have the option to use 2 Underground Mortuary triggers to dig for Chord or Yawgmoth plus I’m not on the play. Not exactly what I wanted but the odds made it seem to me that I should keep especially considering I need the ramp on the draw. I would never hold this if I was the starting player just to be clear. The game was a little rollercoaster of emotions because at first PintuMtg got ahead by quite a bit and was threatening the Yawgmoth ability via Cauldron on the next turn. I drew my second Surveil land and I flooded after using both of them so I expected to lose. Finally, on the last turn I topdeck Chord of Calling to get Yawgmoth and remove all his creatures which secures me the 2-0.

Absolutely insane that after an 0-3 draft I still get to play in the finals and go to the World Championship another time!! What a comeback! For all the times I have criticized this tournament structure I have now gotten bailed out by it. Quite happy about this outcome, I realize that the tournament is still not done yet.

The finals was going to be vs none other than Sam Rolph who beat me in round 1 and 3-0ed the draft with his Gruul deck. Since the Final match is modern though, it would be Yawgmoth vs Amulet Titan.

This matchup is usually a race but I have Fulminator Mage to interact with. The combo of Fulminator + Cauldron is pretty hard to beat for Amulet, they are a bit faster at goldfishing though.

Game 1 I was quite fortunate to have a draw fast enough to Chord for Fulminator Mage which made Sam’s action-light draw pretty nonfunctional until I finally got Yawgmoth into play. Game 2 was a bit more interesting: I had a pretty medium hand but since it would curve Hapatra into Yawgmoth I kept. Sam’s draw was fast enough to beat that but I drew Fulminator Mage for turn 3 which would stop his Titan from attacking me with haste since I would just destroy Slayer’s Stronghold before it untapped if he went for it. I couldn’t stop his Bounce Lands since he had multiples so he at least got a Primeval Titan trigger with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove in play, meaning he searched for Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and another Simic Growth Chamber. Here I ask the judge for how Valakut actually works and it takes 4 minutes until I am certain about it. The important part here is: If I destroy one of the searched lands, that one would check for 5 other mountains and see them, meaning the trigger would deal 3 damage to my Hapatra. If I destroy one of the other lands, both of the searched lands wouldn’t be able to see 5 other mountains and Valakut deals 0 damage. By destroying his old Simic Growth Chamber I was able to keep my Hapatra in this spot but let him untap the newly searched lands so he cast The One Ring off the extra mana. I was pretty sure that a potential Ring was worth the risk because Hapatra + Yawgmoth is so powerful against his creatures that I would often be able to still win despite that, and I did. 2-0 to win the whole tournament!

And here I was, suddenly having won 20.000 dollars and an invite to Worlds. This is now the second time I have qualified for the World Championship in a row! The emotional rollercoaster of starting with an 0-3 draft into clean sweeping the rest of the tournament was very real and it definitely took me a day to process my mixed feelings. Now I have achieved another one of my goals and am looking forward to competing in the World Championship of 2024!