Weekly update – 02/11/2022

It’s time for another weekly update! A bunch of qualifier events have occurred all across Europe these past two weeks, and more players have thus joined the hallowed ranks of the ELM-qualified. Attendance numbers have been through the roof lately, and seeing the community gather in such great numbers is an absolute joy to behold. We have results from Switzerland, the UK, France and Denmark to cover, so strap yourselves in – we’re going for a ride.

Brainstorms take a beating in Bern

The first event we’ll take a look at is the Swiss Magic Masters in Bern, that took place on October 23rd. The Legacy event was part of a multi format weekend, drawing a multitude of Swiss players to Bern for games and a good time. The Legacy event drew a whopping 101 players, with the winner taking home a slot for ELM. When the dust from the swiss rounds (…) settled, a top8 featuring an interesting array of decks was left standing. No Delver in sight, with Prison strategies claiming 7 out of 8 playoff spots.

1st	Pascal Richter	G Cloudpost
2nd	Alec Hochstrasser	DnT
3-4th	Samuele Frisina Sorbello	DnT
3-4th	Jeremy Cailler	Moon Prison
5-8th	Markus Braumann	8 Cast
5-8th	Ronny Blaser	Naya Depths
5-8th	Martin Pelikan	Reanimator
5-8th	Thibaud Zemp	UB Shadow

You can find the decklists here. The people from Aareboge Bern also published a complete tournament report, so to learn more about this amazing weekend of Magic, be sure to check that out.

Congratulations to Pascal Richter for taking down this massive event with 12-Post. As it happens, Pascal can’t make it to the European Legacy Masters himself, so the invitation was passed down to the runner-up. Welcome Alec Hochstrasser, to the fold of ELM-invitees. He will be joining the winner of the ELMQ in Lausanne, Hermann Fehlauer, to represent Switzerland on the big stage.

The final two invites for Switzerland will be awarded at Magic Sunday in Zurich on November 13th, and if the Magic Masters were any indication, that event is promising to be a massive celebration for Legacy Magic. Kudos to the Swiss community for showing up in such great numbers.

Brewers in Birmingham

Over in the UK, Axion Now hosted their first giant The Gathering Weekend on the 22th and 23th of October. Both days featured humongous Legacy events, each awarding the winner a trophy, a blue dual land, and an invitation to the European Legacy Masters.

Axion Now has been running premier Magic tournaments in the UK for years at this point, and are highly regarded for their impeccable organization and incredible prize pools. The Gathering is the next evolution of their MEGA event series, and featured their signature “Bonus Top 8” system, where after the swiss, players up to 44th place would play a final playoff in seperate pods to determine prizes.

On Saturday, 118 players sat down for 7 rounds of swiss, after which a varied top 8 emerged.

1st	Jasper Murison Bowie	Mono Red Painter
2nd	Alex De Lis	Ad Nauseam Tendrils
3-4th	Andy Fernandes	Red Green Valakut
3-4th	Steven Walsh	8 Cast
5-8th	Lewin Keller	Reanimator
5-8th	Sam Poyntz	UR Delver
5-8th	Theo Andresier	Blue Zenith
5-8th	Anders Thiesen	Blue Zenith

Top 8 decklists can be found here.

The playoffs featured quite a few notable players, including crowd favourite and brewer extra-ordinaire Andy Fernandes on a crazy GR Valakut concoction, and Denmark’s Anders Thiesen on Blue Zenith. Keep those names in mind for later. And rounding out the top8, we find Theo Andresier, who qualified for ELM in his hometown of Copenhagen earlier.

As the last chapters of the tournament unfolded, it was Jasper Murison Bowie who completed his Saga and took down the event, earning himself the first ELM slot of the weekend. Congratulation Jasper!

On the second day of competition in Birmingham, 112 players were down to clown and do it all over again. Another extremely diverse collection of archetypes ended up making the playoffs, with some storylines from Saturday gaining another chapter. Anders Thiesen and Andy Fernandes both managed to achieve their second top 8 of the weekend, and Painter ended up making it to the finals again, but narrowly fell short of achieving complete dominance in the end. Instead it was Andy Fernandes who managed to take it all down, with a deck you’ve probably never seen before.

1st	Andy Fernandes	Naya Stompy
2nd	Andreas Hofverberg	Mono Red Painter
3-4th	James Mills	Sticker Goblins
3-4th	Alexander Ebinger	Sneak and Show
5-8th	Jamer Calver	8-Mulch
5-8th	Anders Thiesen	Blue Zenith
5-8th	Enrico Donisi	4C Control
5-8th	Generowe Francis	Orcs

You can check out the decklists right here, and we highly recommend you do. Sticker Goblins? Naya Stompy?! Andy Fernandes’s new concoction features a lot of power and the mana to play it fast. We haven’t truly seen a deck like this before, combining value-laden cards like Minsc and Boo with the new initiative cards, and pumping it all out of stompy mana. A scary deck to play against, undoubtedly. Will this be a new force to be reckoned with in the Legacy Tier 1-2 metagame? Time will tell. Huge props to Andy for showing off some super creative deckbuilding prowess, and backing it up through incredible play the entire weekend. We can’t wait to see what he brings to the table at the European Legacy Masters.

The final prize to be awarded in Birmingham was one for the Legacy Weekend Warrior. The rankings were based off the combined performance during the swiss rounds on Saturday and Sunday, and Denmark’s Anders Thiesen managed to barely eke out Andy Fernades by playing out his final round, instead of taking the safe Intention Draw. It paid off, as he won the match, the Weekend Warrior title, and earned himself a complete set of hard-to-get Adventures of the Forgotten Realms : Ampersand Promo’s for his troubles.

Another Great Dane joins the fray

While Anders had absolutely crushed it at Birmingham, one thing he hadn’t managed to bring home to Denmark with him, was a seat at the European Legacy Masters. His winning streak was not over yet, however. Just a couple of days later, on October 25th, the final Danish qualifier took place in Copenhagen. And this time, Thiesen and trusty Blue Zenith deck did manage to score the qualification! It should be noted that he was passed down the invitation from Daniel Peretz who for the second time won one of the Copenhagen qualifiers and second in standings Simon Bach-Nielsen (armed with Dark Ritual), who previously had won a qualifier and now for the second time had to decline the honor. So let us first commend Daniel and Simon for displaying utter dominance at Faraos Cigarer, before congratulating Anders Thiesen on making it to the Danish squad for the European Legacy Masters!

Cloudpost on top in Lyon

The final event we’ll cover in this update took place in Lyon, France, on the 29th of October. A weekend featuring Duel Commander and Legacy organized by the MtgOnes community drew quite the crowd, and the Legacy event sold out at 80 players, with around 20 more on the waiting list. Two slots were on the line, and in the end it was champion Lucas Mietton with his Green Cloudpost and finalist Marco Gonçalves with BR Reanimator who earned the invites to ELM 2022. Cloudpost is picking up steam both in paper and online and it is one of those decks that some players might underestimate, but is truly versatile and resilient. It has a great Reanimator matchup, as was seen in the finals, with both Endurance, Crop Rotation and Elvish Reclaimer acting as hate pieces, but it also measures up against control, while holding its own against Delver. Are you ready to take on Green Cloudpost?

Upcoming Events

We’re in the home stretch of the qualification season for the 2022 European Legacy Masters. Over in the north, Sweden and Finland are having their Nationals soon, each awarding slots to the top 4 players. Note that the Spanish qualifier event has been moved to the 19th of November due to a scheduling conflict on the side of the TO.

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Thank you for sticking with us as the season unfolds and the last names on the ELM roster are being determined. Join us for the next installment of the weekly update for more stories and results from the European Legacy community, and until then, keep playing the greatest format of them all, and keep being awesome!