Introduction

Hello! For those of you who don’t know me, I am Matias Leveratto, a 32 years old player from Argentina, and I recently had the opportunity to compete in the Mythic Championship III, the event that I ended up winning =)

My relationship with Magic: the Gathering began a long time ago. I started playing in 1999 with some friends at our local game store, but at that time I didn’t know about the Pro Tour and stuff, I just played casual tabletop Magic for almost 2 years and stopped.

I returned to the game in 2007 and learned about the competitive circuit which got me hooked. I teamed up with some good players from Argentina, from whom I learnt a lot, and competed in several GPs. Also, I qualified for World Magic Cup 2012 and Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir. After returning from Hawaii, I was at the peak of my game, but I didn’t have the time to continue playing, so I quit again.

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Lately, some old teammates such as Luis Salvatto and Sebastian Pozzo were on the Pro Tour train and doing great, which was a huge motivation for me to come back. Being a player from Latin America was always difficult, because of the little to none amount of GPs and opportunities to qualify to the Pro Tour, and when someone would qualify they probably will be playing that tournament alone which was not ideal.

Now it was different, because these two friends were playing every single premier event available, which made it much more interesting.

I still had the complication of time, but Magic Arena was a new opportunity for me because I could manage my own time better without having to make a huge investment to play. I was decided to qualify to the Mythic Championship, so I did my best to rank Top 1000 in mythic the first season, and then navigate through the qualifier to be back again playing at the major tables.

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Winning the MC III was more than I was expecting. It was a great achievement for me and I am super happy and excited about what is coming up next. I now have the time and desire to fully dedicate to Magic (and studying Psychology in college xD) and enjoy what this new chapter in my Magic history has to bring. Being able to compete against a lot of people that I admire, and feeling strong about my game is really amazing. I have a lot to learn and improve yet, and I am looking forward to that.

Preparing for Mythic Championship IV

The week after the Arena qualifier for MC Las Vegas I also won the MCQ in Argentina for MC Barcelona. It was an extraordinary week and a great new beginning for myself as a competitive player.

After returning home from Vegas I had only 3 weeks to test Modern, Modern Horizons limited, exams from college and figure out what to do with my job. Even though I wasn’t playing Modern, I was thrilled at first with the format because it seemed that there were a lot of fun and powerful decks to play, but suddenly everything changed.

Learning Modern was much more difficult than I was expecting, and I wasn’t having the results I was hoping for. I felt the decks I liked the most needed more time to fully mastery and I was jumping from one deck to another.

Thankfully I was invited to test with some of the Hareruya Pros players, which was a really nice experience for me, from which I learned a lot. It was not possible for us to join before the event, so all our testing and talks were online, which is probably not ideal, but we couldn’t do it in another way. Half of us settled on Hogaak and the rest on UW Control, so we started focusing on those decks.

Despite being a great fan of control strategies, I choose the graveyard deck. We wanted to make the best list possible to achieve turn two Hogaak, and 《Shriekhorn》 was our technology that no one else seemed to be playing in this archetype. We preferred the artifact over the 4 color version, since we didn’t want to mess too much with the mana base, and the fact that 《Hedron Crab》 didn’t help to convoke was also a factor.

The removal slots were pretty close and some of us went with 《Lightning Axe》 and others with 《Fatal Push》.

Even though we thought that Hogaak was going to be played a lot, we didn’t imagine it was going to be that popular, so we never considered playing maindeck 《Leyline of the Void》. Taking into account that Hogaak was the most played deck on the event, and the fact that it was an open decklist tournament, it was probably the right call to play the pesky enchantment on the maindeck.

We also tried things like 《Lotleth Troll》 and 《Insolent Neonate》, which were decent, but in the end, we decided not to play them. This is the list I submitted:

On the Mythic Championship IV

Draft 1 (2-1)

It was a hard draft pod that featured John Finkel and Raphael Levy as the most experienced players, but I guess that in this kinda event there is no such thing as an easy one. I ended up drafting UB Ninjas with little ninjas, but the deck worked fine, and my only loss was in round 2 against Raph and his Snow deck with which he eventually went 3-0.

Modern (2-3)

I will not go round by round, but I do wanna tell a little story from round 4, the first Modern match at the tournament. I was paired up against Corey Baumeister, and we joked about how this one was personal, since he had to avenge his brother Brad Nelson, who I took down on the finals of Mythic Championship III in Las Vegas.

Corey destroyed me, I didn’t have a chance the whole match. It was a mirror, but with one tiny difference: he was on the 《Leyline of the Void》 maindeck tech, so that was all he needed to lock my game 1. Game 2 I mull to 5, and we both open with our 《Leyline of the Void》 on the play, but he had a way to deal with mine and I didn’t.

Even though the outcome of the match, I was really pleased to meet him, he was super friendly and funny the whole game, an attitude I really value and think it’s important despite playing at these high-level events.

On day 1 I finished 2-3 in Modern and a 4-4 overall record. I was happy to make day 2, but I knew that I had to play a little bit better to get a good finish.

Draft 2 (2-1)

I opened 《Plague Engineer》 and 《Mob》 keep coming so I was sold on black. I ended up adding the green, and after a weak pack 3, I finished with this BG deck.

I entered the 5 last rounds of the Mythic Championship with a 6-5 record, so I needed to win several rounds of Modern to get Mythic points and to cash more. That sadly didn’t occur.

Conclusions

I hadn’t been playing paper magic for a long time, and the few events I attended the last year for sure weren’t at this level of competition. In this kinda tournaments you have to be really focused and with a strong mindset, the thing I lacked the most this time.

I didn’t like the deck I picked, not because it wasn’t good (it was probably the best deck), but I simply didn’t enjoy how the games played out, and I wasn’t feeling comfortable at all. I only tested the deck online, so remembering every trigger was kinda hard, which lead me to make some mistakes.

Since I am not qualified to MC Richmond yet, I kinda felt the pressure to get there, and that was something I managed poorly. The lack of experience at this type of event was something that mattered several times, but I think I was able to identify a lot of things that for sure will help me to improve my game, and I am sure that next time will be better.

To conclude, I can say that I bring home a lot of new knowledge and positive experiences to process from which I will have to work on, so I don’t repeat the same mistakes again. I will do my best to get the Richmond invitation, but I also have more time to prepare for the two major events I am already qualified for this year (Mythic Championship V and 2019 World Championship).

Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you hear more from me in the future =)

Matias Leveratto (Twitter)