I was recently had to go on a work trip to Cologne which I was happy to plan around one of the weekly tournaments happening every Wednesday. Sadly, their league is only every second week and I happened to be there on the off-week. Nevertheless 29 people showed up to battle it out in 4 rounds of high stakes Pauper!

I recently switched to Monster Tron as my main tournament deck. I already had a lot of fun with it when it was still considered Tier 2.5 but the recent printing of Giant's Boulder definitely gave it the tools to turn into a whole new monster of a deck. I am still running the usual creature suite with Maelstrom Colossus and Pinnacle Kill-Ship instead of Chrysalis + Nyxborn because I don’t fully believe in the hype and the creature package is what makes the deck special to me. Also Maelstrom Colossus cascades into Pinnacle Kill-Ship like 70% of the time lmao. Here is my list.

I turned up at 6pm with the tournament starting at 6:30 and had a nice chat with the other players as well as the TO. Everyone was super nice and I recognized a face or two that had already made the trek to a Leipzig tournament earlier in the year. Every player had a story to tell about previous participants from the Leipzig scene and the last entry especially seemed to have left quite the impression (a certain Grixis fella with a mullet). Good vibes all around as we start the tournament.

Match 1 – Alex on Naya Gates

Game 1

I assemble Tron quite early and start deploying beaters. He resolves a chrysalis or two which quickly get shot down by Kill-Ship while the Spawns are wiped by the Breath Weapon I hit off Colossus . I can answer his Basilisk Gates with Giant's Boulders and prevent him from gaining too much life. Nearing the end of the game and on my third Boulder I manage to remember that my Boulders aren’t just good cards, they also scry on etb. I scry into a back breaking cascade off Colossus and finish the game.

Game 2

I take a bit of a greedy hand with 2 Unfathomable Truths and no threats and am always on the back foot, having to exile his Basilisk Gates and destroying his creatures when they become too much of a threat. It takes ages until I actually resolve Truths to dig for threats and I wiff on it. Later threats are handled by Journey to Nowhere and I get overrun.

Game 3

I find more threats than him and end the game with an end step Scour from Existence on a Journey that he previously used to exile my Bramble Wurm .

The match is over 2 to 1.

Match 2 – Jonas on Caw Gates

I have managed to play myself into the basement. Top tables are below ground level.

Game 1

I quickly realize that I am facing this league’s Jakub. My opponent is running a deck that consists only of beautiful self made proxies rounded out by a few foils here and there. He turns out to be the guy that does designs for Pauper Colonia! He starts drawing cards off of Squadron Hawk + Brainstorm and always bluffs Counterspell which I play around, slowing down my game plan. I think I am up against an Azorius Control Brew until he plays a Basilisk Gate as his 5th land or so. My Boulders are online at that point but I don’t need to use them on the Basilisk Gates as the pay off is too little on his side. I get a hit in here and there and bait out his Counterspell with Unfathomable Truths on his end step to follow it up with Bramble Wurms on my turn. At some point he can not remove or chump enough of my threats any more and I take Game 1.

Game 2

This one was super tight. Every land he played was a gate and he had too many Basilisk Gates to make shooting them worthwhile. I take a bit longer to develop and am continuously on the back foot, trying to deny his life linkers while staying in the game. At one point I see my out drawing near in surprising him with an attack, leaving me with no blockes into a Kaervek's Torch for exactly lethal. He taps down and I am elated that my plan is going to work out when he hits me with the absolute Jank that is Evil Presence on a Tron land. This play disabled my mana and left me stunned with only 6 honest mana to work with. Too little to remove the enchantment with Scour or Boulder .
I don’t like playing with honest mana >:(
Still, I manage to cling to dear life and deny his life gain creatures with Barrels of Blasting Jelly and Breath Weapon . Two turns later I have to make a decision: Do I shoot his Outlaw Medic with Torch to stall for another turn, hoping to hit Tron again OR do I cast Truths , which needed to net me exactly a dude and a land to develop my board while still being able to shoot down his cowboy with Torch ? After a bit of deliberation I go for the second option which happens to hit my one remaining Crop Rotation . I count it up, swing in with Rooftop Percher , Crop Rotate the Tron Land that he enchanted into a less swampy copy and suddenly have enough mana to shoot him down with Torch . I had three mana extra here which I also sank into the burn spell because I had them and I was overcooking and irrationally afraid of losing to a food or some other source of three life gain. What I should have done was anticipate a Spell Pierce which he could have paid for (+ Torch Tax) with his three untapped lands. He didn’t have it, my sanity persists for another day.

I am 2–0 and very proud and happy to finish this nail biter of a game with a win.

Match 3 – Christian on Spy

I know this deck very well as I used to play it in tournaments myself. Still, barely have I ever had the honour to play against it (except in Spy mirrors which are their own kind of clown show) and I don’t know if I’ll be fast enough to do a lot against it game 1.

Game 1

He starts with the usual Land Grant into Sagu Wildling . In his hand I see lots of draw spells but no Spy yet. I have two goals in this game: 1) Use Ancient Stirrings to dig for Unfathomable Truths to dig for Crop Rotations to be able to flash Bojuka Bog when he tries the combo and 2) Keep him off black mana for as long as possible to avoid getting spied while going for plan No. 1. He resolves a few draw spells while I manage to kill every black mana producing creature that he finds and seal the deal by exiling his only Swamp with a Boulder . I can’t find CropRots (I only see them in Ancient Stirrings lol) but the looming threat of him ripping a Lotus Petal of the top and spying anyway also doesn’t become reality. My Kill-Ships get stationed by a Wurm and its GG.

Game 2

The game starts similar to game 1 but his Land Grant is now showing me the full package of land tutors, Spy and Mesmeric Fiend . I start with a Crop Rotation in hand and quickly develop to 8 mana on board. At this point the whole game turns into a cat and mouse of him taking my CropRot with MesFiend and me taking it back with a 7 mana removal spell and keeping it open. Him deploying a black mana source and me doing nothing but spending 7 mana to destroy it while keeping 1 mana open to Crop for Bog . That whole time he is beating me down into single digit life totals with creatures he deploys using his near infinite green mana while crippling my board with Masked Vandals . I resist the temptation to resolve a threat myself and take the beatings, keeping up Crop and making sure that he can’t combo off. At some point I hit another mana source to develop my board while keeping the stand off going and draw into a Relic of Progenitus as well, allowing me to spend my mana more freely on balanced and honest creatures to stop his attackers and turn the tide.

3–0! I am super happy with the list and my performance. Every match had lots of situations where I could have seen my past self make mistakes and not see the lines. The new removal suite gives the deck lots of options to play interactive and have meaningful decisions. I was very proud I recognized the correct plays (like denying life linkers to keep Torch active and denying black mana to cripple spy ) and that those decisions won me the matches.

While taking a well deserved break outside (my first two matches had gone into time out) I talk to the other players about my next matchup. I’d be playing against Mono U fae. I believe this to be an alright matchup for me (or at the very least much more manageable for monster tron than for the piles I usually bring to tournaments) and I can already see it in front of me: Timtim – Der Schrecken von Köln. Could I really take home it home in my first tournament in Cologne? Parings get called and I sit down for my final match.

Match 4 – Stephan on …Bogles?!

Well yeah the people outside didn’t realize there was another player on 3–0.

Game 1+2

This is a 25% winrate matchup according to mtgdecks and that’s exactly the way this turned out. My only hope was catching his Bogle with a Breath Weapon while still smol or hitting his Ethereal Armors and Ancestral Masks with my Scours and Boulders while hoping that he’d be too slow to kill me in spite of it. This is not how these games went and my beautiful 4–0-dreams were swiftly turned into Urza’s Monster Mince Meat™. The one Scour I managed to smugly set up with Scry and hit off of a Maelstrom Colossus ran face first into a Tamiyo's Safekeeping 🙃

3rd place with 3–1. Still very happy with the result. And even happier after I realized that there are no prizes to be won in off-weeks in Cologne :D I had a great time talking with the players and exiling cards off Giant's Boulder . As a consolation prize I get myself a set of tokens from Jonas (match 2) and head to the pub to bother my work collegues with a retelling of this evening’s events. I will continue to bend my work trips around the Pauper Colonia tournament schedule <3