An interview with MPDC WORLDS 26 winner - MyGalaxy!

Yet another tournament and yet another winner! Sincere congratulations to our dedicated community member MyGalaxy! Without further ado, let's move on to the interview.

Could you please introduce yourself?

My real name is Andrej. I am 31 years old, married, live in Germany and work at a finance data vendor. 

What is your identity as a wizard? J (Colors and archetypes you prefer, favourite cards and formats)

I think it is Bant (BGU) and Simic (GU). But I play pretty much any color.  I also like RDW a lot. 

Earlier I preferred monocolored decks, but under the influence of Chip I started to play 3-colors.

I don’t like BU, it reminds me of flicker and mill (Editor: Guess what I played, while these archetypes were available ;)).

How did you start playing Magic? MTGO? Standard Pauper?

I knew about magic since school years. 3 years ago I discovered Duel of the Planeswalkers and was wondering if there is a possibility to play with a human opponent online. And this how I found MTGO. Joekewwl introduced me to the STD Pauper format. I am very thankful for this.

What led you to playing the deck you won with?

I wanted to find an answer to WW with enchants. So I moved into GW colors. With the introduction of Invasive Species i could bounce lands, Phonetic Prism ( I primarly wanted to bounce this artifact, because I find it somehow cool:D) and creatures. To ger some power in the air I added raptors. Blue brought negates vs mill decks and more bounce with Peel from reality.

In the process of testing, I noticed, that bouncing are not enough and it would be good to kill some creatures, so I added black gatekeepers and Duress.

Would you play that deck again in a tournament? If no, why?

No, because almost everything from it rotated.

Could you explain some of the more interesting choices in your decklist?

Everything there is pretty much logical. I have lifegain, remove in form of -2/-2, bouncing, ench hate. In the last 2 events I added Zephyr Charge. It is 1U enchantment which gives a creature flying for 1U. It is not a very good card, but it helped to win 3 games (and matches with it) when the table was stalled.

A short recap of the tournament?

The event was good as always. Strange, that we had so few players. 2 weeks ago we had 20+ players and now to Worlds with a bigger prize pool I expected about 30 players.

I had 2 very had matches vs Mill. I sided whips and Dispels out for this event, so it was only Negate and Duress after SB, which could help. But I was really lucky this day. Muzac didn’t draw any remove/counter/GY lifegain in G1 and I won 2-1.

The hardest was to win vs Garth_Edu in top 8. I really thought I am going to lose. In the second game I played 75 cards and just passed 19 turns when we had 19 and 30 cards in our libraries. So I kinda milled him really slow:D

What do you consider to be the best archetypes at the moment?

My deckJ It can beat everything (except very fast RDW maybe). And BW Enchants is tough, but doable.

What is your strategy against these top decks?

Exile/destroy Aetherial armor and we are done here.

 Do you think there were any metagame differences in the Worlds in comparison to regular MPDC/SPDC tournaments?

I think top 8 of worlds represents pretty much all archetypes, which were played during this season. GW aura was something new, but it was much easier match for me after all mills and gwyned’s tokens.

 Do you belong to Standard Pauper Players clan? What benefits do you feel from being in the clan?

Yes I do. I can see if some of players are online (if not a buddy) and can ask for a test game. 

What led you to join the clan?

Adner led me to join the clan;=)

MTGO is not the best instrument for clans and groups imo. It is not a MMO, where ppl MUST play in group to achieve success. So it doesn’t feel really different being a clan member or not. Sadly.

 Is there anything intriguing you in Khans? What deck will you play first after KTK release?

I don’t know yet what to play in STD pauper, but I usually start a season with aggro. So RDW probably. I think BG pack-GY-with-creatures-get-a-big-guy-out decks will be around.

What cards are you sad to see leaving post-rotation?

Centaur Healer, Cloudfin Raptor, extort cards.

 Do you have any tips for a new Standard Pauper player trying to Top 8 his first tournament?

You must pretest a deck you are going to play. I faced some guys trying to play my deck, BW Enchants Control or Mill without really knowing what to do in which situation. They played wrong or slow. Testing is very important. 

 Anything else I forgot to mention?

I would like to shout out to gwyned for letting us play MPDC, joekewwl, DrChrisBaker for SPDC, Adner, beatnikbobby (go, bobby, go!), Malum (pity he doesn’t play), Chip (he doesn’t play either), Mundisv, rremedio1, BigBee and the rest of the guys who make together a small, but cool STD pauper community!