Hooglandia Standard Open: Top 8 Tournament Decklists featuring Midnight Hunt

The Hooglandia Open is a series of tournaments hosted by well-known streamer Jeff Hoogland where players pay a nominal entry fee and compete for store credit at CoolStuffInc.com. On Sunday, the Hooglandia Standard Open was billed as “the first MTG Arena Standard tournament with full coverage post rotation” and was among the first tournaments featuring new cards from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt.

These early-format events are a great opportunity to get a preview of what the competitive Standard format might look like going forward. In this article, we’re going to review the Top 8 results and decklists from the event. The tournament came to a very close ending, with the final match ending with a timeout in game 3 moments before a lethal attack would have reversed the result.

You can watch the recorded live coverage of the event on Jeff Hoogland’s Twitch page.

For more tournament coverage from the weekend, check out the results from the first post-rotation MTGO Standard Challenge:

MTGO Standard Challenge: Top 8 Tournament Decklists featuring Midnight Hunt

Top 8 Standings

Rank	Player	Deck	Record
1	Christopher Williams	Selesnya Aggro	10-1
2	James Rutherford	Orzhov Midrange	9-2
3	prototypeinsession	Mono Green Aggro	7-2
4	Adam Hernandez	Jund Midrange	7-2
5	BonelessWingBonerKing	Rakdos Sacrifice	6-2
6	Riley Hicks	Izzet Dragons	6-2
7	DougMTG	Simic Midrange	5-2
8	Tomas Pokorny	Gruul Aggro	5-2

The Top 8 from this tournament looks a lot different from the MTGO Standard Challenge we reviewed, where Gruul aggro decks were dominant. Gruul and Mono Green achieved one Top 8 finish each, which is still very respectable. The two archetypes have a number of cards in common, including Esika’s Chariot (which is usually a four-of in both archetypes) and the new planeswalker Wrenn and Seven.

The rest of the Top 8 was quite diverse, with no two decks sharing an archetype. Christopher Williams barely managed to eek out the win against James Rutherford who timed out just moments before he would have won with a lethal attack. Both decks performed great at the event and made for exciting gameplay all around.

Christopher Williams’ Selesyna Lands deck also plays Wrenn and Seven and some ramp alongside Scute Swarm and top end payoffs in the form of Storm the Festival and the MDFC Emeria’s Call.

Meanwhile, James Rutherford was playing an Orzhov Midrange deck that’s very similar to the decks that saw heavy play in the Standard 2022 format on Arena. His version of the deck isn’t running too many new cards from Midnight Hunt, but he has included one copy each of the midrange-y angel Liesa, Forgotten Archangel and the versatile sweeper enchantment The Meathook Massacre.

There are many other interesting lists to go through, and we encourage you to browse all of the Top 8 decklists included below. Full results from the event can be found on the tournament’s MTGMelee page.

Top 8 Decklists