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Yet another qualifier in the Red Bull Untapped series of online tournaments took place over the weekend. This time it was United Kingdom players to battle it out for the right to advance to the Red Bull Untapped Finals later this year. 124 players enrolled for UK qualifier event, which consisted of seven rounds of Swiss leading to the Top 8 bracket.
Metagame Breakdown
Red Bull Untapped Online Qualifier UK saw a relatively small number of Reclamation decks registered – both Temur and Four-Color variants have amounted to a little over 25% of the metagame. Compare it to the Players Tour Finals that took place on the same weekend – there, the half of the field was running Wilderness Reclamation decks. This difference can be explained when the stakes of the event are taken into consideration. In a less money-heavy event players are more eager to play ‘for fun’ and register anything else but the best deck in the format just to avoid tiresome mirrors.
The balance in the local meta of this tourney was shifted very much towards aggro strategies, that were very present in the field and performed much better than the so-called ‘Tier 1’ decks (Reclamation and Bant Ramp). It was a great day to sleeve Mono-Green (62% winrate), as well as Mono-White (56%) and Mono-Red (54%). Probably inspired by Michael Jacobs’s deep run in the Players Tour, Mardu Winota players showed up on the day with a stunning 60% winrate.
Archetype | % of Field | Winrate (exc. mirrors) |
Temur Reclamation | 15.3226% | 46.3415% |
Four-color Reclamation | 11.2903% | 50% |
Bant Ramp | 7.2581% | 42.5% |
Mono-G Stompy | 4.8387% | 62.5% |
Mardu Winota | 4.8387% | 60.8696% |
Mono-G Aggro | 4.0323% | 43.4783% |
Azorius Control (Yorion) | 4.0323% | 47.8261% |
Mono-Red Aggro | 4.0323% | 54.1667% |
Mono-Green Aggro | 4.0323% | 55.1724% |
Sultai Ramp | 3.2258% | 41.1765% |
Rakdos Sacrifice | 3.2258% | 48% |
Jund Sacrifice | 2.4194% | 73.6842% |
Rakdos Jegantha | 2.4194% | 45.4545% |
Mono-White Aggro | 2.4194% | 56.25% |
Mono-B Aggro | 2.4194% | 30% |
Jund Sacrifice has the highest winrate in the tournament. It was carried almost solely by the insane run of the 1st place winner Luke Hancock, who finished with 9-1 overall record. His list is fairly stock in both maindeck and sideboard choices, being skewed towards Reclamation and Bant matchups with 3 Bolas’s Citadels in his 60 cards. Hancock run over most of his opponents with a sweeping 2-0’s, but in the finals he had to fight Chris Arlow’s Four-Color Reclamation list feroiciously to a 2-1 victory. Below is the full Top 8 bracket:
As you can see, Red Bull Untapped Online Qualifier UK had quite a diverse Top 8 – shared between 2 Reclamation decks, Bant Ramp, Jund Sacrifice, Mono-Green and Mono-White. Note the other two very spicy lists that made it into the play-offs as well – Freddie Barber evoked a blast from the past with his Golgari Adventures deck, while Joshua Mulligan brought a Four-Color Planeswalkers build starring Nicolas Bolas, Dragon God.
Decklists
Check out 16 highest-placed decks of Red Bull Untapped Online Qualifier UK below! (Source: MTG Melee)