Rodrigo Togores won the Vintage tournament of the first ever MKM Series in Rome and he's back again this weekend to add a few more strong finishes to his resume. I sat down with him and talked a little about yesterday's Vintage event as well as today's Modern tournament.

I assumed that most of the Spanish players made the trip by car, however, Rodrigo was quick to point out that the journey from Madrid takes around 8 hours. Not too surprisingly, that's why him and most of his friends instead travelled by plane, while the players from Barcelona were fine with the car (only a 4 hour ride).

Since Spain dominated both the first and the second Vintage tournament in the MKM Series, I wanted to know a little more about the community in Rodrigo's country. He told me that there are a lot of Vintage players in Barcelona; around 50 regulars are showing up each month for their league events.
In Madrid, they have attendance numbers between 20 and 30 players for their events. Rodrigo estimates the community to be around 60 players in total, but many of the Vintage fans have a lot of other responsibilities like work and family and it's sometimes hard to find the time to play some Magic when there are so many other things going on in your life.

What about the metagame in those communities?

“The metagame is not always as diverse in our community, unfortunately. We've met up for playtesting before and out of 5 guys, 3 were playing the same decks. This weekend, there are 9 guys sharing an apartment in Toulouse and out of them, 7 are playing the same deck.”

According to Rodrigo, even though it sometimes appears like there's not that much innovation in Vintage, the format can change quite a bit from event to event.

“At the moment, Dredge isn't too popular as there's a lot of hate running around against it. While you'll still be able to win the first game rather often, there's little you can do against the anti cards that are being introduced from the sideboard. It can also get repetitive over the course of an event, so many players refrain from running it as they prefer to play the decks that can adapt a bit more to changing game states.”

This weekend, Rodrigo went with the exact same list he played in Rome and that helped him claim the title back then. He had a great start, but some stomach aches caused him to lose his focus and he couldn't quite keep up his perfect record a little later into the day.

While Rodrigo was somewhat familiar with the new take on the MUD deck, he wasn't aware that it was this powerful as he'd never seen it live in action before. He is still feeling confident about the 60 cards he brought to the table, but he now considers adding a little hate against the MUD deck. It really is a trade-off in Vintage where you sometimes need to main deck some silver bullets to combat some of the other popular decks that can wreak havoc on you.

Rodrigo Togores was busy collecting points as always!

Rodrigo Togores was busy collecting points as always!

Today, he's enrolled in the Modern tournament and he relies on the Ad Nauseum combo (spoiler: he's also gonna play it tomorrow!). It's not that widely known; in the very first round this morning, his opponent had to call over a judge three times. This can really play into your cards; the element of surprise is often a huge difference maker. Rodrigo went on and pointed out that even if your opponent is familiar with the inner workings of the deck, you can often overcome them and walk away victorious.

His expectation for the day depends a lot on his draws. He says that if he's drawing into the right cards, it's easy to end up in the top cut, but if he won't see Ad Nauseum, there's really nothing he can do.

His thoughts about the MKM Series in general are that the prizes are really attractive and that it's a shame there aren't more players attending them. Some of this might have been a result of some organizational issues, however, it appears that they have been addressed in the right manner and truly are a thing of the past now. Overall, Rodrigo is feeling confident that if the tournament organizers and the sponsors MagicCardMarket keep this up, more players will eventually show up.

Speaking of showing up, there's also a very high chance we'll see him and his friends both in Prague in October for the third stop of the MKM Series as well as in his hometown Madrid even later this year!