Tim van der Lans was another one of the 2016 SuperFinals competitors who I wanted to talk to, not least because he qualified for three of them! Said van der Lans, “I'm actually pretty nervous about the events. I want to put up some good results and hope to play all three with the time available. Last year, I won the Modern SuperFinals after an 8-2 score in the main event, but Legacy is the format I would really love to win.”

Van der Lans did a lot of Vintage testing in preparation for the SuperFinals, but mentioned the recent restrictions of Gush and Gitaxian Probe as a source of worry. “For Legacy I'm still undecided about a lot of slots in every list as a result of the banning of Sensei's Divining Top.”

In any case, van der Lans had to settle on three decks. “In Vintage, I'm playing Planeswalker Control; first Monastery Mentor, but I'm glad to be playing with Time Vault and Tinker now.

“In the Legacy SuperFinals, I'll play Storm even though I played Elves in Sunday's Legacy main event. I love Elves, it's good and maybe even better now that Miracles is gone. But I wanted to avoid the Elves mirror match. The players in the SuperFinals are likely better at beating Elves too.

“For Modern, I was torn between Ad Nauseam and Grixis Death's Shadow. I guess combo is the better choice because I don't play enough Modern to know the ins and outs of every deck to be able to grind fair games. So I try to play something unfair for a change, both in Modern and Legacy, and hope to be rewarded with some good hands. That's golden in single elimination!”

Finally, I also asked van der Lans about his thoughts on the change from the end-of-season SuperFinals playoffs to the new MKMS Power Eight payout …

“I like the change,” he said, “but I'll probably not make it because I'll only be able to manage to play three out of five events this year.”