This is a translation from Italian. The original article can be found here.

The MOLE Destination Qualifier – EUL Premier was one of the first real testing grounds for Modern following the latest round of bans and unbans. Between a highly fragmented field, the return of updated archetypes, and Affinity’s victory, the tournament paints the picture of a format still taking shape, where data can help guide decisions but cannot explain everything.

Because, as this Top 8 demonstrates, the deck matters, but it is ultimately the player who makes the difference.

Deep Into The Tournament: MOLE Destination Qualifier – EUL Premier

Hey boys and girls, since on 24/05/2026 I organized a tournament for our favorite card game, you now get a proper TO retrospective full of suspense, gameplay data, tournament analysis, and a few conceptual easter eggs.

Last Sunday, the second MOLE Destination Qualifier of 2026 took place. The event qualified the top four players for the Regional Championship in Ghent, taking place on 9-11 October 2026. That Regional Championship will, in turn, qualify its top players for the most prestigious paper Magic tournaments: the World Championship and the Pro Tour. For more information about the event, you can visit the official page here: https://www.fanfinity.gg/event/ultimate-guard-european-magic-series-regional-championship-ghent-2026/

But that was not all. This MOLE Destination Qualifier was also an EUL Premier Event. The European Unity League is an independent European competitive circuit that qualifies players for its top-level events, namely the National Championships of each country and the European Championship, through a mixed system of points and direct qualifications. You can find more information on the official website here: https://unityleague.gg/info/

On top of this pile of qualifications, the additional prizes awarded to the Top 16, and the highest possible EUL multiplier, I also decided to commission a commemorative trophy for the tournament champion.

That was what was on the table. Now let’s talk about the game.

The first look at post-ban Modern

The format chosen for the tournament was Modern. This event was one of the first paper tournaments we can look at to observe the formation of a new metagame after the latest Banned and Restricted announcement. Just five days before the Destination Qualifier, Modern was affected by two bans and two unbans. Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury and Lotus Field left the format, while Violent Outburst and Umezawa's Jitte returned through the side door.

After this change, Modern experienced a significant drop in active players. This was probably, at least in part, a natural effect. These changes affected the decklists of Boros Energy, Jeskai Blink, Amulet Titan, and 5c Domain across the board. Players who mostly relied on those decks still had to figure out how to modify their archetypes, or what to play instead in an undefined metagame.

Inside the clouds of these still uncertain choices, let’s see what this MOLE Destination Qualifier – EUL Premier has to tell us. The field distribution was the following:

1. U/R Affinity 10.3%
2. U/B/W Goryo
3. U/R Prowess
4. Living End
5. Broodscale Combo
6. Eldrazi Tron
7. U/G Ritual 5.2%
8. U/G/R Rhinos 3.4%
9. U/R Ruby Storm 3.4%
10. Amulet Titan 3.4%
11. W/B Ponza 3.4%
12. Others 36.4%

The Others category includes all decks played by players that did not reach 3% metashare. Since it made up more than one third of the field in a competitive tournament, this is already a meaningful data point. A substantial part of the players decided to play outside the pre-ban metagame instead of trying to update it.

Another part of the metagame chose to take advantage of the unban of Violent Outburst by updating Living End or rebuilding U/G/R Rhinos. However, this significant minority had the lowest win rate of the entire field. It is especially interesting that, between the two, the deck that was supposed to be the favorite, Living End, performed worse.

Here is the Swiss-only win rate for the most represented decks:

1. Broodscale Combo 75%
2. U/R Prowess 57.4%
3. U/R Ruby Storm 50%
4. W/R Ponza 50%
5. U/B/W Goryo 48.3%
6. U/G Ritual 47.2%
7. Eldrazi Tron 41.7%
8. U/R Affinity 44.8%
9. Amulet Titan 41.7%
10. U/G/R Rhinos 40%
11. Living End 29.4%

Broodscale Combo and the best metagame read

The best metagame read came from the players who chose Broodscale Combo. The deck came out untouched by this round of bans and started with three major advantages.

First, it has the most efficient selection package in the format: Malevolent Rumble , Ancient Stirrings , and, for those who play it, Traverse the Ulvenwald . Second, it is probably the deck that makes the best use of Kozilek's Command . Finally, besides having a clean two-card combo with Basking Broodscale and Blade of the Bloodchief , it also has dynamic alternative win conditions through Glaring Fleshraker and, sometimes, Walking Ballista .

A deck like this concentrates most of its difficulty in understanding when to improve card quality and when to deploy threats. In the post-ban environment, it was the deck that, on one hand, did not need to change its play pattern at all and, on the other hand, had the easiest access to an unfair advantage that was difficult to contain.

One could think that luck also contributed to increasing the deck’s win rate. U/B/W Goryo was very present in the metagame, and that is theoretically positive for Broodscale. The deck can use the last mode of Kozilek's Command very well as graveyard hate against Goryo targets. In practice, however, there was only one match between the two decks during the tournament, and it ended in a draw. So luck contributed very little to its result.

Amulet Titan after the ban

Another interesting point was the non-negligible presence of Amulet Titan. It is a very strong deck, but it had not been extremely popular recently and was affected by the ban of Lotus Field , although only mildly. Still, it did not perform well. It had no Top 8 conversion and few wins in the Swiss rounds.

There is also an unusual detail that I am not sure how to evaluate: Amulet Titan recorded 75% of its wins against decks that had been upgraded or downgraded by the banlist update, such as Living End, U/G/R Rhinos, and Energy decks without Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury . On the other hand, 85% of its losses came against decks that were untouched by the ban. This could be a practical data point suggesting that, among the weakened archetypes, Amulet Titan may be the one least affected by the recent format change.

U/R Prowess and the fair side of Modern

The participation and win rate of U/R Prowess were also meaningful. The players who made this choice performed slightly below expectations, but their reasoning was sound. It is a solid and linear deck, without any major card loss, that does its job and keeps gaining excellent tools.

If one wants to play a U/R base, the main options are Prowess, Affinity, or Ruby Storm. Against Affinity, however, it is reasonable to expect players to integrate a strong plan against zero-mana spells, since the deck is very present. And indeed, this tournament was won by Affinity, but its performance ratio was mediocre.

Ruby Storm, on the other hand, has the best matchups against Blink decks. But those decks were a category whose dominant version, Jeskai Blink, was destroyed by the removal of Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury . So it was reasonable to expect the category to have very low representation.

This argument, however, can also be reversed. Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury also pushed an already declining deck, Domain Aggro, completely off the radar. Ruby Storm had a terrible matchup against Domain, so bringing it could also have been correct.

The truth is that, in an unclear metagame, U/R Prowess, a proactive deck, gives more statistical safety than a linear combo deck that is easy to prepare against and that sees more and more playable tools that prevent players from casting more than one spell per turn.

I think all of these elements should have pushed players toward U/R Prowess. The deck has only one problem: every power play from the other Modern decks is stronger. This creates the paradoxical situation where U/R Prowess becomes one of the fairest decks in the format. That is exactly why it did not shine, even though its Performance Ratio was 11% higher than the rest of the metagame.

Performance Ratio and the Top 8

Performance Ratio is a metric that is almost never provided to players, yet I find it one of the most relevant tools for understanding how a deck behaves and how much of a result comes from the player. As a quick example, here is the Top 8 of the winning decks, their win rate, this time including Swiss and playoffs, and their Performance Ratio:

1. Decio Sacco U/R Affinity / Winrate 50% / 0%
2. Milos Mrkic W/R Ponza / Winrate 53.3% / +6%
3. Marcio Fodi Broodscale Combo / Winrate 72.5% / +45%
4. Niccolò Possati B/G Yawgmoth / Winrate 68.8% / +38%
5. Simone Crivellin U/B/G Goryo / Winrate 46.7% / -7%
6. Lorenzo Simeoni U/W Blink / Winrate 71.4% / +43%
7. Pietro Maria Oltolina U/R Prowess / Winrate 55.4% / +11%
8. Riccardo Puglia Blue Moon / Winrate 64.3% / +29%

The most interesting evaluation here is that the player in first place and the player in fifth place achieved excellent tournament results even though their decks, as a group, had neutral or negative performance. This allows us to remember two important lessons about this beautiful game.

The first is that tournaments are won by players, not decks. Decio Sacco, in first place, and Simone Crivellin, in fifth place, did not reach those results because their decks were especially well positioned in this specific tournament, but because they knew how to pilot them masterfully despite starting at a disadvantage. Netdecking their lists while believing they were intrinsically the strongest would be a logical mistake. From that point of view, any other deck in the Top 8 was better. Both players belong to the competitive Team Trecani, which never misses a chance to demonstrate its quality of play and thought.

The second important lesson is that the game is not only mathematics. I always enjoy doing advanced statistical analysis and interpreting data. It is very useful to obtain logical evidence with a high degree of certainty. However, the philosophy of the game cannot be reduced to the philosophy of arithmetic.

A player who is comfortable with and well prepared on a deck that is disadvantaged compared to the metagame average can absolutely close the gap and surpass a player who chose a very well-positioned deck but does not have the same preparation behind it. For example, Pietro Maria Oltolina and Milos Mrkic piloted decks whose Performance Ratio was very limited, even if positive. Yet they converted into the Top 8 ahead of other decks in the room, such as Broodscale Combo, which showed much more relevant advantage rates. As always in Magic, having the best tool matters a lot, but knowing how to use it matters just as much.

What makes a format beautiful?

This topic is particularly dear to me. I often use it in many different contexts. For example, when I teach new players how to approach Magic, I am often asked: “What is the most beautiful format?”

This question seems innocent, but it is actually very deep. If we do not reduce it to mere personal taste, meaning “the most beautiful format is the one I like the most”, then the question should be read as: “What is the healthiest format?” In other words, the format where everyone can win through effort, without most games being decided by a die roll. That is, the distributive fairness of victory under equal conditions.

I will not say here which format I currently think is the best in Magic, but it is well known that I find the usual arguments used to answer this question poor and banal: “It is the most balanced format”, “the cheapest one”, “the one with the most stable metagame”, “the one with only two or three Tier 1 decks”, and so on.

The answer I usually give is this: “The most beautiful format in Magic: The Gathering is the one where the factor that matters most for victory is the player’s in-game skill.” Everything fits inside this answer. All discussions about color balance, power level, metagame variability, and so on. It tells us everything, and it is so simple.

The most played cards

Returning to the tournament, the three most played cards were Consign to Memory , Mystical Dispute , and Force of Negation . This means that players feel the need to have efficient and fast tools to stop an opposing line or protect their own, regardless of the strategy they are using.

Of course, this does not mean that all decks played those cards. It means that all players were prepared either to stop a sudden acceleration, to win through a sudden acceleration, or to expect being stopped when they started accelerating toward the Fundamental Turn and wanted to answer the obstacle, as with Mystical Dispute .

From this, we can infer that the format, as is well known, tends to tear apart the timing of the game. This inevitably develops certain skills. It means that some decisions, such as keeping or mulliganing, must be handled more carefully than in other formats. It also rewards accurate reading of interaction even when the opponent is tapped out. But it also means that the format tends to depend more heavily on the die roll and mulligan quality. Positive sides and negative sides. The final judgment is left to the readers.

Top player decklists

Together with the rest of the opinions, here are the decklists of the top players:

Two spicy lists: Blue Moon and Grixis Reanimator

I would like to continue the article with a few notes of color on two spicy lists: Riccardo Puglia’s Blue Moon and Andrea Incerti’s Grixis Reanimator. These are two decks that performed very well and come from far away.

Blue Moon is an old-school control deck, but it has changed a lot. At the beginning of last year, it was still playing a core made of Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void to lock out every opposing plan. Alongside that, it included old-style tempo plays such as Fire // Ice tapping a land during the opponent’s upkeep in the early turns. That play itself comes from the same line once used with Gigadrowse years earlier.

All of that is now gone. Puglia built a much leaner list, where only one Blood Moon remains in the main deck. It almost looks like a different deck. But it is truly a beautiful display of style and deckbuilding work. I especially appreciated the main deck integration of new cards such as Traumatic Critique , a card that has also been much discussed in Standard.

As for Grixis Reanimator, it is always nice to see this kind of deck in the format because it follows a play pattern that is truly different from the rest. Knowing when to use looting effects profitably is not obvious, and the deck’s tricks against specific hate are very enjoyable. For example, responding to an opponent’s Surgical Extraction targeting our Archon of Cruelty by exiling it with the last ability of Psychic Frog .

The two Force of Despair in the sideboard were also very beautiful, providing an asymmetric wrath effect that is always appreciated. Here is the list, together with our compliments:

Matchup predators

To close in style, I built the matchup matrix of the 11 most represented decks. Then I deleted all results except the ones where one deck presented itself as a predator of another. Predator means that it won 100%, or almost 100%, of the matches every time the two decks met, even after sideboarding. I excluded all samples made up of only one match, from which no statistically meaningful conclusions can be drawn, as well as drawn matches and mirror matches.

Final words

This concludes the TO retrospective on the tournament. Remember to check your position in the EUL ranking to make sure your points have been correctly assigned. For those who do not know the circuit yet: it is real. Go to your trusted WPN stores and ask them to offer European Unity League tournaments, starting from simple local events and going all the way up to the European Championship at the end of the season. You can find all useful information here: https://unityleague.gg/info/

It was very beautiful.

See you Space Cowboy

Francesco