I had a pretty good Magic week!

It started off kind of choppy. I borrowed Elves from my podcast partner Rich Bucey for Pauper League but didn't do very well (1-2). That's okay! I followed up with nine points the next night after Patrick O'Halloran-Gannon convinced me to play another Pauper League event in Brooklyn.

Still, I was a little concerned. 1-2 with Llanowar Elves? I was planning on tapping Llanowar Elves in the Standard portion on Saturday. Even sooner though? I was planning on using them...

Thursday

Thursday was the Season Three Premodern League Finals. I had deliberately decided not to play as hard as I had the previous two seasons, where I ended up seeded first both times. I didn't win either. This time my lack of playing hard caught up with me and I had to scramble to even make the Top 8 cut, in part by jamming Phyrexian Dreadnought to a 3-0 / 6-0 on New Year's Day.

I ended up seeded seventh. Which was doubly great because I was just happy to have snuck into the Top 8, kind of wanted to be on the draw, and was going to dodge SWB in the quarterfinals. SWB absolutely crushed League in Season Three, winning five trophies over 10/11 available Thursday nights. For context I edged him out for first in Season Two, where we both earned two trophies. SWB is a fancy programmer and made an app to track our League performance. So, I could see I have about a lifetime 10% win rate against him.

Making the cut at all might have been job number one, but close behind was dodging SWB in the quarters.

So, I got Simon Penzer in the Top 8. Simon had a great Season Three, earning second seed with two trophies. He had played straight TerraGeddon all season, so I decided to metagame purely for that deck.

TerraGeddon is a pure midrange deck with cards like Sylvan Library, Swords to Plowshares, and its portmanteau namesakes, Terravore and Armageddon.

In that sense TerraGeddon is kind of a combo deck. If you have a Terravore in play, it gets lethal real quick when Armageddon resolves!

I decided to go with Elves as my anti-Simon deck:

Elves | Premodern | Michael Flores

• Creatures (38)
• 1 Anger
• 1 Caller of the Claw
• 1 Masticore
• 1 Skyshroud Poacher
• 1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
• 1 Yavimaya Granger
• 2 Nantuko Vigilante
• 2 Thornscape Battlemage
• 4 Deranged Hermit
• 4 Fyndhorn Elves
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Multani's Acolyte
• 4 Priest of Titania
• 4 Quirion Ranger
• 4 Wirewood Symbiote

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Survival of the Fittest

• Lands (19)
• 5 Forest
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 4 Gaea's Cradle
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 4 Wooded Foothills

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Druid Lyrist
• 4 Naturalize
• 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1 Uktabi Orangutan
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Thornscape Battlemage
• 4 Wall of Blossoms
• 2 Armageddon

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Elves is one of the best decks against TerraGeddon. You can deploy wide enough to go around a Terravore, and Armageddon kind of sucks against a deck that not only has Quirion Ranger, but can produce dozens of mana with 0-1 lands in play.

Simon and I split the first two games. In the second, I kept a two-lander (Forest and Mountain). He killed my first mana creature and then just tapped down my lone Forest all game while accumulating a battlefield.

Game 3 was the big play. TerraGeddon doesn't put up the most resistance in Game 1, but it usually has some number of Pyroclasms and Cataclysms after sideboarding. I deliberately overcommitted, trying to bait out the Cataclysm.

Simon obliged. I did a few tricks with Quirion Ranger to keep most of my mana (even though some ended up in hand) but I still buried several pointy-eared bodies. That's all right. Picking up Forests meant untapping mana Elves. When the dust cleared I played Caller of the Claw.

Which was about a Fireball for 14. Good enough to get me to the Top 4.

In the Top 4 Derek Heaton, my very longtime friend and rival, brought Mono-Blue Tinker. This one ended up being one of the most memorable matches of Premodern I've ever played.

Derek had Masticore both games... And if you look at my deck list, I had mostly 1/1 creatures.

In Game 1 I naturally paired my Masticore with Squee, Goblin Nabob (no Survival of the Fittest!) which essentially resulted in Derek having a Masticore he had to pay for versus my having a Masticore that - thanks to Gaea's Cradle - could at least tap his down most turns. In Game 2, Derek had all the mana in the world for his Masticore, but a lot of it came from Ancient Tomb. I was able to find the last two points thanks to Anger in my graveyard.

Predictably I got SWB for the Finals in a repeat of the Season Two Finals.

The League Championship took place prior to the recent banning, so SWB was allowed to try to defend his title with a Tide Control deck.

I had never played this matchup, but it seemed overwhelmingly favorable for Elves. I made a small mistake in one game by not returning a mostly-irrelevant Forest to my hand on my own turn, which would have resulted in SWB burgling one fewer land with his Tide Combo the next turn. Elves doesn't really care about the Tide Combo, I found. Not only can you pick up a potential victim with Quirion Ranger, but you can operate on just one or two lands anyway.

Anyway, I managed to not screw up! And against SWB! It was all matchup, though. I picked an archetype to get past a first-round TerraGeddon, and ended the tournament chipping away through an even more favorable matchup.

Our Hero is now also the @hexandcompany #premodern League Champion for Season Three!

TerraGeddon ?????????
Mono-U Tinker ????????
Mono-U Tide ???????? (@swbmtg)

Let's go Elves! pic.twitter.com/EO5DH2xWTM

— Michael Flores (@fivewithflores) January 16, 2026

That's a handsome deck, am I right?

Saturday

Saturday was the NYCIS Heavy Play Championship ("the Invitational"). Some of the best players in New York City qualified through a variety of big money tournaments... Everything from Cube draft to my beloved Premodern. My best finish in a qualifying event was Team Trios with Dan Sondike and Andy Levine (why I got into Pauper!)

The Invitational was three rounds of Standard, three rounds of Pauper, and a Top 8 draft of Lorwyn Eclipsed (yes, this was Prerelease weekend).

For Standard I played a version of the green Landfall deck I told you about last week:

Green Landfall | TLA Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (23)
• 3 Mossborn Hydra
• 4 Badgermole Cub
• 4 Icetill Explorer
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Mightform Harmonizer
• 4 Sazh's Chocobo

• Instants (4)
• 4 Snakeskin Veil

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Earthbender Ascension

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Lumbering Worldwagon

• Lands (25)
• 10 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 2 Ba Sing Se
• 4 Escape Tunnel
• 4 Fabled Passage
• 4 Hushwood Verge

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Seam Rip
• 3 Soul-Guide Lantern
• 2 Felidar Retreat
• 2 Scrapshooter
• 2 Sheltered by Ghosts
• 1 Mossborn Hydra
• 1 Vivien Reid

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Rebell sourced it for me from her friend Maeve. On the earlier subject of Llanowar Elves, when I returned the deck, I gifted Maeve four FBB Llanowar Elves from the mid-1990s in four different languages, which were a printings upgrade.

The deck was unsurprisingly everything I thought it would be.

I actually lost the first round of the Invitational to David Adelman. David was on Bant Airbending, which is one of the few decks in Standard that even has a shot against Landfall if I win the die roll.

I shipped my seven card hand, but kept Badgermole Cub into Lumbering Worldwagon on turn three. I had the attack on turn four, but David played Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius on turn two, and just met my incoming Worldwagon on turn three with Aang, Swift Savior.

... You can probably already guess what was in his hand for turn four.

Game 2 I was up something like 20 cards but had to fight through Avatar's Wrath.

How annoying is that? I got through the following turn with two piddly Sazh's Chocobos in play. I had the machinery rebuilt by the next turn, but David had had time to assemble his combo again.

0-1

I won the next two matchups of Dimir Midrange and Izzet Tiger-Seal. Dimir is supposed to be a bad matchup (and I was on the draw) but I just had enough two-for-ones. Tiger-Seal just doesn't have the right interaction to square up against the Green decks. I didn't help that they drew Spell Snare and there are barely any 2 mana spells in my deck.

I got out of Standard 2-1 and brought this to Pauper:

Dimir Terror | Pauper | Michael Flores

• Creatures (11)
• 3 Gurmag Angler
• 4 Tolarian Terror
• 4 Sneaky Snacker

• Instants (29)
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 3 Cast Down
• 4 Abandon Attachments
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Counterspell
• 4 Mental Note
• 4 Snuff Out
• 4 Thought Scour

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Deep Analysis
• 4 Lorien Revealed

• Lands (15)
• 10 Island
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Ice Tunnel
• 3 Contaminated Aquifer

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Annul
• 2 Steel Sabotage
• 2 Blue Elemental Blast
• 2 Hydroblast
• 2 Suffocating Fumes
• 2 Unexpected Fangs
• 1 Arms of Hadar

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My fourth round match was against Mora Steudel with Azorius Caw-Gates. We split the first two games and went to time in the third. I had what would have been a lethal Gurmag Angler, but wasn't going to get the chance to attack with it because we were in extra turns. "Show me interaction for this blocker," Mora said. I had the Snuff Out and she gave me the concession, which was obviously remarkably generous.

This match I made a kind of automatic mistake that I hope you can learn from. In Game 1, Mora played a Squadron Hawk and got the team. She later played a Brainstorm.

At the end of her turn, I Thought Scoured myself (like you do). But what I probably should have done was Thought Scour Mora. The likelihood was that she put two Squadron Hawks on top of her library to compound the power of both Squadron Hawk and Brainstorm.

If I had Thought Scoured her, I would have specifically put two Squadron Hawks into the graveyard. As it was those were two Squadron Hawks I had to get through to win the game.

I was on the camera feature for Round Five, but offered the Intentional Draw with Ryan Davis on Mono-Blue Terror. Ryan is currently in second place in the New York Pauper League and has a ridiculous 93% win rate with the Terror deck over 15 matches. We agreed it would be better to draw and potentially both make Top 8 (we did).

I won my last round against a Sunscape Familiar deck, so was through Pauper 2-0-1.

For Lorwyn Eclipsed, I had gotten some coaching from Jon Becker the day before. He told me he thought I'd be able to get Run Away Together late; and to pair Run Away Together with "the new Man-o'-War" (Rimekin Recluse). I added a Springleaf Drum, cut a land down to 16, and ended up with a pretty spectacular Merfolk deck.

You can watch both my semi finals and finals matches here.

I really loved the arc of commentary as the two matches went by. I misplayed a new card in my semifinal match (Blight 2 instead of Blight 1). No one stopped the match, despite it being on camera. The Head Judge told me later he didn't think it affected the outcome of the game, but I still felt pretty bad, especially for my opponent who had been up a game at the time. Forrest was exceptionally cool, and when I won Game 3, he congratulated me and wished me luck in the finals. What a class act.

I'm really proud of how I played the Finals. If you get a chance to watch the replay, I think it's worth the few minutes. I'll just say this: Play to your outs. First figure out what they are, and then play to them. The opponent simply doesn't always have the cards to put you away.

NYC has its first Champion!

Congratulations to @fivewithflores for figuring out who's the beat down! He took down the NYC Invitational Series Heavy Play Championship with a 7-1-1 record crushing the opposition. pic.twitter.com/ehFrRuRLzt

— Pactdoll Terror (@Jenn_the_Judge) January 18, 2026

I looked pretty g-d fat and sweaty by the end of the day, but in my defense, the camera lights were pretty hot and the day week was long. Still, it ended up amazing.

I couldn't have done it without the points that Dan and Andy helped me earn, Rebell and Maeve hooking me up with my Standard deck, Becker coaching me on how to draft, or Mora being so selfless. But the one person I really want to thank is Jenn the Judge. Jenn runs my Premodern League, my Pauper League, all the feeders to the Invitaional, and the big show itself. Given this was just the prerelease, she probably put 80 hours in this week. Thanks Jenn! And thanks everyone.

LOVE

MIKE