ATOG EDITION

[July 2021, 33 players]

The very beginning

It was December 2020, with all expectations of returning to normality after a global pandemic and considering the rise of Magic The Gathering ("MTG") games via webcam, the writer (Santiago Góngora) organized a tournament through the Facebook group PREMODERN MTG ARGENTINA, after doing a survey that about 15-20 positive votes for the option obviously, I'm in!.

What was the outcome? Four interested people and zero games played.

We move into the future until June 2021, where some of us were already participating in the Premodern Monthly (T.O. Andrew Walker) and Hispanoesfera (T.O. Carlos Orellana) webcam tournaments, but at the same time several casual games was organized and played through the Premodern Argentina WhatsApp group.

After participating in an IRL tournament at Magic Lair and returning home, the discussion about why there were several players in the community who were not participating in those webcam tournaments arised, and the most common responses were: I want to play just with the people from Argentina community.., I have no interest in meeting other people, I am afraid of not being able to coordinate the matches.

I show minimal interest in developing something of my own and I receive messages from two guys: Francisco Coria and Pablo Covicchioni, we are quickly in create a Whatsapp group between the three of us and ideas begin to emerge: name, rules, ways to encourage to the community and everything else, everything else is a history that I will tell you below...

It's all start with a smile, that damned smile...

About the name, the structure of the tournament and everything else

I don't remember how it was exactly, but I do remember that it was very easy. We are Argentinians and we like atogs, so someone mentioned the name and it was immediately chosen.

Regarding the tournament's sheets, the way to register, the way to uploading the results and decks, etc. We owe everything to the models of Andrew Walker, organizer of the Premodern Monthly's planetary-scale tournament (if you are reading, thank you very much Andrew!).

About the tournament structure: there are 11 atogs in the Premodern sets, one of them is the Lord Atogatog, so we decided that the Argentog will be a serie of 10 tournaments, each named as one of the atogs (Atog, Foratog, Chronatog, Necratog, Auratog, Lithatog, Phantatog, Psychatog, Sarcatog and Thaumatog), to conclude the entire series with an special Lord's tournament.

In addition to the number of tournaments, we had clearly in mind what the purpose was: to have fun and promote camaraderie among the community in a more relaxed environment. For that we needed an incentive both: for them to participate and to do so by moving away from the tier decks, so we decided to give the following prizes:

An altered atog card for the winner.
An altered card for the most original deck.

We were going to do the alteration ourselves, but we intended for the second prize to be something more fun than useful, which is why the card chosen was the Uktabi Orangutan, an art that does not need any comment.

Concept art of the prize for the champion

Argentinian Joke that is not translatable into English

What happened after? Casually, Fran had a friend who made card alterations. We immediately contacted her (the previos concept art show all our capabilities) so we sent her the cards to make the work, which you will be able to enjoy at the end of this tournament report.

Now, let's talk about the Argentog - Atog Edition

After a 10-day registration period, 33 players signed up for the tournament, with both experienced players from the community and rookies, Argentinians and Chileans. We highlight the participation of Maximiliano Argüello Sosa, a reference and promoter of the format in Argentina, as well as Javier Luna, owner of Magic Lair, a store where the format is played in the City of Buenos Aires.

In the group stage, the players were randomly divided into 6 groups in which each player had 4 games to play.

After two weeks of group stage and 64 played games, the cut to the Top 16 was made, in which we had four players with a 4-0 record, with Pablo Covicchioni (Stasis) standing out in first place.

In the lower positions, Pol Tavarone (False Cure) and GP (Fires) entered the top in the 15th and 16th positions, who qualified with a 2-2 record but with a winrate greater than 50%.

The meta in the Top 16 includes 14 different archetypes, the only ones that are repeated being Goblins and Stasis, and which would be represented in the semifinals.

Juan Manuel Estrugamou (RG Goblins) reached the Top 4 after beating Mono Black Aggro and Wake Control, who played against Martín Profumo (Stasis), who had beaten RG Goblins and Fires. In that first semifinal, RG Goblins won 2-0, so Captain Estruga, an experienced player from La Banda del Monored (a group of red players from Argentina), entered to the final.

The other semifinal was reached by Santiago Góngora (GW Oath Control) after beating Reanimator and RecSur. The last semi-finalist would be Cristian Wisner (BG Braids), who left Deadguy Ale and The Solution (aka SSS) behind. In this semi-final Cristian won, with a deck of his own invention and who would also participate in the prize for the most original deck.

In the final, Juan Manuel Estrugamou (RG Goblins) beat Cristian Wisner (BG Braids) 2-1 in a very close match, demonstrating that the goblins were, are and will be one of the strongest archetypes in the format.

After all the games have been played, and having the information of each of the games of the entire tournament, the first edition of Argentog left us the following meta and the winrate of each archetype:

Having crowned Captain Estruga with his RG Goblins, we moved on to voting for the most original deck, where the Argentog organizers have chosen 6 decks for the survey. After 31 votes, the winning deck was Federico Kleiner's BG Beast. Below you can enjoy all the decks that were elected:

With this we bring to a close this recap of the first edition of the Argentog - Atog Edition, that was played in July 2021, but not before of share with you the lists published in TCDecks and the Top 4 gallery, and finally what was promised: the prizes.

TCDecks: Argentog - #1 Atog Edition

ATOG EDITION CHAMPION

Juan Manuel Estrugamou

MOST ORIGINAL DECK

Federico Kleiner

What's next?

We know that from July 2021 to the present, many significant changes were made in the format as a whole and also its community.

During this time we had a lot of new decks, changes in the banlist, and we also have new players, but we do not want to stop sharing with you a recap of all Argentog editions, because as William Shakespiere said, What's past is prologue.

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