Joel Larsson won Players Tour Brussels today with his homebrewed Sultai Delirium deck, defeating Magic Pro League member Piotr Glogowski on UB Inverter of Truth 2-1 in the finals.
Don’t miss our coverage of Day 1 and Day 2 of PT Brussels, Day 1 and the Top 8 of PT Nagoya, or Day 1, Day 2, and the Top 8 of PT Phoenix.
Players Tour Brussels was Larsson’s third Pro Tour/Mythic Championship/Players Tour Top 8. He has made the finals in each of those Top 8s, having won Pro Tour Magic Origins in 2015, finished second at Pro Tour Gatecrash in 2013, and now won Players Tour Brussels.
Glogowski continued his impressive run of Magic results by adding his fourth Top 8 in three years. He Top 8’d Pro Tour Ixalan in 2017, made the finals of the Mythic Invitational in March 2019, where he lost to Andrea Mengucci, and won Mythic Championship VII in December.
As the swiss rounds drew to a close, Larsson was on the Top 8 bubble and had to win his Round 16 matchup to even have a chance to make the cut. His tiebreakers ended up being good enough and put Larsson into the Top 8 as the eighth seed.
He was joined fellow Pro Tour and Mythic Championship winners (and Magic Pro League members) Glogowski and Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (Niv to Light) in the Top 8, as well as Mattia Rizzi (Bant Spirits), Juan Jose Rodriguez Lopez (Mono-Red Aggro), Brent Vos (Lotus Breach), Zhiyang Zhang (Mono-Black Aggro), and Valerio Luminati (Bant Spirits).
The Top 8 bracket at Players Tour Brussels.
Larsson found himself paired against the one seed Mattia Rizzia in the quarterfinals and defeated the Bant Spirits player two games to one. He then faced Brent Vos on Lotus Breach and won two quick games to advance to the finals.
On the other side of the bracket, Glogowski’s third seed matched him against six seed Valerio Luminati on Bant Spirits. Glogowski won 2-1 and faced Hall of Famer Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa in the semifinals, whom he defeated in three long, grindy games to earn his chance to face Joel Larsson in the finals of Players Tour Brussels.
The Finals
Larsson kept a sketchy one-land hand in Game 1 of the Players Tour Brussels finals. Glogowski cast Thoughtseize on his first turn and saw Larsson’s single land and opted to take Satyr Wayfinder. Larsson managed to draw into multiple lands in a row, allowing him to make a game of it, but Glogowski played a Turn 4 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries that began to take over the game, fueling multiple Dig Through Times to help set up his combo. Glogowski eventually pieced together an Inverter of Truth, reducing his library four to cards and won by playing Thassa’s Oracle with his devotion to Blue being more than four.
In Game 2, Larsson started with Leyline of the Void in play and cast a Turn 1 Duress to take a Thought Erasure from Glogowski’s hand. Larssen followed that up with a Thoughtseize, taking Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and Glogowski began to flood out.
The influx of lands into Glogowski’s hand couldn’t replace the gas Larsson had taken with his discard spells, and Larsson landed a Nissa, Who Shakes the World into another Thoughtseize to take Glogowski’s last proactive spell, The Scarab God. Glogowski couldn’t find an action spell to save him and fell to an army of animated Forests to even up the match at one game apiece.
Larsson again started with a Leyline of the Void in play in Game 3 but the rest of his hand didn’t look like much—just a Mystical Dispute and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, the latter of which Glogoswki promptly Thoughtseized. Another Thoughtseize from Glogowski took the Mystical Dispute to clear the way for any threats and a third Thoughtseize took Larsson’s topdecked Nissa, Who Shakes the World.
But Glogowski didn’t really have any threats to play and only had one half of the combo, Thassa’s Oracle, and was looking for an Invert of Truth to win the game. Then Larsson topdecked a Thoughtseize to strip the Oracle from Glogowski’s hand, leaving both players without any action.
Glogowski and Larsson stared at each other for a few turns while they both continued drawing blanks. Glogowski was the first to find action, a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, whose +1 drew him into an Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. Larsson drew an Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath to pressure Glogowski’s planeswalkers, while Glogowski just needed an Inverter to win—but he couldn’t find it.
Glogowski cast a Dig Through Time and finally found an Inverter of Truth, but it was too late and Larsson’s Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath took down Jace. Despite all of his digging, Glogowski couldn’t put together a second piece of his game ending-combo, finding a Thief of Sanity instead…then Larsson drew another Thoughtseize to take the Inverter.
Glogowski, completely out of gas in hand, found a Satyr Wayfinder off the top of Larsson’s deck with the ability of Thief of Sanity…but the Wayfinder’s enter the battlefield triggered milled two Jaces and an Inverter, dramatically reducing the number of win conditions Glogowski could draw. It didn’t end up mattering in the end, though, as Larsson found a Tireless Tracker and, on the following turn, removed Glogowski’s only blocker and attacked for lethal with his Tracker and Uro.
Deck Lists from the Finals of PT Brussels
Pioneer Sultai Delirium by Joel Larsson (1st Place)
Pioneer UB Inverter of Truth by Piotr Glogowski (2nd Place)
| Creatures (8) 4 Inverter of Truth 4 Thassa’s Oracle Planeswalkers (3) 3 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries Spells (22) 2 Thought Erasure 4 Thoughtseize 2 Censor 4 Dig Through Time 2 Drown in the Loch 4 Fatal Push 4 Opt Enchantments (2) 2 Omen of the Sea | Lands (25) 2 Choked Estuary 4 Drowned Catacomb 4 Fabled Passage 2 Fetid Pools 6 Island 3 Swamp 4 Watery Grave Sideboard (15) 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 2 Cry of the Carnarium 1 Damping Sphere 1 Grafdigger’s Cage 1 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy 1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet 1 Legion’s End 3 Mystical Dispute 1 Noxious Grasp 1 The Scarab God 1 Thief of Sanity 1 Ultimate Price |