The long summer in Austin has finally ended, bringing back Middle School for its Fall Semester! 33 players registered for 6 weeks of Swiss. Cool dudes and cool decks were all around – especially a certain gold-bordered Grixis Control list that represented 15% of the meta! Thanks, Team Serious.

The Top 8 was a wonderful, diverse mix of archetypes representing combo, control, aggro, and the hybrids of them. All the lists are worth celebrating, but we have to give a special shoutout to our friend from Japan, Masayuki Higashi. Masa’s been playing with us since last year and has Top 8’d a handful of leagues with his powerful Replenish deck. This time, he piloted it to an incredibly convincing 9-0 finish, a perfect record that has made him our first ever international winner (and broke Green’s stranglehold on the season!). Congrats Masa!

The Fall Semester League was our last open event of the season. By the time this post goes live, we’ll have held our annual Invitational here in Austin and crowned the Romancing the Stones Season 4 Champion! More on that soon. It’s been a ball, folks – we appreciate everyone who played with us this season. We’ll take a short break for Chrimbus Season, and will be back with more Middle School and Vintage in January.

  1. Masayuki Higashi – Replenish Combo
  2. Robert Wilson – Counter Rebels
  3. Kai Schafroth – Parfait
  4. Phillip Collier – Shadow Weenie
  5. Brian Tweedy – Nether Spirit Control
  6. Chet Miller – Mono U Stiflenaught
  7. Jake Hilty – Grixis Control
  8. Keith Sweeney – Suicide Black
  9. Kyle Wells – RUG Stiflenaught
  10. David Craig – FishNaught
  11. Mike Klements – Elf-a-Geddon
  12. Herb Wilson – Goblins
  13. Lorien Elleman – Bubbling Muck Black
  14. Sam Krohlow – Grixis Control
  15. Ty Thomason – Zoo
  16. Andrew Webb – Dream Halls Combo
  17. Mike O’Malley – Black Dragon
  18. Bryan Hockey – Nether Spirit Control
  19. Luke Tooker – Oath
  20. Ryan Linda – MUD
  21. Bobby Scheidemann – Sligh
  22. Eric Caffrey – Grixis Control
  23. Gregg Graham – Aluren
  24. Jake Baltz – Tideless High Tide
  25. Angelo Kortyka – Grixis Control
  26. Dustin Ransom – Blue Storm
  27. Rajah James – Grixis Control
  28. Bryan Chasanoff – Braids Controls
  29. Miguel Angel Garcia – Draco Weenie
  30. Chad Frazier – Standstill Oath
  31. Jason Hallman – MagnivoreStill
  32. Jose Montini – Eggs
  33. Patrick Vincent – Goblins