PWCQ91 COVERAGE
Krokodeilos won Premium World Championship Qualifiers 91 with a unique Stein Reasoning Gate Turbo variant, defeating wolfe_KMH's Chaos Turbo in the finals.
PWCQ 91 had 52 participants competing for the invite to the Goat Format World Championship and a playmat. The event consisted of six Swiss rounds, after which the top eight players duked it out in a single-elimination bracket for the title. TOPCUT BREAKDOWN:3 WARRIORS 2 CHAOS TURBO1 STEIN RGT1 CHAOS WARRIOR1 PANDA BURN
Congratulations are in order to Krokodeilos for winning an entire event with Stein Reasoning Gate Turbo (RGT),securing their first invite of the season to the Goat Format World Championship 2026 tournament and a playmat. For this event, Krokodeilos decided to bring a completely different take on the usual Stein RGT lists, which tend to focus on a high monster count and a wide variety of levels for opponents to choose from when resolving Reasoning. Instead, they opted to make their list more resilient and more likely to resolve Reasoning. Their side deck is a perfect example of smoke-screening, where you take a large portion of your main deck out and replace it with a different engine. The goal is to make opponents have more dead or less useful cards post-side and to focus on gaining the upper hand through it. In this case, Krokodeilos was substituting some of the RGT engine for a Burn engine. This side pattern plan is somewhat of a mystery to me, and I don't see how Krokodeilos managed to get the upper hand, let alone win the entire event, when players were able to check their opponents' replays before each match. That's usually one of the reasons drastic smokescreen strategies don't work well in an online tournament environment. It's been a while since we saw any variant of RGT perform at a tournament, so huge congratulations to Krokodeilos on this amazing achievement because not many players could've pulled this off.
In 2nd place we have wolfe_KMH, a player who is no stranger to the worlds scene and had a very good performance at this event. For this event, Wolf brought Chaos Turbo with two copies of Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and two copies of Trap Dustshoot in the main deck, showing they still think Chaos Turbo is the best deck. Considering that many think we are in a Warrior-dominated meta, as recent topping results show, it was an interesting choice. In the side deck, we can find many different techs, but the most noticeable ones are three cards to counter OTK decks: two copies of Threatening Roar and a single copy of Kuriboh, our little furry friend. Raigeki Breaks were in the side deck combined with two copies of Solemn Judgment, which could've also come in against Stein RGT in the finals. It's worth talking about the two copies of Cipher Soldier and Kycoo, which were the only monsters besides Kuriboh present in the side deck. I am guessing the game plan against Warriors for this version of Chaos Turbo postside was to match opponents' Solemns with your own. If the opponent gave up too many life points early in the game, you could've looked for sneaky set Cipher Soldier damage to close out the game once Blade Knight tried to run it over.
Rounding out the TOP 4 are SS95 and sdlkilla. Both players had displayed very good performance and showcased more aggressive decks to us in this event. SS95 for this event decided to deviate from their usual Chaos Warrior deck, but... not by a lot. They had a small Warrior package combined with a Chaos engine and Abyss Soldiers, complemented by Mystic Tomatoes to more easily find Sinister Serpent. The goal of this list seems to be to quickly access Sinister Serpent and start abusing it with discard traps and Abyss Soldiers. The deck seems to rely on a methodical grind game, with occasional strong openings through Card Destruction. An interesting fact about this main deck is that SS95 opted for two copies of Upstart Goblin and three copies of Jar of Greed to max out draw power. The side deck is similar to their usual Chaos warrior lists, with a small inclusion of Blade Knight and Kuriboh.
Sdlkilla for this event brought their trusted Warrior deck and tried to conquer the event. They had a great showing but, in the end, came up short with their third Sakuretsu Armor and a single Magician of Faith in the main deck. An interesting thing about this main deck is the ratio of Jars of Greed to monster count, because we usually see Warrior lists running 13 monsters with multiple Jars of Greed. The side deck doesn't have Morphing Jar, which reminds us of the last event where we also saw jharris topping without it. Many consider it a staple in the side deck of Warriors nowadays, but these two show us how it maybe isn't as needed as we all think. For the Warrior mirror match, the side deck seems to revolve around stabilizing and getting into a good position to drop Mobius, which we can find in multiples in this list. I wonder if he was using this Mobius against Chaos Turbo as he did in the past.
Finally, completing the TOP 8, we have some great performers such as ghostrider15, nessapouliata, krebz and mp3107 who made the top cut of the tournament before ending their runs. Ghostrider15, for this event, brought their signature list of Chaos Turbo with Time Seals and many chainable traps, aiming to establish a lead and disrupt their opponent's tempo to eventually resolve key cards and close out the game. Ghost had a great showing with a similar list at FLC38,where he won without Mirror Force in the main deck. In this event, he brought it into the main deck instead of a single copy of the usual Book of Moon, and it certainly caught many players off guard during the matches. A single copy of Dekoichi in the main deck, combined with triple copies of Magician of Faith in this deck, just goes to show how focused he was on resolving that key flip as soon as possible and running away with the game afterward. The side deck features a lot of three-ofs, being Zombyra, Mind Control, and Sakuretsu Armor, targeting the most popular decks in the format. Looking into it further, there are some potential elements of a Queen's Gambit we discussed in the PWCQ90 report on this side deck, but without solemn judgments.
Krebz for this event brought a regular Warrior list, compared to their brother sdlkilla, but without Jar of Greeds in the main deck. This list features a high monster count of 15 by running both three Kycoos and three Blade Knights in addition to the 2nd Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. They don’t run Torrential Tribute at all and instead prefer a 3rd Sakuretsu and a single copy of Book of Moon in the main deck. Two copies of King Tiger Wanghu are in the side deck, showing how he was prepared for potential combo/OTK decks. Last but not least, we can find a spicy copy of United We Stand in the side deck, too.
Nessapoulita once again performed but, unluckily, didn't manage to grab that invite. With a 3rd topping performance in a row with Panda Burn, the question arises: how much more will Nessapoulita need to keep knocking on the door of worlds before he is allowed in? The list didn't see many changes from PWCQ90, except for substituting one copy of Big Shield Guardna for the 3rd copy of Des Koala. In the side deck, they decided to switch out Mystical Space Typhoon and Mystic Wok for the 2nd copy of Cipher Soldier and a single copy of spicy Greenkappa, aiming to abuse opponents trying to play around Des Koala and Morphing Jar by setting cards before attacking for potential card advantage.
Lastly, Mp3107 for this event decided to give their FLC41 topping warrior list another try, with some smaller adjustments. In the main deck, they switched out a single copy of Xing Zhen Hu for a more consistent 2nd copy of Dust Tornado. Zombyra noticeably remained in the main deck in favor of the 3rd Kycoo, aiming for an edge in the Warrior mirror during Game 1. On the side deck, we can find the 2nd Assura Priest replaced by a single copy of King Tiger Wanghu, Mystic Wok replaced by Book of Moon, and Sangan removed in favor of the 3rd Dust Tornado. Mp3107 seems to be playing around with ratios, showing good performance overall in the meantime and slowly building on a winning formula.
Conclusion: In this event, Warriors continued to be the best-performing deck with 3 tops, but without crown this time; Chaos Turbo also kept its spot in 2nd place in the overall performance race by securing 2 spots. Panda Burn, Chaos Warrior, and Stein RGT rounded out the top cut of the tournament with one representative each.
Graphs were found on format library website.
