Guatemala has six Regional Championship trophies: Modern tells a remarkable story

Allan Ayapán’s title joins a record worth celebrating in full: four Guatemalan players, six finalist finishes, and results in Pioneer, Standard, and Modern. We reconstructed the 13 Regional Championships held in Mexico since December 2022.

Allan Ayapán won CAMS T13 and gave Guatemala another reason to celebrate. His Esper Blink victory over Dagoberto Silva’s Goryo’s Vengeance closes a memorable weekend and opens a wider question: how much has Guatemala built in this circuit? The final Melee bracket adds another line to that story.

Across 13 Regional Championships, from Yellow Rabbit’s The Gathering Showdown to Necrotower’s Central America Magic Series, we identified six Guatemalan trophies: two championships and four runner-up finishes. The names behind them are Javier Castellán, Pablo Duque, Pedro Molina, and Allan Ayapán.

For this account, a trophy means a first- or second-place finish. Other Top 8 finishes are excluded. This counting convention does not imply that we independently verified the physical presentation of both trophies at every historical event.

Six results to celebrate, three formats to compete in

Castellán reached a Pioneer final with Azorius Humans, won in Modern with Grinding Breach, and returned to a Standard final with Izzet Prowess. Duque added a final with Dimir Murktide; Molina did the same with Amulet Titan. Ayapán has now added the Esper Blink championship.

Result sources: November 2024, March 2025, October 2025, May 2026, and T13.

Pablo Duque’s and Pedro Molina’s Guatemalan attribution was confirmed firsthand to our editorial team. Ayapán’s attribution comes from firsthand delegation reporting, corroborated by the qualification list. Competitive results were checked independently. Official coverage explicitly identifies Castellán as a player from Guatemala.

Modern: four of eight finalist places have Guatemalan names

One number captures the excitement: Guatemala occupies four of the eight finalist places across the four Modern Regionals in this historical series. That is half of their combined first- and second-place finishes.

The Necrotower sequence is particularly striking. Castellán and Duque contested an all-Guatemalan final in March 2025. Molina reached the Guadalajara final that October. Ayapán won T13 in October 2026. All three Modern Regionals in that era had Guatemalan representation in the final, accounting for four of their six finalist places.

The tools changed too: Grinding Breach, Dimir Murktide, Amulet Titan, and Esper Blink. These results show a broad competitive repertoire, with combo, interaction, and value engines all contributing to the same regional record.

These numbers describe the tournaments. Measuring success rates by country would require the size of each delegation at every event. What we already have is exciting enough: four Modern finalist finishes achieved by four different players.

Castellán spans all three formats; Ayapán adds another champion

Within this reconstruction, Castellán is the only one of the 23 distinct finalists to reach finals in Pioneer, Modern, and Standard. His three identified trophies account for half of Guatemala’s six finishes.

The story is also growing in names. Duque and Molina contributed their own finals, and Ayapán’s victory gives Guatemala two different champions in the period. T13’s celebration belongs to Allan; the wider record shows how much there is to celebrate alongside him.

The circuit as a whole reinforces that sense of open competition: 13 championships produced 13 different champions. Only two players repeat among the first two places: Castellán, three times, and Silva, twice. Twenty-three names fill the 26 finalist slots.

The complete history of the finals

Comparing the two eras requires following the continuity of the Regional Championship for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The first six events here were Yellow Rabbit’s The Gathering Showdown. The next seven belong to the Necrotower era. Wizards announced that the transition would begin with the final Regional of 2024. Official organizer announcement.

The numbering is chronological; the first six labels are not presented as official season names. Most dates above are archive event windows, which may include festival days. The October 2025 event took place in Guadalajara; the other events in this account were held in Mexico City.

The 26 “drops,” according to Javier Castellán

Our best player, Javier Castellán, also keeps track of the circuit’s “drops.” His tally allocates the 26 trophies as follows: Mexico, 14; Guatemala, 6; Costa Rica, 4; and El Salvador, 2.

In that tally, Guatemala sits second, with six of the 26 drops: 23.1% of the total. It offers another way to celebrate Allan’s achievement: his title adds to a collection of results that already holds a prominent place in the region’s competitive memory.

This allocation was shared with our editorial team and attributed to Castellán. The table below shows the progress of our player-by-player review: 18 places have a recorded country attribution under the stated evidence criteria, and eight remain open. Reconciling Javier’s allocation with that matrix requires identifying which player corresponds to each country in his tally.

Status of country documentation

Under our matrix’s documentary criteria, Mexico has nine attributed places; Guatemala, six; Costa Rica, two; and El Salvador, one. Eight finalist places still have pending country attribution. These figures show how much we have documented by player. The complete allocation attributed to Castellán retains its own source; the table shows the progress and evidence underlying our research.

Mexico’s total includes eight places supported by official player cards or an explicit biography, and one country association from Erick Manuel López Basulto’s judge registry entry. The latter records a country within the community; it is not a declaration of Regional Championship representation. Excluding that criterion leaves Mexico with eight documented places. Judge registry · Fernando Domínguez Roldán’s biography.

Residence, RCQ location, and the “País Calif” field in the CAMS qualification list remain separate from closed country attributions. Research continues for Archi Peralta, Edgar Rangel, Juan Valladares, Roberto Soto, Vinicio Sánchez Delgado, Jorge López, Iván Sáenz, and Francisco Ávila.

What the trophy record tells us, and what comes next

The six identified Guatemalan finishes are concentrated in the seven Necrotower-era Regionals. They represent six of those events’ 14 finalist places: 42.9%. Five of the seven editions had at least one Guatemalan in the final.

That sequence deserves celebration through its players. Castellán opened and sustained several of those opportunities. Duque and Molina took their own decks to the final table. Ayapán has just turned another final into a championship for Guatemala.

The next Regional will add two names to this record. Until then, Allan’s victory already has its place in a shared story: Guatemala competes across all three formats, and Modern has brought four great reasons to applaud it.

Sources

• Magic.gg event archive: chronology, formats, and finalists; individual event records are linked in the historical table.
• CAMS Hall of Fame: cross-check of results for the published seasons.
• Wizards’ organizer transition announcement: the transition from Yellow Rabbit to Necrotower.
• Melee · CAMS Regional Championship T13: bracket and Allan Ayapán’s championship result.
• Official report · November 2024: the Pioneer final and Castellán’s Guatemalan origin.
• Official report · March 2025: the Castellán–Duque final.
• Official report · October 2025: the Amulet Titan final between Sánchez Delgado and Molina.
• Official report · May 2026: the Ávila–Castellán final.
• Official interview with Alejandro Pereira: Costa Rica attribution.
• CAMS qualification list: qualification context; its “País Calif” field retains that definition.
• Judge registry: community country association for Erick Manuel López Basulto.
• Fernando Domínguez Roldán’s MTG Wiki biography: a secondary source with explicit nationality.

The tally of 26 “drops” attributed to Javier Castellán and the firsthand confirmations described in the article were supplied to our editorial team; no public link is available for them in this release.

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Method and update. Documentary verification cutoff: October 12, 2026, 00:18, America/Guatemala. The tally attributed to Castellán was added later that day. Sources include Magic.gg’s archive and reports, the CAMS Hall of Fame, and the T13 Melee bracket. Only the main event’s champion and runner-up are counted. Country attributions use the evidence categories described above and in the matrix; eight remain pending. Percentages are descriptive counts, not victory probabilities.

Question and record boundaries

Question or objective

What does the reconstruction of 13 CAMS Regional Championships show about Guatemalan finalists and formats?

Method

Reconstruct the champion and runner-up for each of 13 chronologically numbered Regional Championships using linked Magic.gg event records and reports, the CAMS Hall of Fame, and the T13 Melee bracket. Classify country attribution by evidence type and link the investigation sources in the article. Cutoff: October 12, 2026, 00:18, America/Guatemala.

Observations

The reconstruction contains 13 champions and 13 runners-up (26 finalist places) across Pioneer, Modern, and Standard. Four Guatemalan players account for six identified finishes: two championships and four runner-up finishes. A separate tally attributed to Javier Castellán distributes 26 drops as Mexico 14, Guatemala 6, Costa Rica 4, and El Salvador 2. Eighteen places have a recorded country attribution under the stated evidence criteria; eight remain open.

Interpretation

Within this bounded series, Guatemala has six identified finalist finishes, including four of eight Modern finalist places. Castellán's attributed aggregate tally is presented separately and does not resolve the documentary matrix's pending country attributions. Neither count is a delegation success rate or forecast.

Evidence boundary

This record counts only champions and runners-up from 13 Regional Championships held in Mexico from December 2022 through October 2026. The article links its sources and distinguishes a tally attributed to Javier Castellán from the documentary country matrix; verification cutoff: October 12, 2026, 00:18, America/Guatemala.

Limitations

The finalist reconstruction covers 26 places, but eight country attributions remain pending. The separate tally attributed to Javier Castellán does not resolve those places or establish a definitive ranking. Residence, qualification country, and community registry evidence are not equivalent to declared representation. Counts describe these 13 events only.