CDN Wins Mudwater Open #3 in a Grand Final Rematch With KRAEZEY

CDN beat KRAEZEY 4-3 to win Mudwater Open #3, turning a quarterfinal defeat into a title-winning grand final rematch.

The Nov. 13, 2026 tournament brought 22 players into double elimination with every card unlocked and no NFT holdings required. Decks were locked between rounds.

KRAEZEY knocked CDN into the lower bracket with a 2-1 quarterfinal win. CDN's next opponent was md_codes, the previous week's champion and this tournament's top seed. CDN eliminated him 2-0, then won four more lower-bracket series to earn another shot at KRAEZEY.

The rematch began with CDN down 0-1. As the upper-bracket winner, KRAEZEY received a one-game advantage in the best-of-seven final, leaving him needing three wins to CDN's four. There was no bracket reset. CDN took four of the six games actually played. KRAEZEY tied the official score at 3-3 in the penultimate game, but CDN won the decider at 12:07 a.m. ET on Nov. 14.

“You battled all the way back to beat me!” KRAEZEY wrote afterward.

Familiar Cards, Different Capture Map

The tournament data recorded 41 series and 105 games. The field was smaller than the previous week's 34 players, but going second produced almost exactly the same result: 56 wins in 102 games finished on the board, or 55%, compared with 94 of 171 a week earlier.

The same five Commons occupied the top five places for card plays, with a change at the top:

• Bored Stiff: 155 plays.
• Bottle Rocket: 136 plays.
• Moon Dust: 94 plays.
• Sea Dog: 63 plays.
• The Deckhand: 42 plays.

Adjusting for the smaller event, Bored Stiff rose from 1.22 plays per game to 1.48, overtaking Bottle Rocket. Moon Dust also became more frequent, climbing from 0.62 plays per game to 0.90. These figures count cards played in games, rather than submitted decks.

The Deckhand's observed win rate barely changed. Our game-record calculation found 28 wins from 42 player-game appearances in board-finished games, or 67%, compared with 61 of 92, or 66%, the previous week. Each player's use counts separately when both sides play the card; the figures describe those players' results without isolating the card's contribution.

The bigger visual change was where cards changed hands. The middle-left square accounted for 167 of the event's 920 captures, about 18%, edging out the center's 161. The center had been the busiest square both the previous week and in the Oct. 30 opener.

The left column's share of captures rose from 31% the previous week to 36%, while the right column fell from 28% to 22%. Corners still accounted for roughly 30% overall. The leading cards remained familiar, but the exchanges shifted across the board. Captures include recaptures, so these figures count repeated changes of ownership as well as initial takeovers.

CDN's Center Rock and Quicker Finishes

CDN's signature opening was a rock in the center whenever he went first, followed by a ring of cards around it with their weak sides exposed. The game-record count confirms the center rock in all 12 of his first-player starts, compared with four of eight the previous week. One of those 12 starts ended in an administrative forfeit; he won eight of the other 11.

Across the event, more games reached a full board with little upgrading. Our count of board-finished games found 17 of 102 ended within 10 moves, allowing at most one upgrade alongside the nine placements. That was 17%, up from 18 of 171, or 11%, on Nov. 6 and eight of 84, or 10%, on Oct. 30.

Average upgrades per board-finished game fell more modestly, from 6.6 in the first week and 6.8 in the second to 6.4 here. Quickly filled boards also became more common late in the event: six of the final 34 board-finished games ended within 10 moves, compared with four of the final 57 the previous week. That left less room to recover from a misplaced card before the final count.

The grand final demanded both tempos. CDN won his third and fourth games over 23 and 24 moves, then clinched the title in a 10-move game with just one upgrade.