Today was a little longer than expected but the format was still fast enough that I was able to enjoy a leisurely dinner with Mike Turian and Randy Buehler at the staff hotel. The restaurant here is pretty absurd. Randy and I also grabbed lunch here and when we had the tomato soup we knew we were coming back.

They bring out this large white bowl with a dollop of marscapone cheese drizzled with reduced balsamic vinegar and a basil oil which gets drenched in a shower of steaming hot soup at your table. Utterly amazing both times I had it today.

I also had, what is apparently a house classic, a tuna tartar that was perfumed with apple brandy as my entrée. It is among the very best meals I have ever enjoyed at a Pro Tour.

Afterwards we went to the bar and did the only thing you can do after a long day of watching 400 of the world’s best play Magic: The Gathering. We busted out a box of Shards of Alara and started drafting.

I was talking with Randy last night about drafting an actual shard as opposed to simply taking mana fixing and the best cards that come along. Normally I choose the latter strategy but when I opened Stoic Angel and was passed another it seemed like I wanted to be Bant.

The problem is that you end up taking weaker cards that are on-shard while passing ridiculous picks in each direction. I passed crazy stuff to Bill Stark while I stubbornly fought for Bant with drafters to my right. I shoulda just first picked a tri-land.

Also on the right side of Day Two from the extended Top8Magic family is Andre Coimbra. Andre was playing a metagamed monoblue deck designed by none other than our very own MichaelJ. The deck is designed to beat up on a field full of combo and Zoo but did not take into account all the little green elves and insects that seemed to spring up in the metagame overnight.

Andre managed to dodge the Elfball matchup through most of Day One but not completley, resulting in one of his only two losses on the day. He also lost to Zoo but smashed it the three of four other times he had that pairing. With all the elves stampedeing into Day Two Mike’s deck could turn out be a Day One masterpiece and Day Two disaster.

I will check back on Andre and his pairings in the morning.

Lest you think the tournament was a complete disaster for the friends of Top8magic may I present one very relieved Gabe Carlton-Barnes. Gabe slid into Day Two with a 5-3 record, piloting the same deck that let down JamieP, Sadin, and Jake Van Lunen.

Apparently there were a couple of exciting squeakers along the way. I will try and get some details about that in the morning.

Good luck on Day Two tomorrow, Gabe.

Gavin Verhey is one of three players at this event who I have been following in their efforts to qualify for Pro Tour Kyoto. Sam Stoddard and Gabe Carlton-Barnes had already locked up the neccessary number of ones to keep playing on Saturday but Gavin — playing in his first Pro Tour — needed to win against Paulo Carvalho to make it through.

I am sure the pressure was already bearing down on him before he heard his name being called to the Feature Match area. And if you want to really talk about pressure than you have to talk about the brutally fast All-in Red deck that Paulo was piloting.

Gavin’s deck was a Deathcloud build that could empty an opponent’s hand with the Raven’s Crime and Life from the Loam engine. “Its kind of like the Rock… Good against everything / bad against everything,” he said.

With only five basic lands Gavin was not able to get out from under a turn one Magus of the Moon and no Swamp in sight. In game two Gavin Thoughtsiezed a handful of Rituals and fell to a topdecked Empty the Warrens on Paulo’s turn one.

“Sigh,” said the young PTQ veteran. “What format is the qualifier tomorrow?”

This is not the neighborhood you expect to find Guillaume Wafo-Tapa at the start of Round Seven of a Constructed Pro Tour. He broke off from the supergroup tech to play some of his beloved blue cards and is now scuffling to say alive at an unfamiliarly high table number.

Mark Herberholz — another Constructed Master and one of my picks to Top 8 — would be happy to be sitting anywhere for the next round. He bowed out of the event shortly after the start of Rd 7 and will be playing do or die for his Player’s Club status at Worlds.

I assume you have heard the Mel Brooks line about the difference between comedy and tragedy. This picture of the nattily attired Steve Sadin and Gerry Thompson reminded me of it. I don’t recall the exact text but was something along the lines of:

“Tragedy is when I get a papercut. Comedy is when you fall into a hole and die.”

Tragically Steve Sadin finds himself in an 0-3 hole to start his Pro Tour Berlin experience including a third round loss to Battle of Wits! To rub salt in things for him, the breakout deck of the event is an Elfball build featuring Nettle Sentinel and Glimpse of Nature that was a deck Steve had flirted with very early on in testing.

If Steve wants to play through to Saturday he is going to need to rattle off five straight wins. That would be comedic relief for Steve after his rough start and tragedy for each of his opponents along the well.

*Update* Steve dropped after round four. His first three losses were almost comicly insane losing to — in succession — Azami Lady of Scrolls, a Tron deck, and Battle of Wits.

Originally the plan had me going into Berlin 24 hours earlier but forces beyond my control meant I had to change my plans which sadly included burning a non-trivial number of miles to last minute reschedule an otherwise gratis trip.

On the plus side it meant a bump to business class and the ability to make my seat go horizontal to get a good night’s sleep. Easier said than done. I was fretting about having to do my column under extreme deadline as soon as I arrived. (I calmed my frets by watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and episodes of 30 Rock).

I was particularly concerned with the fact that my flight was landing in the massive Munich airport at 10:35 and my flight to Berlin was boarding 10 minutes later. Never underestimate German efficiency — I was sitting on my connecting flight and drinking a frosty beverage by 10:50.

I arrived with more than enough time to freshen up and head over to the site only to find that my editor — fearful of fog — had conscripted Bill Stark to pinch hit for me.

Time to draft!

I am about an hour away from wheels up and off to Pro Tour Berlin. I am enjoying a quick glass of wine in the lounge and looking forward to a comfy business class flight before diving right into my weekly column, doing video segments, and culminating in the Top 8 commentary with Randy on Sunday.

It should be a whirlwind weekend of Magic: The Gathering and exciting Extended technology. Looking forward to seeing not only what the rotation of many Extended staples — and the banning of Sensei’s Divining Top — has wrought on the format but what the new cards from Shards of Alara add to the mix.

I am going to try and provide a peek behind the scenes of the Pro Tour this weekend. Go behind the curtain of the coverage team; peer over the shoulder of R&D members during late might drafts to see what their favorite strategies are; and give you a look at some of your favorite players (Top8Magicians and otherwise) and how they are approaching this new format.

Fact or Fiction?

Matt Wang is working hard at his computer in this picture.