Worlds 2008: I Came to Game Invitational
bdm | December 12, 2008 | 9:21 pmA crowd gathered last night under the skull of the black themed Feature Match area to watch Jon Finkel square off with none other than Mike Long in the semifinal round of the I Came to Game Invitational.
Lan D. Ho, Eric Atwood, and Dan Burdick pulled the exhibition tournament together for their documentary I Came to Game. They selected 8 of the Pro Tour’s biggest stars from the last decade plus to take part in a single elimination tournament using the Top 8 decks from Pro Tour 1.
The lineup included Paul Cheon vs. Jon Finkel, Kenji Tsumura vs. Mike Long, Mark Herberholz vs. Mike Turian, and Gab Nassif vs. Patrick Chapin. The latter player won each matchup on Friday with Finkel putting on a Prison primer with Baxter’s deck against Cheon. Paul seemed pretty surprised when Jon tapped his own Winter Orb with an Icy and paroled all of his own mana while Cheon languished in solitary.
The decks were redrawn randomly on Saturday. Chapin had Baxter’s deck while Turian had Poulter’s. Chapin took the seat in the finals by winning the mind numbing battle of wills over Turian’s Land Tax.
“He wasn’t willing to discard,” laughed Patrick who was willing to sit on one land all day before giving his opponent the card adantage and mana advantage from the Legends enchantment.
The headline battle was the match between Finkel playing the Lestree deck against Long with Hammer’s Millstone deck. By all accounts Finkel was at a large disadvantage but he managed to emerged victorious — attacking with an Elf and a Factory in game one — to square off with Chapin for the trophy this evening.
I was expecting info about this event, hope ic2g.com uploads all the stuff soon.
haha this is awesome! its like opening a time capsule. or a singleton courier’s capsule in 5cc (certainly a nassif contribution if i i’ve ever seen one).
So, clearly the event has concluded. HAve you promised not to reveal the winner in order to maintain the surprise until the documentary is realsed slash someone else leaks it?
Just curious since chapin v finkel is pretty much a battle between the most dominant mind in the game versus the most dominant personality therein. Were the decks reshuffled for the finals? OR was it lestree versus baxter? BEcause that would be one HECK of a game, geddon versus pure aggro. Seems good, but then that could also not be the match played.
regardless looking very much forward to the documentary next year.
not to be a pain. i love the idea of this tournament. but i dont believe baxter’s deck was prison…baxter played a b/r/g good stuff deck including erhnam djinn, lightning bolt and hymn to tourachs. the prison deck was the one that belonged to mark justice. wish i could have been there to see this!
Correct, the prison deck was Justice’s. This tournament was a lot of fun. I’m off camera over Finkel’s left shoulder in the last picture. It was a lot of fun watching him wait out Long perfectly. Afterwards someone stupid in the crowd shouted that it was a bad matchup for Finkel, which promted Long to turn and respond, “yeah, if it’s not him”. Finkel then agreed saying “I like this deck as long as the person knows how to play against control.” which he very much does.
-AJ
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It would have been nice to see the actual decklists given here.