One of the public events at GP Okayama this past weekend was a Super Grand Prix Trial for GP Kobe — the 2009 GP schedule can be found here — which offered the winner three byes, entry, and transportation to the event. (I would imagine the organizers were happy none of the Austalian or Europeans in attendance won the Trial.) The format was Extended and provides one of our first peeks at the post-Berlin metagame. It was a pretty small event considering the prize — most of the public event thunder on Sunday was stolen by what was essentially a five-slot qualifier for Kyoto — that only had 17 players. Nonetheless it was something I was eager to look at as I am sure you are too.

It sounds like these lists will show up on the Mothership sometime in the next week or so. Both Mike and I are off this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday so they won’t be appearing there. In the meanwhile I figured I would post them here. Before you continued reading below the fold…  How many Elves decks were in the Top 8? Read the rest of this entry »

Post Berlin and Readers Comments Part 1

BDM, MichaelJ, and Wilson Price of Progress discuss the 9th through
16th place decks from Pro Tour Berlin. While the Top 8 was dominated
by Elves the next 8 decks were dominated by diversity with cards as
diverse as Fecundity and Azami, Lady of Scrolls populating the lists.
With Worlds on the horizon and a PTQ season not far behind will any of
these decks dethrone Elves as the king of the Extended hill?

BDM, Michaelj, and Wilson PoP answer the Top8Magic comments section
with a discussion of everything from smattering of basketball talk
(ranging from LeBron and company in Cleveland to why BDM thinks the
Knicks will make the playoffs), the impact of Rewind on the creation
on Cryptic Command, the new season of Top Chef, why Tom hates
Chinatown, and Elves, Elves, Elves!

I had hoped to do a little more blogging on Sunday but after a particularly grueling — but very exciting — Top 8 there was little time to do anything but scurry to the hotel, change, and grab a taxi to the staff dinner. Everyone was pretty much wrung out and we did not have the energy to even draft.

Now it is Monday and I am back in a Luftunsa lounge waiting for my flight home. Flipping through my phone there were a bunch of pics I never got to use in a blog entry. I am just going to throw them on the site and may edit the copy to caption them later. Featured are Sadin, Kenji, Chapin, and LSV.

So in between the quarterfinals and semifinals of each Pro Tour and Worlds the Top 8 competitors, the coverage staff, and the event staff are treated to a catered lunch buffet. I snapped a couple of behind the scenes shots which included quarterfinalist opponents Kenny Oberg and eventual Pro Tour Berlin winner Luis Scott Vargas queuing up for some free lunch.

Why is this man smiling? You would be too if you had just gone 12-4 in a 450+ person Pro Tour. Rashad Miller — of Spirit Stompy fame from GP Philadelphia — usually judges at Pro Tours and is the regular Top 8 spotter for the Sunday webcasts. He is likely mere tiebreakers away from causing the tournament staff to scramble for a replacement spotter. 36 points was good enough for Top 8 even if his tiebreakers were not. (Luis Scott-Vargas squeaked into the last spot for Sunday.)

While we were talking about his tournament — playing the Demigod Stompy aka All-in Red deck — Rashad shared his favorite play from the event.

He looked at his opening hand — on the draw — and saw that he could make a turn one Demigod with one card left over. That one card? Another Demigod.

Greed is good amiright? Rashad passed his first turn with no play and moved to discard the redundant demon.

“Oh fudge,” said his opponent (except what he said wasn’t fudge).

A turn later he was being attacked by 10 points of Demigod.

“He tasted it,” grinned Rashad.

I had the pleasure to meet Top8Magic listener Danny Gardner today. Danny had come from England to Berlin to try his hand at the LCQ on Friday. His Reveillark deck left him short of the mark with a 6-2-1 record but there was still plenty of Magic left to play.

Danny was playing in the Sealed PTQ and opened a pool that fell bombtastically along a Shard — Naya –with Realm Razer and Titanic Ultimatum. He was undefeated as of this picture taking.

Gavin Verhey ended up going 0-2 drop. “My pool was not very good.” Apparently his cards were mostly Grixis.

“Goblins?!?” said an incredulous Martin Juza after Johan Sadeghpour followed up his first turn Fanatic with another and a Goblin Sledder to start Round 15. Martin could not see it but Johan was holding Fecundity as well.

Despite the loss of Goblin Matron, Dirty Kitty was alive and well needing only one more win to potentially draw into the Top 8.

Considering how many elves were threatening to overrun that Top 8 Johan would be in good shape since he claims to be advantaged in that matchup. He would have to put his money where his mouth was since that was the deck Juza has been frontrunning with all weekend.

Juza fought through the pair of Fanatics and combo’d into Predator Dragon game one. Sharpshooter was providing cover fire in game two until Juza Chord of Calling’d up a Burrenton Forge Tender and tossed it a Jitte.

With four losses it was still possible to make the Top 8 but pretty unlikely.

I love blue land destruction — or should I say “land destruction” — more than I normally care to admit. I have played more Glowing Anemone than anyone this side of Jon Becker and built a deck around Cowardice, the Anemone, Rishadan Cutpurse and Footpad, and Jolting Merfolk in that block season. I even own the original painting to the Cutpurse.

It was with no small amount of glee that I watched Andre Coimbra bring his opponent from five lands down to one over the course of one turn cycle playing with Mike Flores’ metagamed (sort of) monoblue deck.

Andre’s opponent cracked a fetchland only to have it Stifled into nothingness. Without his fifth land he passed the turn only to have another land bounced with Andre’s Venser. The Portuguese player — who had stocked his hand with Visions the turn earlier — then bounced two more lands with a pair of Cryptic Commands. He drew two more cards and was able to play a pair of free Spire Golems with his opponent bombed down to only one land.

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.