Round four saw a clash between two top-notch local players. Matt Ferrando aka Matt qualified for this year’s Nationals with his token deck and finished that event with a Top 32 finish. Matt was playing an almost identical list to the Blightning Beatdown list I used to 3-0 the Mock the other night.

His opponent was Christian Calcano, winner of the first ever Top8Magic Mockvitational. Chris had a hand in the design of the Mannequin as a member of Team Unknown Stars. Calcano was running a Cruel Control deck with a little something extra for the red decks after sideboarding — Kiss of the Amesha.

Matt lost game one but seemed like he was going to bust through a mana-strapped Calcsno in game two. Matt’s deck yielded too many lands while Calcano clung to the game by his fingernails. Soon Calcano as fortifying behind Forge Tenders, Finks, and finally he sealed the game with a Kiss of the Amesha into Cruel Ultimatum.

“BDM,” said Matt as he picked up loss number two, “Do you have any sets for a draft?”

One of the great things about doing coverage is that you don’t need to get up at the crack of dawn. I needed a couple of extra hours of sleep this morning after my normally sedentary cat decided to get his hunt on and kill a defensless baby field mouse at 2am.

I got to Neutral Ground as the second of eight rounds was winding down. Early on the top tables were glowing red with Demigod Deck Wins and Blightning Beatdown seemingly on every other seat. White Weenie — or Weenie White as Pierre had me saying in our Berlin Deck Tech — Faeries, and 5-Color variants.

MichaelJ was crammed in at table 16 so we can assume he won Round One but round two was looking bad. I could see from the scorepad that he was down one game and getting beaten down by a Demigod in game two. Mike is never going to win a poker face competition and I could tell he had the answers but not the mana to phrase them.

Mike was playing Jund Mana Ramp and had added Broodmate Dragon as his answer to Demigod — one main and two sideboard. Sure enough he was holding two Broodmate Dragons and two Primal Command but was scuffling on five lands.

Mike was taunted by a Rampant Growth on the final turn and went to 1-1. With 134 players the tournament was just over the 8-round threshhold which meant at least one player with two losses would make the Top 8 but it was unlikely to be Mike with an early loss dragging down his breakers.

If he wanted to play some actual Top 8 Magic he would need to string together at least five straight wins.

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.

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.