I have to admit I was pretty stunned to see Finkel sit down for the first round of Extended play on Saturday. Over the latter course of his career Jon has made no secret of his distaste for Constructed. At 5-7 in the first two legs of the event I would have assumed it was time for him to hit the team draft circuit with fellow Hall of Famer Dirk Baberowski.

Instead there he was, handing in a decklist and shuffling up a sixty.

“I can still win money,” Jon said defiantly. Apparently he is within shooting distance of passing Kai on the lifetime winnings list. “Besides someone gave me a deck that is a lot of fun.”

I didn’t need much more than that to settle in and see what was in store. What Island based monstrosity could it be? I couldn’t imagine Jon calling Faeries fun. Maybe the Tezerator?

I almost lost my grip on reality when Jon dropped a Mountain and sent Spark Elemental hurtling into the red zone for absolutely zero card advantage. He then proceeded to follow up with another, Lava Spike, and a suspended Rift Bolt over the next couple of turns. Up was down, right was wrong, and blue was red.

Jon could not comprehend my surprise.

“I played a monored deck to a Top 8 at Worlds.”

In 1998.

A 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.