Enjoy this long podcast with BDM and Flores as they provide a recap of US Nationals!

US Nationals Recap with BDM and Flores

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

hNationals Q \’n Effin-A! Part Six

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

Nationals Q \’n Effin-A! Part Three

Here is the deck Calcano played:

Good ol Blue White Control

1  Arid Mesa
4  Celestial Colonnade
4  Glacial Fortress
5  Island
7  Plains
1  Scalding Tarn
2  Sejiri Refuge
2  Tectonic Edge
4  Baneslayer Angel
4  Wall of Omens
2  Day of Judgment
1  Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3  Everflowing Chalice
1  Gideon Jura
3  Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1  Martial Coup
3  Mind Spring
2  Negate
3  Oblivion Ring
3  Path to Exile
4  Spreading Seas

Sideboard:

2  Cancel
2  Celestial Purge
2  Flashfreeze
4  Kor Firewalker
1  Kor Sanctifiers
2  Negate
1  Oblivion Ring
1  Path to Exile

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

Nationals Q \’n Effin-A! Part Two

I don’t know if Mike has actually mentioned this anywhere or not but both of us qualified for US Nationals this past weekend at the NYC Nats Qualifier run by Gray Matter Conventions. Top8Magic.com Mockvitational winner Christian Calcano also won a berth at the same event. All three of us were running very different decks with Mike running Grixis Hits, me running GerryT’s Naya Like-Saber, and Calcano running blue-white control. This set of podcasts include Mike and I talking during the early rounds of the tournament, a post-Top 8 migration to Shake Shack, and a post mortem by Mike and from Monday.

Nationals Q \’n Effin-A! Part One

Here is the deck I played:

Naya Like-Saber

4 Noble Hierarch
3 Wild Nacatl
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Scute Mob
2 Lotus Cobra
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Cunning Sparkmage
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Vengevine
3 Ranger of Eos
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Behemoth Sledge
2 Raging Ravine
2 Stirring Wildwood
2 Sunpetal Grove
3 Evolving Wilds
2 Mountain
2 Plains
5 Forest
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Arid Mesa
1 Sejiri Steppe

Sideboard:

3 Vapor Snare
2 Qasali Pridemage
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Pithing Needle
1 Island
1 Behemoth Sledge
2 Path to Exile

Paul Jordan is a frequent contributor to Magicthegathering.com, former NJ State Champion, and a teammate of Steve Sadin and Michael J Flores at Pro Tour Charleston, where they finished in 26th place as Team Two-Headed Giant. Steve (who did an excellent job of coverage at UK Nationals) sent Paul the breakdown of decks and Paul has produced the following analysis of the Standard rounds in his first ever piece for Top8Magic.com.

Thanks to my once and future teammate, I was able to do some number crunching on UK Nats. This won’t be a full-blown thing, as it was a pretty small tournament, but there should still be a nugget or two worth exploring. Let’s take a look, shall we?

U.S. and Japanese Nationals saw victories from 5Color decks built around the powerful sorcery, Cruel Ultimatum. In England, they took note and filled their deckboxes with Vivid lands and Reflecting Pools in hopes of adding another title to Grixis’ mantle. What they got, however, was something quite different. Instead of a field full of Faeries, White aggro decks and Elves this was one littered with Blightning and Jund decks — along with the ever-present mirror match.

5Color Control decks remained the most popular, eating up 17% of the field in the UK , though it did lose about 5% over Japan and the US. Faeries, White Aggro and Elves! all lost between 5 and 10% of their share of the field, largely being supplanted by Jund and Blightning. The UK also seemed to fill out the ranks with a much larger variety of onesy-twosy decks that had their own categorization. Steve Sadin already did a breakdown for the mothership here, so I won’t delve much further into it, but you get the idea. It was a vastly different field.

A lot of people no doubt noticed the 58% win rate of Blightning decks over two National tournaments and chose it as their weapon of choice as a result. With so many more people running the deck, it was not likely to sustain the great numbers. As expected, there was a drop, but it still came through, with a very manageable 52%. Nothing dominating going on there, of course, but still worth keeping track of. Surprisingly, the pitfall for this deck seems to be in quote-unquote random decks. Jund and 5CC, the two most popular decks outside of Blightning, were both handily kept in check at 79% and 56% respectively, but Blightning only won 44% of its remaining matches, with each minor piece of the metagame taking a bite. None of those decks faced Blightning more than 8 times, but they all combined to put some serious hurt on the would-be best deck.

So what was the best deck? It is a little difficult to say. With such a small tournament, and such a wide variety of decks, there were a lot that had very few matches played. This led to some difficulty in really understanding how each deck did. So you could say that Doran and its 18 matches at 79% was best, or Kithkin at 25 and 64%, or Elves! at 47 and 60%. I could understand an argument for any of those. I’d lean towards Elves! stirctly due to sample size, as losing 4% over almost double the matches from Kithkin is, well, pretty good.

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to infer any concrete meaning from this tournament, as the most matches of any one deck against another was 16 (Blightning vs. 5CC), which is an extremely low number with regards to sample size. What we can look at, though, is the overall performances. So while this is going to be the end of the analysis, I’ll send BDM and Matt a spreadsheet that hopefully they can link you to if you want to come to your own conclusions.

UK Nats Spreadsheet

Uruguay's National Champion, Juan Odriozola

Congratulations to Juan Odriozola on winning the 2009 Uruguay National Championships and earning an invite to Worlds. In contrast to the 5Color domination of the U.S. Nationals this event — which was admittedly close to 10 times smaller — featured 8 different deck archetypes. The Top 8 reads like a Standard primer from the past year of Magic with a range of archetypes from Bant to Reviellark all rearing their heads.

Thanks to second place finisher Gustavo Fischer for the lists. Gustavo was quick to point out that his Top 8 berth was due almost entirely to his undefeated Limited performance. Top 8 finisher Jorge Sierra went undefeated in Standard - up until the Top 8 that is - with Kithkin.

Reveillark (aka “Goodbye to Wrath”)
Juan Odriozola - Champion
Uruguay Nationals

4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Mulldrifter
2 Wall of Reverence
3 Sower of Temptation
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Reveillark

4 Path to Exile
4 Cryptic Command
2 Austere Command
2 Martial Coup

4 Fieldmist Borderpost
1 Mutavault
2 Wandervine Hub
4 Mystic Gate
2 Glacial Fortress
6 Island
6 Plains

Sideboard:
2 Negate
2 Celestial Purge
4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
4 Meddling Mage
2 Wispmare
1 Hallowed Burial
Read the rest of this entry »

If you have not already checked out the coverage of Spanish, Japanese and Australian Nationals for fresh from the oven M10 Standard tech, you should do so right now. The Elvish Archdruid-powered Combo deck took the top spot in Australia and dominated the Japanese event with three Top 8 finishes although Shuhei Nakamura hoisted the trophy with Cruel Control. Cruel Control also won Spanish Nationals with nary an Elf Combo deck to be found in the elimination rounds.

Based on a handful of Twitter comments it sounds like a lot of American players are gnashing their teeth right now over the tremendous performance of the Elves Combo deck. It would have been a great deck to have in your back pocket going into US Nationals but now everyone will either be playing it or have a firm plan for playing against it. Osyp, who ended up making the finals of a massive PTQ in Edison, NJ, compared the raw power of the deck to that of Affinity. How people prepare for and with the deck will be one of the dominant storylines next weekend as Bill Stark and I cover Nats in KC.

The 2009 Singapore National team

In the meanwhile I have the Top 8 decklists from Singapore Nationals which featured some interesting non-Elf concoctions including a Sanity Grinding/Time Warp deck by Pro Tour Barcelona Top 8 competitor Albertus Law. He went 6-0 in the Swiss rounds of Standard, including multiple victories over Kithkin, but fell to one of the two Kithkin finalists in the quarterfinals. The other really interesting deck was the 5Color deck featuring Brion Stoutarm that ended up earning a spot on the National team. Thanks to Jun-Wei Hew for the decklists and the photo of the team! (Decklists appear below the fold. Click to keep on reading!)

Read the rest of this entry »