Pro Tour Columbus

[Smmenen]

Congratulations to Rich Shay for finishing in the money.  Way to represent!

Congratulations to Kevin Cron for owning Kai Budde and Gabriel Nassif and winning a T1 Side event with Meandeck Oath.

[Vegeta2711]

To be specfic. Rich finished 51st in PT Col. which is extended format. He last second switched from Affinity to the Rock. Making him one of the few players to actually do well with the damn thing.

Congrats to Cron for owning Budde then. Hehe.

[Smmenen]

Rich also won a very very long T4 game that I'll let him fill you in on.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Tell me more about the Cron-Budde and Cron-Nassif warfare so I can mention it on SCG. :)

Congrats to Rich! Since it's my job to sift through this stuff for you, here are the players he was paired against:

Loss 122    Shay, Richard [USA]    vs.    Piccari, Carlo [ITA]
Win 125    Berthelsen, Nis [DNK]     0    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     0
Loss 71    Kasper, Matthew [USA]     3    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     3
Win 117    Rathcke, Alexander [DNK]     3    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     3
Win 59    Nai, Enrico [ITA]     6    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     6
Win 52    Shay, Richard [USA]     9    vs.    Reeves, Neil [USA]     9
Win 27    goron, julien [FRA]     12    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     12
Loss 20    Humpherys, David [USA]     15    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     15

Loss 32    Shay, Richard [USA]     15    vs.    Fujita, Tsuyoshi [JPN]     15
Win 38    Moreno, William [USA]     15    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     15
Win 38    Shay, Richard [USA]    vs.    Wiegersma, Jelger [NLD]
Win 20    Walls, Gabe [USA]     21    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     21
Loss 14    Dominguez, Javier [ESP]     24    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     24
Loss 20    Shay, Richard [USA]     24    vs.    Cunningham, Jeff [CAN]     24
Win 36    Brown, Daniel [USA]     24    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     24
Draw  25    Komuro, Shuu [JPN]     27    vs.    Shay, Richard [USA]     27

[The Atog Lord]

Thanks

PT: Columbus was a blast. It was my first Pro Tour, so I was excited just to make day two. Finishing in the money was more than I had hoped for.

I settled on The Rock because I decided that Affinity was just not going to be able to plow through the hate out there. Energy Flux and Pulverize are very scary cards. I had little experience with the Rock, and was figuring out how to sideboard as I went along.

Then someone else wins the whole thing with Rav. I wish I had thought of his brilliant Meddling Mage tech; that seems like a great answer to all the hate.

As for the Type Four game, it was the first time I had played that since the last time I was in Ohio, Origins. I drew about 17 cards off Armistice.  That card should get banned, I think. Eventually, I was only able to win because Steve let one of the other players take something back. Steve, I'm sharing the victory with you.

Kevin, huge props on beating two of the best constructed players in the world there!

[rozetta]

Congratulations on the high finish and impressive individual wins (there are plenty of recognisible names on that list).

I've always had a soft spot for Extended - I actually originally joined TMD because the extended boards on here were the best around. I was perhaps a little disappointed to find that noone had discovered any groundbreaking new deck for this tournament - in comparison, last year's Extended was much cooler. This is unfortunately the last Extended season before they rotate out a lot of good sets, so let's hope some team discovers something exciting before it ends. I watched some of the top-8 coverage online and I thought they did a surprisingly professional job with the presentation. You could see the cards being played a lot more clearly than in some other coverage videos they've done and they had a nice sidebar which showed some of the cards being played. I suppose the commentary could have been better in places, but it was anyway pretty entertaining.

I have to say that the diverse field (somewhere around 30 archetypes) right now looks good for the format, although I expect the field will narrow in the coming tournaments. Worth things to note were the lack of Tog and The Rock in the top 8 despite their large presence. 4 Aggro, 3 Combo and 1 Control in Top 8 looks about right, since Control decks are usually the decks which are shaped last, around the parameters defined by the Aggro and Combo decks.

Finally I'd like to add that watching the affinity deck in action was quite a treat, especially when you look at some of the great cards he had in his sideboard. Aether Vial looked quite strong, too. Although Meddling Mage is probably a little slow for Type 1 affinity, it makes me wonder if some proactive creature, say for destroying Null Rod would be the sort of thing that affinity needs. If you think about the amount of hate that deck must have seen during the tournament what with Deeds, Kegs, Engineered Explosives, Meltdown and so on, it really shows that perhaps people just haven't been creative enough with Type 1 builds yet.

[CHA1N5]

Per Pip's request, here is a mini-report on my defeat of two amazing players @ PT CBus:

The T1 side event was only 15 peeps, but it was still a pretty good challenge (at least, for me).  I played the same MeanDeck Oath list that we all played at SCG P9 II.


Round 1: Gabriel Nassif

Gabriel is playing UWB control with Vindicate, Plow, Johnny Magic main and Seal/Disenchant/Annul out of the board.

Game 1:  I Misdirect his turn 1 Ancestral, resolve Oath and beat.  I don't fight over plow on my Akroma because it doesn't matter.

Game 2:  Very long game where I simply cannot draw mana sources.  I resolve a very early Oath, but he undoes my first Orchard with Plow/Waste.  I resolve 2 more Oaths before I find an Orchard, but this doesn't occur until turn 5.9B and only after he has had Crucible/Strip going for a few turns.

Game 3:  Orchard, Mox, Oath, Misdirect your Ancestral.  GG.


Round 2: Kai Budde, mit TPS.

Game 1:  I resolve my turn 1 Ancestral through his Force, but it does not draw me into a 2cc counter, so his turn 2 Bargain resolves.  He starts with 15 life, draws a bunch, then Timetwisters me into: Fow, Fow, Fow, MisD, Drain +++  I counter his next two threats on his turn and he scoops to his own Bargain lock.

Game 2:  This game goes for several turns with my countering setup spells like Brainstorm.  I resolve an Oath, but he Seals it on his turn.  He finally runs me out of counters and resolves Bargain, this time at 18!  He passes the turn after drawing 7.  On his next turn he basically does the same thing as in game 1:  D7's me into 3 x FoW and loses!


So, Gabriel was totally outmatched by MeanDeck Oath and Kai was exceedingly unlucky.  [Don't play TPS, kids.]  In my defense, I played properly to win both matchups... and I never even drew a SB card in game 2 against Kai (despite seeing about 20-25 cards).  Both of them were excellent opponents and a joy to play against.


I defeated UR MudDomination in Round 3 (I don't think my opponent, Keith, has a TMD handle) and Eli Kassis with UBg Oath in Round 4 to take home the awesome 15 CoK packs.  My match against Eli was insane; it was a "mirror" tech-fest that came down to turns and depended entirely on whether he Oathed up Akroma before DSC/Gilded Drake in game 3.

[Shades]

Round 1: Gabriel Nassif

Gabriel is playing UWB control with Vindicate, Plow, Johnny Magic main and Seal/Disenchant/Annul out of the board.

 :shock:

I'm really interested in his list! Is it possible to get it?

/edit: thanks Toaddy

[jpmeyer]

He played it at the last Paris Type 1 tourney, IIRC.

[The Atog Lord]

After one of his rounds ended, I asked Kai if he thought that his deck (TPS) was the best type one deck to be playing. He told me that he had no idea. I asked him if he read The Mana Drain, to which he responded, "What? Is that a website?".

[rozetta]

After one of his rounds ended, I asked Kai if he thought that his deck (TPS) was the best type one deck to be playing. He told me that he had no idea. I asked him if he read The Mana Drain, to which he responded, "What? Is that a website?".

Noooooooo!

Are the pros really that engrained in their PT world?

[Zherbus]

Since it's impossible to tell from reading text, were the pro's overly snobby when you attempted to talk type 1 with them?

[The Atog Lord]

Kai didn't come across as snobby at all. While one particular pro at Nationals denounced Type One, I haven't heard anything negative from most of them.

[Zherbus]

That's real cool. It seems Kai has a secret love affair with type 1 combo, I keep hearing about him playing them.

[Shades]

That's real cool. It seems Kai has a secret love affair with type 1 combo, I keep hearing about him playing them.

Yeah thats right. Kai attended in Dulmen last year and played(you guessed it) Budde Trix. I think TPS and Budde Trix are easy comparable to each other except the win condition which changed from Illusions/Donate to Tendrils...

[Smmenen]

Kai didn't come across as snobby at all. While one particular pro at Nationals denounced Type One, I haven't heard anything negative from most of them.

Gadiel Szifer (spelling is wrong) played at SCG III.  Type one is continuing to gain legitimacy, I think.