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Congratulations to the Pro Tour Champion here in Chicago, Matt Nass.
Let's give it up for our Pro Tour Final Fantasy Champion, Ken Yucca Hero.
And that's going to do it.
Michael D. Mededino-Quammer wins the Pro Tour here in Atlanta.
after 10 years, Saint-Namfield is once again the world champion.
Welcome to Top 8 Sunday here at Pro Tour.
Lorwen Eclips live from Richmond, Virginia.
We started the weekend with 305 players.
Now we are down to only eight.
By the time we are done today, only one will remain to hoist this beautiful trophy.
Welcome into the news as Maria Bartholdi, your host for the weekend,
joined by Manny de Booty and Cedric Phillips.
Top 8 Sunday, always very, very exciting,
but what are you most looking forward to, Manny?
Maria, I'm just looking forward to seeing the standard games play out today
because most of the time when we come into Sunday,
we have our eyes on one player.
For me, I have no idea who's going to win today.
Oh, I love that.
That's some exciting television.
What about you, Cedric?
For me, I'm just excited to see who's going to crown themselves
champion here this weekend.
It's been a very fun tournament to watch and both limited and standard
We saw some things we didn't expect certainly in the constructed portion
And we do have a a returning pro tour champion in the top a person Luis Alvato
So it could be a two-time pro tour champion or a brand new one fun to find out
Yes, and we have a very diverse top eight as far as the metagame is concerned as well
Let's take a peek on how we got here today by taking a look at our tournament schedule
What happened on day one money? Oh, Maria feels like forever ago, but we take things off with limited
Lowerwind eclips draft for rounds 103.
Then we swapped over to standard, our first glimpse of the format for rounds 4 through 8.
At the end of that, all players with 12 matchpoints, that's a 4-4 record, are better came back for day 2.
And day 2 is where we will go next, where we did kick things off once again with
Lowerwind eclips drafts, those three rounds for the last rounds,
uploaded here this week. And before we transition into those very important rounds of standard,
rounds 12 through 16, pardon me, 36 matchpoints before round 16,
was the goal to an automatically advanced to top eight like our number one overall seed
Francisco Sanchez and that's what brings us to today top eight Sunday where it's all standard
all the time best three out of five games is what we're seeing all day and sideboarding
will begin after game two as we work our way towards browning a pro tour champion and what
does that champion go home like of course the title the trophy but also $50,000 for our first
place finisher second place goes home with $30,000 15 K for third to fourth place
fifth through eighth place go home with $9,000 it's been a terrific tournament if
you missed any of the action from the feature maturi yesterday Cedric's got
you covered with these highlights I do indeed we will take a quick look through
day number two of competition we are here in snowy and cold Richmond
Virginia but the players are staying warm inside of the Richmond Convention
Center for day number two of competition Dominic Harvey among the
players that did make day number two. Again, we did kick things off with draft.
We kicked things off in the very happy Luis Alvato, the Pro Tour Rivals Mixed
Long Champion, is back and better than ever. He made top eight this week and
has been number one overall seed Francisco Sanchez and almost last year
player the year Tony Portolan and Warros Aguilera, the player who we have
seen make a top eight over a decade ago, is thrilled along with his
teammates to be back on the Sunday stage.
Pacifica on Toronto player who's watched a lot of coverage as he did say in his interview
He is thrilled to be here as is Christopher Larson the big game
Hanging out with his teammates big hugs all around and our last player to make it in there
Big sigh of relief for Marco Balacca who was our overnight leader started the tournament 10 and 0 almost missed
But did make it and so his opportunity to win that beautiful trophy is still available
Those are our final eight players can't wait to see which one of them is going to be our champion
Yes, me too. Let's meet them right now.
Five color rhythm, Marco Bellacca, Italia, the Sky Contra.
Christopher Larsen, Denmark, Spanish demon trap, the Merrick's
radiator.
And those are your top eight.
It's been a minute, I want to say,
since we've had a top eight with no Americans in it.
So a very international top eight here
at this first pro tour of the season.
Let's check out our bracket and find out
who will be playing who in our quarter finals.
This is how it all shakes out.
Francisco Sanchez will be up against the vain,
Christopher Larson. Then we have Siflian Tong, who will be playing Eduardo Sajgulik. Tony
Portolan did so very well in last year's player of the year race will be up against
Guillermo Loupi. Then Marco Balaca are overnight leader who struggled to make top eight, but
he just got in at the end. We'll face off against pro-tour champion Luis Salvado. But
how do the numbers break out? Who do we predict will win this whole thing? Mani,
you've been crunching them behind the scenes.
Maria time for my favorite segment of the very unreliable predictor
So we've crunched the numbers and what I can tell you is our baseline here is 12 and a half percent for any given player to win
The tournament okay, but we take a lot of facets into consideration and for William a loopy our only
Cub player in the top eight in service of the cub archetypes
He is a chum in a world of sharks six percent for him
He has a tough road ahead of him. Next up we get into average numbers just below from Marko block at 11%
12% for Cyprian Tron. He is also playing badminton club, but he's not a cup deck. He's on bad airbending
Next up two more players just below average a Georgia Satchelike at 12% and
Francisco Sanchez at 12%
But for those paying attention at home, we still have some demonet's
Procedures left to show Mr. Larson the first of our above average players 15% for him Tony
Cordell on getting a huge pump thanks to his quarterfinals matchup 16% for him and then Luis
Salvador our only previous Pro Tour champion has 17% his name. Well Mania do you have to say these
predictor numbers have been known to be wrong. Look Maria I only present the numbers I don't
crunch the numbers. I take no responsibility for how we have done in the past. All I can
say is I look forward to finding out at the end of the day whether we're dealing with
Frank numbers or Riley numbers. Riley mass. I like that term that we've coined this weekend.
Well, I guess we'll find out. We'll check in with the predictor as we work our way through
our top eight today. Where are we starting things off? Here's our first quarter final.
Christopher Larson and Demir Excruciator will be up against their first seed Francisco
Sanchez on Is It Lessons? Christopher Larson, no stranger to competitive play, has top aided
every single kind of event, including Pro Tour Murders at Carla Manor, where he came in third.
He has 10 Grand Prix top aides to his name and one win back in 2017. Francisco Sanchez,
also no stranger to the top aides. This is the second Pro Tour top eight in a row, if we're not
counting the world championship. He top aided Pro Tour Edge of Eternities and got second.
He's played 15 Premier events since his first in 2014. Let's take a look at Christopher
Chris Grillarson's road here to the top eight went 6-0 in draft.
In fact, he's our only undefeated drafter here in our top eight.
When 6-4 overall in standards was a real sweat for Chris Grillarson
to actually make the top eight here today,
came coming in as our eighth seed,
but was so very happy when he did get that top eight first.
Let's take a look at the stats coming into the weekend here with Riley.
A sensational 63% constructed win rate
is saying Christopher make one top eight back in 2024
and performed strongly at two events in 2025,
with three tidy win streaks to boot.
That's a look at Christopher Larson,
who'll be up against Francisco Sanchez.
Take a look here at his road to the top eight,
one 10 in a row to lock up with the first place seed,
went seven and one in standard with those two buys.
You can see awarded in the final rounds
as he was the first person to lock up a spot
in our top eight.
Coming into the weekend, how did his stats look?
Let's talk to Riley.
With a top 8 and a fabulous 65% constructed winrate, Francisco will be looking to go one
better than the second place finisher pro to her edge of eternity.
Watch out on Saturday where that day 2 winrate sky rockets.
One better this time, Francisco Sanchez, a hoping for here.
One better than second place, Nadi.
It's not too difficult to make top 8 if you are Francisco Sanchez.
Talk to me about these decks in the matchup, Lani.
Okay, we're going to start by taking a look at the Demir Excruciator deck that
Chris Larson and some of his teammates brought. This is an evolution of the deck that Javier
Dominguez won the world championship with a year and a half ago. This deck is essentially a combo
control deck. You have controlling elements and a lot of removal, but also you have Doomsday
Excruciator as your top end. Your goal is to get the Excruciator down, put both players
libraries to six, and then you can finish your opponent off using a card like Veselis
brief, more insatiable avarice.
The addition of Superior Spider-Man, as well as Deceit, really leveled up this deck.
And when you're playing as the deck that doesn't put enough pressure on you to give you the
time to play out your combo, you're feeling pretty great.
So the matchup, in theory, should be good for Chris.
On the other side, we go to Sanchez's Is It Lessons deck.
Now, of course, this was the breakout deck from the prettiest World Championship.
However, the deck hasn't gained that much since, especially in a high-impact set like
Lord of the Cliffs.
So the rest of the format caught up a bit.
Now this is a very proactive deck.
You're trying to put pressure on your opponent, but also set up to start getting maximum value
from your healing wisdom and all of your lessons package.
The step typically wins with Monument to Endurance and Artist Talent.
Now one big thing about the Evolution of Visit lessons is it's not as aggressive
as it was at the World Championship,
they've had to become more reactive and cut
carts like Storm Chaser's talent in boomerang basics.
And that's great news for Christopher Larson,
who needs time to set up.
Oh, interesting.
OK, thank you so much, Monty, for a look at the decks.
How are the players feeling ahead of this quarterfinal?
They talked to Cedric.
Here are Christopher Larson at the top eight
of pro tour lower winning clips.
Chris, how do you feel about your top eight matchup?
I feel like my team did a lot of prep work for me
for the matchups probably in a good shape coming into this but we'll see how
it plays out patches the strong player he touched me when I visited Malaga two
weeks ago and told him he can't touch me now Chris good luck thanks man here with
Francisco Sanchez number one overall seed at pro tour lower-ranked clips
Francisco how you feeling about your top eight matchup I haven't played too
much that much about the flu I think I have the tools to beat him and I'll
for my best. Good luck. That's how the players are feeling, but how are you
feeling, Mani? Who's going to win this one? I think this matchup is way too close
to call. In the Swiss, we actually saw lessons going 4-0 against
Excruciator, but I don't think that tells the full story of the matchup, and
of course it's a very small sample size as I can almost hear Frank yelling
from backstage. I think for me this one is too close to call. What about
I'm going to lean the way of Christopher Larson.
He went six and four in the standard portion of the Swiss,
but he said he felt like he should have went eight and two.
He said he felt like he threw two matches away
because he wasn't sure exactly how to play in those matchups.
So he's had a little bit more time to prepare specifically
for this matchup against Is It Lessons
alongside a very, very powerful team.
That's a dangerous player. I'm going to lean his way.
All right, let's find out what happens.
It's time for our first quarter final.
over to Marshall and Paul. Yeah, that's right. Thank you, Maria. Welcome to the booth here and we are all set for our first quarter final match here.
Marshall Cycliffe with Paul Cheon and we're super happy to bring you coverage of top eight Sunday here from Richmond.
This is where the nerves rise. This is where the prize money goes up with every win.
You know, there's that initial relief that you get Paul when you make the top eight because many players' goal for the tournament is to do that.
But now you've got to kind of aim a little higher and try to get that win.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, of course, the initial goal is a top-eat event,
but now every single person here has a chance to become the pro-tour champion.
So lots on the line.
That's right. Now we've got two players facing off with a lot of experience
at the highest levels here.
You see Christopher Larson versus Francisco Sanchez.
And two very different takes on the format, however.
You know people were kind of like are you going to play a cub deck or are you going to attack from a different angle?
And these players both chose to attack from a different angle. This is Demir excruciators
You see Christopher take his seat here for his quarterfinal match versus is it lessons in the hands of Francisco Sanchez?
Yeah, super interesting match up here
Not sure that Francisco had Demir excruciator
Kind of as a deck that he thought he would be playing against coming into this tournament
But yeah, this is just kind of going back and forth with this matchup here.
I think the most important thing here for Christopher Larson is to just try and resolve the doomsday excruciator.
If you can get that into play, turn six or perhaps turn four with a Spider-Man,
then while Christopher Francisco Sanchez will only have six cards left in his deck,
all of a sudden all of his accumulate wisdoms don't do anything,
and he's going to have a tough time actually closing out the game with only six cards left.
Let's see our staff enter the frame as well and that means we are ready to go for game
number one of our first quarter final.
Let's get underway here.
Take a look at the opening hands.
It looks like Francisco's on six cards to start, but we've seen this deck has the ability
to unmulligan with the best of them.
And Christopher Larson also on six maybe.
Did he keep a one-lander?
It does look like he's kept a one-lander here.
I mean, this could be over quick if Christopher doesn't find land.
Oh, no, no landing.
He just says, go.
This is rough.
I mean, he kept it to seats, which are very good in this matchup,
but Francisco has turned to artist talent.
Are you kidding me?
Monument to endurance.
If Chris doesn't find a land here, it's going to be over.
Is this game done?
He has to be with OK scoops, right?
And they're like, yeah, if you want, that
has to be the fastest game one we've had on top paint Sunday.
I mean, that was a totally smoke.
That was a turn three win.
And this is a lesson that is not a deck that can typically
win on turn three.
But of course, Christopher Larson,
keeping a one-lander with multiple deceits
to recognizing that's one of the most important cards
in the matchup, trying to just will some lands
on top of his neck, but failed to do so.
Yeah, instead he got to watch two key permanents
at the battlefield for Francisco and said,
it's OK if I could just be done at this point.
And he was given the green light on that.
So let's get a real game here for game number two.
This is going to be tough.
Giving away a game for Christopher
lowers your percent chance of winning the match by a lot.
Yeah.
And one of the important cards for Chris Larson,
actually the most important card
is to try to resolve that doom to the excruciator.
But the problem is on the other side,
when you're at the Demir deck, you
don't have great answers once an artist talent resolves
or a monument, right?
Once it's in play, Demir typically
doesn't have the tools to deal with artifacts
or enchantments all that well, which
means Francisco can just continue casting spells
once he gets his talent in play, dig, find his counter
magic, just to be able to stop what Chris Larson can do.
Yeah, Larson's deck much better at dealing
with opposing threats.
They're just creatures and Francisco playing even fewer
creatures than the prior version of this deck.
Dead look at this insatiable average using the draw three cards
mode as life total doesn't really matter all that much here.
Painful way to draw some cards, but still gets it done here.
All right.
Why to yeah when you overdrag it up to eight cards you have
to discard it and step and that's going to put the excruciator
in the yard.
Yeah, and Chris Larsen does have that superior spider-man. So Francisco with that little quencha
Will certainly not run out the second copy of artist talent in hand and keep that counter spell available
So Christopher is gonna want to try to clear the way first if he can
Right gonna be looking for something like a deceit now the problem is go with tactics
Yeah tactics doesn't get spells out of your hand, but he'll know at least he'll know he'll know so he'll he'll be able
But the thing is he's gonna have to wait right right
He's gonna have to at least wait until turn six to be able to play that superior spider-man and be able to pay for the little quencha
Now this is still these are still pre-boarded games right this is game two, but this is best out of five
So Francisco might not have more counter spells here
But he is playing a version with a couple of hard counters
He does have a couple of copies of three steps ahead
head, so he's going to be really looking to try to find one of those
Howard counters for in impending superior Spider-Man.
Chris is just taking a quick note of the different
cards that are in hand here since there are so many.
Yeah, wouldn't be surprised here if Francisco just runs out.
I know it doesn't feel great, but accumulate wisdom just to get the one card,
get a firebending lesson out of there, and just to try to find
more counter magic and more card draw.
He's going to go for stock up here and just kind of say,
hey, you want to burn your ittle quencia on this?
Fair enough.
And if you don't, maybe I'll find some way
to disrupt your hand otherwise.
Yeah, the issue is if stock up resolves,
yeah, because Chris Larson knows about it.
So he knows he's going to play around it anyways.
Maybe you can use this to find a way
to find more counter magic.
Also, if you resolve stock up,
you're very likely to find something like a deceit
exactly clear the way for your superior Spider-Man.
So a productive turn there for Larson.
The real question is, does he just fire off here?
Yeah, I mean, as far as he knows, the way is clear.
Francisco's only looked at two extra cards here.
Now there are, there is one extra copy of it'll quencha.
And of course, the two copies of the three steps ahead.
But, you know, Chris Larson can certainly go for this turn.
Francisco now reading the excruciator here.
Yeah, I guess the way I would think about it is like,
How bad is it if he gets his superior Spider-Man quenched here?
It's not like the end of the world for him, right?
And it's also just one card left here, right?
The issue here...
He's going for it. They're supporting Spider-Man on the stack.
Francisco can respond by casting Accumulate Wisdom,
Rummage, and look for the other Ittle Quencha in his deck.
That's what he's going to do. Larson says,
OK, so far you don't have it.
We're going to dig. Three cards, by the way.
way. Spell snare. Does it resolve? And he found a steam vent, so that is going to resolve.
Okay. Okay. I mean, is that game? No, it is not game, Mark. What happens now? So what
happens now if is both sides, well, both that will have six cards left in your deck.
Now Francisco can find a way to kill the excruciator. Well, if Christopher Larson
He needs to find one of those extra cards to basically make it so that Francisco will
have less cards left in his deck.
Remember, Doomstick's Crusader makes you draw an extra card every single turn.
So you need to pair it with something like an insatiable avarice or a restless wreath
to actually mill out your opponent.
To offset the number of cards drawn.
Now Francisco though, he really can't do much here, right?
Like if he casts anything, most of his stuff draws cards like he really just sort of
needs to let Christopher.
Yeah, it's tough to actually rummage here. Right. He has an
Iroh demonstration that is not enough here to kill. Oh, and I
like this. He's leveling up artist talent because if you
level it up to level the final chapter, yeah, then you can
actually cast Iroh demonstration to deal six damage to the
excruciator. Funny. Also of note, Francisco careful with
his life total there. He was still at the full 20. You
know, sometimes you find yourself at 18. You can
only take the three hits but he's gonna take four. Can Chris just play another
excruciator here? Oh that's interesting. Just go land and just go double six six
flyer. He would have to draw even an extra extra card. Yeah but it would shorten
the clock because Chris Larson currently is not on the milieu plan.
Okay of course can just play the harvest. This works better yeah. Yes.
because right now he's already down to four cards in library.
Right.
Yikes.
We should have implemented a cards in library number at this point.
Should have seen this one coming.
Demonstration is enough, however, to just kill.
Okay. Chooses, of course, not to rummage here.
Probably just going to tick up the artist talent.
No.
Just keeping up Spellsner instead.
Okay, how many cards left?
Two. That's two.
Yeah.
Okay, so he's got, I mean, he needs to play out another thread here, right?
He does.
But if he does, he will, he will deck himself.
He will just deck himself, so he can't do a demon.
Okay, deadly cover up.
Is there a way that Francisco has multiple copies of a card left in his deck?
I don't know if that's enough though, right?
Oh, that's really interesting.
Unless both of the cards left in the deck are the exact copy of the card that Chris Larsen is targeting.
So now, Chris has to just see what he can get with this deadly cover.
Oh, never mind. Removing his excruciate, of course.
So he will get to slow back down again and only draw.
Right, but how is he still going to win with only two cards left in his library?
He needs to draw in Sageshable Averus or get a restless reaper going.
He doesn't have one in play.
He's going to look and see if there's firebending lesson in the library, but there's not.
Yeah, I mean, the Excruciator is a double-edged sword.
It doesn't end the game by itself, right?
Not at all.
It is kind of a two-card combo.
You want to pair that with Averus or the Restless Reef.
Of course, can I watch right now in the library?
also interesting that and thankful that the rest of the libraries are exiled
face down those are not public information so he just has to hope that
avarice or whatever is one of those I mean on top or or a restless reef right
draw card play wreath that your turn activate attack in Hope Francisco has
nothing I mean he has to drive here though right and he also he could also
draw avarice does he have an avarice left in his back we don't know oh there's the
reef he says go let's see there's three lessons in the yard he does have
combustion technique and he does need to turn it sideways
I'll give you the straight answer.
Okay, because Larson knows the library.
Right, alright, this has to be combustion technique.
What a rip.
One good top deck deserves another.
He's just gonna have to do it here.
Restless reef with, I mean, Larson has no choice.
He just fires it up in attacks because he knows that there wasn't a combustion technique in the library.
making the library winning with those cards. Oh my God. That is absolutely incredible.
Both players on no library, but it's Francisco chances turn and he's the one that has to
drop first. So he loses. I mean, he had only two cards. He could have drawn there and found
found the perfect card to win. Francisco still had a chance. I mean, that's the way
That reef was clutch that is on and he needed if it was the reef it had to be the top. It
couldn't be the last average could have been either but I eat. Wow. Oh man. That was a little
better than game one. I'll say. Okay. We're going to catch our breath and take a break
here from Richard. When we come back though, we'll be back with more quarterfinal action.
Don't go anywhere.
Welcome back to coverage here of pro tour lower when it clips where Richmond, Virginia and Marcia
like if I was Paul Chi on and we are in top eight Sunday. That's right. We've got our first quarter
final match underway. Very quick game one lasted about a minute, maybe. Yeah, I mean Chris Larson
just kept you know, Mulligan kept the one lander, but I will say this very entertaining game
to aim to made up for it. Let's just say that now. Remember we're playing best three out of
five here on top eight Sunday. So that means that the first two games, no sideboards,
but any subsequent games do have sideboards so the players have had a chance to consult their boards and now they're going to play out as
Even money here one to one
Best two out of three like normal from here on out, but with sideboards. So let's see how this goes
Weird matchup I have to say these these two decks
We're both kind of aimed at the same thing, but not at each other, right?
And so game one both decks are going to be packing their deck with all kinds of removal
Right just to be able to kind of handle
The all the various vaginal cub decks, but after cyborg. I mean taking a look here
I mean both sides just boarding out a ton of
Removal here and kind of setting up for kind of a controlling mirror here
I mean from Chris Larsen side
He is bringing in three copies of quantum Riddler
four copies of duress negate and two copies of soul guy lantern you can tell
there was a matchup that they had in mind in the sideboard absolutely she's all
those dresses too yeah along with the deceit so tons of hand disruption here
from the demure side yeah this seems difficult for Francisco I mean if he
does land those key permanence they do have a good chance of sticking on the
battlefield, but. Yeah, yeah, for
person has the ability to take him
out of hand quite easily. Yeah, from
Francisco side, he absolutely just
wants to try to stick one of those
enchantments or artifacts. In fact,
just digging here, firing off three
steps ahead, because he has no
action. It's a very reactive and he
wants to find a monument or an
artist talent here gets rid of
combustion technique, draws his card
for the turn, finds the monument
here as well. There's a monument and an ittle quencia as well.
This could be a good window to just slam the monument here, play around some counter magic.
There isn't a doomstick crusader in the graveyard right now, so you're not really concerned about
a Turn 4 Superior Spider-Man copying that creature.
But Larson is really loading up on the future gains here. He's got two quantum riddlers
already warped and he has another in his hand. Yeah, so lots of cards coming up here.
However, on the flip side, you know, there's a dress Francisco does have that monument to endurance and he's got Agnicella in play
So he's already got his own card draw engine online
So even through hand disruption Francisco can pretty easily kind of refuel because every single turn you activate Agnicella
Your disc you're looting drawing the card discarding card triggers the monument to endurance
So basically it's dropped to discard one from your land
Okay, well Christopher, all for the winner night stories is going to discard two copies
of Requiting Hex and then he's going to play Soul Guide Lantern.
Yeah, keeping it in just to be able to deal with Grand Grand, which is a very, very
problematic creature if she stays on the battlefield.
Chris Larson likely going to want to set up trying to resolve one of these
Riddlers. Maybe start things off with the rest here. Lots of cards. Riddler number three.
Sure. This is on the QR code here. Yeah. That's three of them. And then
winter night stories here potentially. And it plays a land to play around
Edel Quintia and of course Francisco does have it here. It's a good
sequencing. Chris has seen so many cards in such a short period of time. There's a demon
by the way. Might discard that. You have to discard a creature card or two cards.
Yeah, this deck does have the ability to cast doomsday excruciator quite easily.
It is not mono black, but if you look at the mana base, you basically every... I believe
every lane just tap tap right
so tricky spot here just lots of option in terms of what you want to actually
discard
it's really interesting you know a normal demir control deck would have a real
problem with is it lessons yes you can take away a bunch of stuff but they
always can see more cards and those decks typically don't apply enough
pressure to really back up the hand disruption but this deck
does like this is the type of deck where you can go like play two hand
destruction spells and clear the way for the excruciator and then you kind of
don't care what they did up until all right abandon attachments this is going
to give Francisco three extra cards here because you're gonna you're gonna
discard a card here draw two and then you also have the monument trigger now
Chris Larson does have the option here to go for a negate yeah he's gonna
fight over this actually that is just so much more resources and are we gonna see
Francisco fight back with it'll quench it we are because this is just so many
extra cards right yeah it's interesting because you know generally speaking
both players will let them yeah draw some cards what I you know I'm gonna I
have to focus on the cards that really matter but both recognizing that that's
just so many cards that it could just become overwhelming for Christopher
Larsen if he were to let Francisco resolve that so he went for the negate, but
They got counter back so Francisco gets this huge bump and cartage
Francisco finds another monument here so can run that out and has another abandoned attachments
But actually just choosing to keep all of his men up has access to negate
And you can just still activate the Agnicella. Oh and look at this superior spider-man just goes right on the stack
No duress going forward here in Francisco doesn't have a counter spell here. Seriously
So if this resolves this will be a doomsday excruciator and he's gonna have to dig
All right cast a cumulative wisdom that there is a soul guy lantern in place
So you can prevent this Francisco from drawing the full three cards, but right now Francisco is just looking for
three steps away
Can he find a three steps ahead, or is he going to, or is this, or are we going to have
one?
I think it's going to resolve.
Right, remember, this time there is a restless reef in play, right?
We have a little more action to, instead of just hoping to get lucky with something
on top, you actually have the ability to mill your opponent out.
So interesting too that Larson has duress in hand.
right like how tempting would it be to just fire that off to try to clear the way and there's
it counters disappear spider-man but there's good news for larson he has another one in hand
so this is one that he could afford to get countered yeah there's a second copy
there's two copies you he used one earlier to just kind of loot and now now he doesn't have any
left so now i wonder francisco is looking for something like a soul guide lantern could perhaps
It's just Casablan and attachments this turn, right?
He did board them in to deal with Superior Spider-Man.
Could be something that we see here.
Sanchez has to be very worried about a second copy coming out,
especially because Larson just sort of threw it out there.
He got to figure out he's got another one.
There's probably a backup, right?
Right.
But next turn, Larson can go land,
duress, have two mana up, and still
cast superior Spider-Man all in the same turn. That is going to be a lot to get
through. A Soul Guide Lantern would be much better for Sanchez here.
Yeah, it looks like Francisco digging this turn. Here, can he find it? He found what he
needed last turn. This card is the barrage. So this will find him
monument trigger on the stack finding an extra card.
Okay, and then there are two lessons in the graveyard does find and accumulate wisdom
So that would allow him to continue to dig but he has not seen anything
Relevant just yet as not here. You can you could just fire off this wisdom here the
Just two mana anticipate option here. He's gonna play grand-grand. Okay
And he's passed the turn back asking the turn now there is a bitter triumph here for Larson
So he figures well right might as well might as well
That's what it's there for I think Francisco is probably okay with just letting this guy
Still has the ability to so what instant speed stuff does Francisco have access to at this point
They could interact with this superior. Yeah, I mean he brings it in the gate in a spell pierce
But those don't actually do it here. Wow. He found a seat to yeah, I mean and Larsen not going for duress
Looks like he's still just happy. Wow out the spider-man here. So gutsy from Larsen
He's put Spiderman on the stack yet again.
I mean, at this point, given that he's used both of the three steps ahead, I guess you're
thinking it's just the coast is kind of clear here, unless you have double quench, right?
One quench has also been cast.
Oh, it has.
Right.
So there's only one quench left.
Okay.
Well, then he just knows.
Right.
Exactly.
I guess you don't need to have, you don't need to speculate if you're Christopher
Larsen, you just throw it on the stack.
Larsen looks non-plus, he's just like, look.
Yeah, I think what Larsen is trying to do is set this up.
If this resolves, if this resolves the turn before he activates the reef,
that's when he wants to fire off his hand resruption to make sure
Francisco doesn't have a removal spell for the reef.
Because he knows that the counters have been used up.
Yeah
Wow
There's only the two and I'm not saying it was incorrect for Francisco to fire off the three steps ahead
He absolutely needed to find some action here
But you know when you know exactly you and you have a full night to kind of prepare for this match
If you know all the interaction that your opponent can have I
I wonder if Francisco may have wanted to still cast that accumulate wisdom on his turn to
dig, you know, find a soul guide Lantern also brought in a singular copy of Torpor orb,
which also would have worked.
Yeah, I mean, I think Francisco's racket is brain for things that could matter here
and isn't able to come up with anything.
He's like, oh, I can't, I don't have an answer for the excruciator.
I'm just gonna activate the Agnicella make sure I have all as many cards in my hand as possible
Before the excruciator results because you don't want to cast card draw spells after the excruciator results
But this is beautiful for Larson. He sees his hint is tap out
And he knows that he activating the Agnicella means the way is 100% clear right for
Whatever he wants to do
All right, here we go, six cards left in library, this worked out well for Larsen last time,
but barely.
Bottom six.
Larsen now can flip the rest.
Post-superior Spider-Man duress, he is just showing that he knows this matchup.
There's a monument there.
Takes away the second monument.
Francisco can't get a treasure here as he did discard a card or he's always gonna draw he's gonna choose to draw here
Okay, well, I guess he probably just says I have to find an answer right for the reefer. I'm gonna lose anyway
Okay
does he
For cards left just a monument
Agna kill this is rough. All right. I mean this is Francisco's playing his out some that's it. Oh
Oh, Christopher Larson navigates that game beautifully
and picks up his second win.
He's up two games to one.
The only game he lost, he didn't play a spell.
Right, yeah.
And this, I mean, Doomsday's Crusher is the card here
that completely swings this matchup on its head
just because if you think about it historically speaking,
you know, the, is it lessons
does really really well against various control shells right but if you can resolve a creature
that makes it so your opponent just doesn't have any cards left they just do not have time to kind
of spin their wheels. Francisco with the Soul Guide Lantern now so Superior Spider-Man will be
turned off. That was a very quick start. Requiring Hex killed Gran-Gran and now like you said
that Soulguide Lantern is going to be sitting there.
And as you mentioned, these blue-black decks
have a lot of good answers for our team champions.
We're going to see a stock up.
Whatever this is, we'll likely get countered.
Nope.
Oh, it's going to let it go.
Well, Francisco needs to hit land drops here.
So probably just going, you know what?
I'm going to let that resolve because I really
need to cast abandoned attachments here
to try to keep hitting land drops.
Because if you go abandoned attachments,
This card combustion technique, perhaps it'll quench at the next play,
next play, then you can turn on accumulate wisdom.
So with that lantern out there, does Larson just switch, switch modes into hard casting?
Right.
Because he can do it.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, that mana cost looks oppressive, but it's actually only six.
And in his deck, that's six lands.
Yeah.
Like he can cast it on turn six if he has it.
It is a lot harder to kind of play around it'll quench at that point, but after cyborg
Chris Larson has seven hand disruption spells right for duress note eight for duress and
for deceits here.
Right.
And he actually is going to go for a duress right now going that's negate ice.
Yeah.
Then he's just going to probably fire off another duress here that will take the
accumulate wisdom.
Yeah.
I mean the one thing that Sanchez doesn't have going is the engine right like he
He doesn't have either enchantments or artifacts.
And then the seed, the Quantum Riddler, right?
Yeah.
So he's annihilated his hand.
I mean, Sanchez has the ability to get a lot of cards going
in a short period of time, but he's kind of forcing an issue
and it was the land off the top.
By the way, you can target any creature in the graveyard
with Superior Spider-Man.
There's a Quantum Riddler in Francisco's graveyard.
So you can play a 4-4.
You could potentially force your opponent to just exiled their own graveyard,
which would kind of slow down the lessons deck as well.
Larson says, I've always wanted my own quantum riddler,
but he's going to go for avarice here.
That is actually going to draw out the ittle quench you though.
And that means Sanchez is down to island.
Yeah. Now Francisco going,
do I want to just crack the soul guy lantern to draw a card?
Oh, he's in that mode.
Yeah. Cause he doesn't have anything going here.
You could just target the seat potentially.
He is doing it. Oh, he found another soulguide lantern. I think artist talent and soulguide
lantern. You can rummage as well. That's how you get right back in this. Right. Francisco
at the deceit out of there. Okay. So now he's starting to get an engine rolling and he
has that backup plan with the lantern. Chris Larson does have an insatiable adverse here
to restock here. And if you can get to six mana and find a deceit, the seed is an answer
to some of these enjamments. You can cast the deceit for blue, blue, black, black, bounce
permanent and then have them discard that permanent that's right but another
avarice here for Larson and he's just trying to load up on cards because right
now both players have kind of attacked each other's hands enough Francisco has
found another land probably just gonna take up the artist talent I wonder if
he's gonna play the Spire bluff canal nope just the island representing the
gate. Oh, and that's a deceit
here from Larsen off. And he's just going to hard cast it for the full amount.
That is brutal because now all of a sudden Francisco can't just play spells to start
rummaging either. And Chris Larsen has a very credible threat here into the seat.
In response to the spell, he's going to crack. Is there anything? Nope.
He just found a land. He's going to showcase his hand of all land.
Yeah, I see it in all lands. He let him he let him know. Yeah, he discarding this one and by the way, that's a clock now
Right, absolutely. Oh, that is a rail
Rall crackling wit here for Sanchez. So you can use the rail to
Either draw three discard two cards to try to find more cards perhaps a combustion technique to kill the deceit or
You can just start making one-one tokens and hope Chris Larson doesn't have a way to kill the token
but yeah Francisco actually just choosing to dig here instead yeah we saw
broadside barrage in the last game Francisco actually discarding it early
but that's a card that can take care of C2 finds a quantum Riddler and grand
grand well it has to pitch two cards here I guess you can use grand grand to
to keep Rowell around.
So if you disperse two cards, he's
going to go down to three, play a land for the turn,
and then if you warp the Quantum Rither,
you do get to draw two cards.
Yeah.
Is he OK with letting Rowell go here?
I think, well, there's also a restless grief in play.
I think the assumption is that the Rowell will die.
If Chris wanted to, Rowell's dead anyway.
That makes sense.
Oh, and he finds accumulate wisdom.
So he's loading back up here.
Yeah, this is a little bit of momentum.
But Chris Larson finds stock up.
So the haymakers are coming here from both sides,
actually double accumulate wisdom here in Francisco's hand.
Holy swith the grand grand.
Chris Larson got a stock up,
try to find one of his eight hand disruptions spelled.
Yeah, he wants to get a look.
That's a duress.
Maybe a deceit in there too.
No, it doesn't look like it.
It was a duress and...
Also has a negate so actually both accumulate wisdoms are now are dealt with or yeah and the route right
This is an incredible game
Both players just throwing everything they have at each other. Oh, but he doesn't fire off the rest
The rest of one of the wisdoms will
Resolve assuming Chris Larson only has a negate in hand here
Well, and there's a combustion technique just a little bit late for Sanchez, right? So first grand-grand
Now if you're Francisco, are you gonna be patient here? Do you just run it out first one's just coming out?
Okay, well that one runs out in response. You do this. Maybe you find a counter spell right here. You can resolve both
This is the first the second to accumulate wisdom
Does this one get countered it does okay, so it stays countered artists talent island
Monuments everything
What? So he has grand grand talent and then monument at some point here, right?
And combustion technique if he needs as well and Chris Larsen I mean at this
point we're kind of on back on the maybe I need to get doomsday excruciator
going here because Francisco would just kind of found all the pieces here
unbelievable
Wow, Larsen passed the turn and there was nothing.
thing. Yeah, one card left, that's combustion technique. So we didn't rummage that away.
Oh, but a stock up here. What can you find?
That's superior Spider-Man and a space and a quantum ruler. Yeah, I mean, those are
fine cars. Yeah, definitely. Is that really what he needs right now?
Now, yeah, and there's also a quantum river warped on the Francisco side, which will kind
of fuel him back up here.
This is a tough little spot here for Chris Larson.
No doomsday excruciators to be seen.
He did board one out here.
Okay.
Match up.
Maybe feeling that a little bit right now.
Yeah, the key is to just resolve one at some point just kind of more important to have all those hand disruption elements
So he's gonna get a riddler here
Yeah, that's I believe that's the only decent creature in the yard right there's a grand-grand I don't know if that yeah
Yeah, but there's no lessons so you know the each discount. It's the only other option so
But I don't even get comes a quantum riddler Chris Larson has so many cards in hand. I mean, it's a fine card
It is a 4-6 flyer, but that's all it is
I mean, can you just start beating down with deceit and riddler?
Sure can but Francisco's hands just does have the combustion technique that would deal with the deceit
And then Francisco can just hard cast a quantum riddler draw two cards have the blocker for the opposing riddler
And presumably if you can find some more spells chain those with artist town plus monument all of a sudden Francisco could
potentially Barry Chris Larson in card advantage.
It's certainly feeling like that's the direction it's going to
seat is going to attack, but it's going to get combustion
technique.
Alright.
And that exiles it to right?
It absolutely does. Alright, can Francisco find some spells
here to cast to get the talent and
in its catchments, right? Okay, that'll work. But no cards
in hand. So you want to run out the quantum riddler first
right draw two cards. But yeah, I mean, this is just all
of the cards here now for Francisco.
Yeah, this was the card avalanche that has been forming
for the last turn and a half.
And also finds a three steps ahead.
Oh, interesting.
Probably just want to run out abandoned attachments now
while you get the discount for one mana.
By the way, with that Riddler in play,
you play the abandoned attachments, you discard,
you draw more than one card.
Because you're down to one card.
You're down to just three steps ahead.
when that trigger is all right so big
draw two off the river yes
now monument trigger still on the stack yeah i'm an extra card so that's three
cards
abandoned attachments hasn't resolved it hasn't even resolved
all right and now this will get francesco a treasure as well
Holy smokes.
Yeah, I mean, when this tech just kind of gets this engine
running, it's so hard to stop.
That's another monument endurance sale.
Oh, no, two more monuments.
So what can Larson do to get out of this mess?
I think it's excruciating.
It's really bust, yeah.
I think that's absolutely what Chris Larson needs here.
I don't think playing this kind of fair game
of running out some quantum drillers in the seats
will get it done from this point.
You just need to kind of attack Francisco's deck with the excruciator.
Man, I keep thinking about that turn when Francisco had the two accumulate wisdom, right?
And Chris Larson did have the opportunity to fire off that the rest in his hand.
And if he did, he would have the negate for the other one.
And then Francisco would have nothing.
Right. And instead look what happened.
Right. Oh, there's an excruciator.
Okay. But there is a three steps ahead and this, this will cost what?
Six mana to cast.
but there is a duress.
Does he have enough to do it all?
Yeah, he does actually.
Yeah, and here's the thing.
So what does this mean?
Well, here's the thing though.
If you think Christopher Larson's
setting up a doomsday excruciator,
you can spell Pierce this duress.
Right?
If Chris Larson pays for the duress,
he can't play the doomsday excruciator.
Also, when you cast the spell Pierce,
you trigger your monument
and then you can make another treasure.
So you can actually have them
because there's already a treasure in play.
You rummage, you make a second treasure, you have grand-grand in play and you still have the ability to cast the three steps ahead in your hand as well.
That is wild.
So I think if you're Francisco you spell pierce this, because your route to losing this game is a resolved doomsday excruciator.
And that would basically buy you a turn.
Right.
And a turn is so huge in this situation.
With the three monuments you can actually kill Christopher Larson over two turns.
Oh, we were in the other resolve
Oh, hey steps ahead and Chris Larson has so he just goes for it got the line here
He's I mean he's gonna go for the doomsday excretion now
There's still a chance here that Francisco can win with those monuments, right?
He'll only have six cards like don't you just end up what you play?
Accidentally drawing don't rummage until you get all three in play
I see then you play a spell then you rummage nine to your opponent on your opponent's turn cast another spell take another nine
And that's in Larsen's at 17 right
And Larsen's gonna be tapped out. You have to be careful, but very careful. Yes, but that's definitely so but if Larsen was at 19
Not so much that would be a lot more difficult. Yes, but the insatiable avarice
Was the three damage that might very much matter here
He's going for it. Excruciator.
If Francisco can just might as well get all the card draw out of the way now.
Yeah, I wonder also about the quantum Riddler for Sanchez like that's not a May right?
not a May but at this point Francisco has so many cards I don't think he's
gonna get to the point where he's gonna have to draw two cards off of it okay
it just won't matter anymore yeah he the last turn he just drew five cards or
something okay because he's got to get the monuments yeah I yeah it's so tricky
what he needs to do is get the monuments in play but also find another
spell to cast because right now he doesn't right so with this abandoned
attachments Francisco is going to be looking for you know combustion
technique or anything to kind of trigger the three monuments that he's going to
have in play next term. So he's just trying to set himself up. There's Torpor Orb a little late.
A little late. Hey, but it's a piece of cardboard that counts as a spell that you cast.
That's right. Okay, it resolves. Both players will be down to just six cards in their library,
And if Larson can somehow survive, he could be in the driver's seat with that reef.
But it feels like Francisco has all the tools needed to go nine, right?
Then on your upkeep, nine you again needs an instant speed spell here to be able to pass in Larson.
The orb does not do that.
He doesn't have any yet, right?
Doesn't have any yet.
He doesn't yet.
There are two months and that was kind of a with with the abandoned attachments.
Now, do you have a way if you can kill the doomsday excruciator, which you can't.
But if you could, you could have attacked.
That would have put Chris Larson to nine.
Then you play double monument in the Torpor Orban.
That would be lethal. Right.
But he didn't have any removal.
Well, I mean, Sanchez boarded out most of his removal in this matchup.
Right. He boarded out all four of the firebending techniques and boarded out
Yeah, firebending lessons and only has combustion techniques left, right?
Larson has the easy job right now. He just has to sit and watch. This is very much out of his hands for the moment
Picking that up all right because he's gonna cast a lot of spells
So might as well get the full on cost reduction here. This is the first monumental endurance
it'll cost one mana to cast.
Not rummaging yet, playing out the second one here.
And then you can play kind of the Torper Orb for free.
It costs zero mana with Grand Grand
and the leveled up artist talent here.
And hopefully that will find Francisco
in instant speed spell here to go for the win.
He needs to find one.
Let's see what he can get.
It's the rummage.
So he goes for a rummage here with two monuments.
It'll question no, no, four cards left.
I guess unless Larson put something on the stack.
Right.
But Larson just wants to activate restless wisdom.
Accumulate wisdom.
OK.
OK.
So the triggers will resolve before the spell does.
That should get it done here.
Torpor orb.
Nine you.
Rummage, take nine.
on your upkeep, accumulate wisdom, discard, take nine again.
With zero cards in library.
Zero cards in library.
By the way, Chris Larson won with zero cards in library
in the previous game.
Hahaha.
Francisco Sanchez looks like he has found a route to victory.
He actually has a combustion technique here too.
Every single card here, mattering.
He's just going to say go spell and it's just going to be combustion technique, rummage.
Trigger, trigger, trigger.
I will choose not to draw off my monuments and do nine to you.
Take nine.
So he said I'm going to do nine to you.
Nine, nine.
What do you choose? And there we go. That is game number four going to
Francisco Sanchez to even things up and force a final and fifth game between
these two and I'm thrilled that we're gonna get a game five here Paul. This
matchup not what you would assume coming in but boy is it exciting. Yeah
wow. I mean Francisco at a couple of points early in that game with
Basically no resources in hand, but you see just how quickly that that can just refuel up with cards like that accumulate wisdom
We were talking we were singing such high praises of the card and of course the you know
A lot of the other decks in the form I have caught up, but this is still an extremely powerful engine
Yeah once Francisco
Rounded that corner with that second copy of accumulate wisdom
he never looked back and was even able to win through the excruciator. Here's
stock up once again Larson playing kind of a more of a Demir control shell with
that combo finish. Slammed the monument and the monument hits immediately. No
way to deal with the monument but Chris Larson does have stock up here gonna be
looking for a duress hasn't played a land for the turn yet. Does find one.
And I think a Soul Guide Lantern as well, so some good disruption elements, if that's
what he goes for.
Yeah, nice cheap interaction.
Ooh, Cruel Claws Heist.
Actually a Game 5 special here, boarding this in.
Another hand disruption spell.
From the Loomboro.
Getting the Lantern going here, so now accumulate wisdom.
The first one, at least, will not be drawing Francisco three cards.
Wait, did Francisco draw all four of his monuments?
It does look like it.
Yeah, but this is huge, abandoned attachments with an active monument.
This is going to be discard one, draw three cards.
He's going to keep all the monuments in hand.
Oh, and then I guess he's deciding, oh, he didn't find a land.
He might want to make a treasure here.
He wants to fire something else.
Like, make a treasure just play artist talent and just kind of hope that Christopher Larson
doesn't completely punish you on the following turn.
Make a treasure.
Yeah.
Oh, goes for accumulate wisdom here instead.
just trying to hit these lands, right?
And it's not going to get that much better,
given that there's a sole guy lantern in play.
So it looks, I'm assuming he went for a land here.
He did it quickly.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the cards he's put in on the bottom
is Acumulant Wisdom.
So yeah, we're going to see a steam vents from Francisco.
And he's going to pass the turn back with triple monument
artist talent and a combustion technique.
Chris Larson doesn't have a whole lot of action here.
but he's heisting Cruel Claw.
Cruel Claw's heist goes out of stack.
And I believe he's gifting him a card.
Yeah, you do a card.
I gift you a card.
Yeah, he gifts you a card, and then he can take a non-land card
and cast it.
And he can cast it.
So you can take artist talent here if you want.
And I mean, that's probably the most impactful card.
You're not taking a monument doesn't do anything.
So it feels like you're going to take the artist talent
here.
I mean, haven't you ever wanted
to have a monument in play, Paul?
Yeah, but you got a lot of spells.
Artists talent also seems pretty nice.
By the way, the first time I played the lessons that this was what I drew.
I drew all the monuments and just didn't do anything.
I was going to say, is it a good thing or a bad thing to have all four?
Well, at this point, no.
You want to kind of went Francisco ahead at the last game.
But right now Francisco wants to find grand-grands, more abandoned attachments,
or of course the Agnicella in his back.
So he wants to get these cost reduction effects going.
going. Yeah so it's kind of, it's both players right now just actually don't don't have too much going right now.
He's going to play the artist talent because why not? Okay.
He's got a pair of bitter triumph and a pair of lands facing down triple monument double combustion technique.
All right so that is a land so if you're Francisco you just play out the other monument
Set up, right? Set up for an artist talent off the top.
Set up for an Agnichela.
You know, why not? He's got no pressure here.
Oh, and the rail that he runned.
There's a deceit, though, for a person.
And is this Six Mana?
Yeah. Okay.
Just cast a thing.
You can cast it, kill one of the monuments, and then...
Have a five-five?
Balance a monument.
It might actually just take combustion technique.
Oh, but if you do this, by the way,
what the monument will trigger?
right the one you're going to play a little trigger because you make them
discard which is actually not necessarily a great thing here no because
you're not actually solving the monument problem with this right you kind of
want to it but the thing is every land in your deck taps for black man as you
can't not cast the seat for just all blue can you I mean if you have two swamps
which he does your your stuff yeah he doesn't want to take a card
I don't intend to discard my opponent.
So the question is, do you have that choice if you had two swamps and were forced to use black mana?
Can I choose?
You can, you can.
I mean, if you play six moves, you have to.
If you play six blue, you could.
Yeah, there's two swamps in play.
Three swamps.
Yeah, I think you just got to do it.
If black was spent, target opponent reveals their hand, you choose.
It doesn't say you may so they have to choose a card and this isn't like searching your library where you can say
Well, I didn't find what I wanted. Yeah, it's not a fail to find right there are cards. This is rough
I mean unbelievable. Yeah, it might have been better to just not even play the deceit
Oh, it's a no, let's just go can find artist talent accumulate wisdom Agnicella
Will Chris Larson be punished not yet. No
And it's extra rough because Sanchez still has a combustion technique in hand anyway,
right?
So he still has the answer for the deceit.
There is an active soul guide lantern on Larson's side so he could.
Oh sure.
I guess counter it and Chris Larson's because at this point, Chris Larson has nothing right.
Right.
He's just getting a plan with his.
His game plan is I mean there's a restless reef in the graveyard as well.
His plan might just be to just try to kill you over three turns.
Three monuments on the battlefield for Sanchez.
He is monument flooded.
It is time to and Larson needs to go into be a mode with your deck.
Thank you for nine.
He's deciding who to mill with the reef.
I could target himself because he does have superior Spider-Man in his deck.
If you didn't do the excruciator and then draw Spider-Man, that would be good.
He's going to target himself and he'll actually be happy.
Yeah, we're quite in thanks.
been but that's just luck all right oh what is that nine damage
Francisco needs to find a way to discard a card here all right we're gonna be
cycling soul guide lantern I believe yeah it does look like it abandoned
attachments Agnatella artist talent something
One more.
Another one.
Okay.
He's working his way through his library trying to find a discard outlet.
The combustion technique will not be successful at killing either of these creatures.
He's passed a turn back.
Oh, wow.
Did he? I guess he could play a land.
I think he did a little hand motion like what is going on here.
Yeah, he doesn't have anything here, he just has a bunch of monuments.
This card he has all four moments on the battlefield and nothing to do with them. Okay. This is an attack for nine
Larson is kind of smiling like is this for real right now? Hey look any way to win
In sacial will avarice too by the way isn't out right, Francisco is at two
But bitter triumph times two in hand here for Larson means he just has to hold his place
Abandon attachments here abandon attachments to have a chance
He finds him!
I laid a cloud!
And he looses!
Christopher Larson wins the match!
Attacking with
creature somehow!
That is not the way
Chris Larson drew it up here.
What an incredible way
to still find a way to close things out there.
You know, and, you know,
this is a lesson that
Monument is extremely powerful, right?
But if you can't pair that
But if you can't pair that with the discard outlet, it just kind of stays on the battlefield.
I go back to that one moment in that game where he created that treasure and was looking for a land.
Yeah.
Maybe he should have played the artist talent, right?
If he played out that artist talent, that is a completely different game.
Now I understand why you want to hit that land drop, but by doing so,
Chris Larsen getting that artist talent out of his hand,
and all of a sudden, Francisco just had nothing he could do over the next three or four turns.
He tried. He saw as many cards as he possibly could over those turns,
and Larson critically noted I have nothing going like he didn't even have a
temptation at another game there were no options right he's just like well fire
it up and let's go it actually ended up getting him across the line not a typical
way to win a game but then again none of those were very exciting match there
and luckily enough we have Cedric with Christopher Larson right now I'm
joined with the big winner Christopher Larson a five game set against
Francisco Sanchez, tell us about the win. I mean it's more like a four game set.
As game one I get the one line and I get it on. And game two I just played a
naked demon and hope he got there. Get a little bit lucky. And game four,
far was winning. Got lucky. Game five you just had four monuments and no dish
card. So we take those sometimes. Get lucky a little bit. A little luck never
hurts. Now you played the winner of Aguaro, Sadgelec and Cyprian Tron.
Who would you rather play against and why?
I think both matchups as one playing airbending should be favorable for us.
I have not played against Isis Elementals all game, all tournaments.
My team who is mostly at my knowledge of this tournament
telling me that Elementals should be a favorable matchup for our demonic consultations
for what we're trying to do, the Spanish Demon Trap.
But I have no idea what I'm doing against the Elementals.
So I'm going to go now, talk to the team and see how they feel about my matchup
because they actually played it.
Well, I won't stop you any longer. Get over to that team and good luck my friend.
Great stuff from Christopher Larson who advances to the semifinals. We're going to take a short break
when we come back, when we be at the news desk. We'll be sitting up for our next quarter final match.
coming soon, February 6th through the 8th in Toronto, Canada.
The Spotlight main event has sold out,
but the side events will still be running all weekend long.
Can attend, catch the coverage live on Twitch.tv
slash face to face game.
Get a TLDR, coverage highlights will be featured
on magic.gg and play MTG social channels.
And you can see the full Magic Spotlight schedule
for 2026 over on magic.gg slash spotlight.
I'm going to need a minute after that matchup here.
Hard quarterfinals are underway on top eight Sunday here at Pro Tour.
Lorraine Eclipse live from Richmond, Virginia.
Who'll be going home with this trophy and $50,000 for one step closer to figuring it all out.
Welcome back to the New Testament with all the money, the booty and Cedric Phillips with you here.
And we've been following our big teams in the room all weekend long.
Let's get a check in now on how those teams are doing.
In fact, after two days of play starting here with Team Cosmos, Monty.
Yeah, Team Cosmos, heavy play, where they're suddenly not going to be sad
because they put two players into the top eight, Luis Salvatro and Christopher Larson.
Unfortunately, 10 is what most players would like to get,
and only two other players, Jack Potter and Alejandra Mora hit that number.
So not the best weekend for Cosmos, heavy play, but you can't complain with two people in the top eight.
Yeah, absolutely not. Let's check it out in the Italian center.
We will dive in indeed.
A small upstart team of just players from Italy that have grouped up together.
They have put one player in the top right there and Marco Balacca,
who was our overnight leader, 8-0, our last undefeated player,
and 10-0 on the weekend.
Marco with 12 wins, ninth place, tiebreaker stings,
but requalification, same can be said there, and 10-6.
But this is a smaller team with maybe a little bit lower expectations.
I'd say they put up one heck of a weekend.
absolutely they did. Let's check in now on team Moriyama, Japan they've of course
dominated some tournaments over the past couple of years. How do they do this
weekend? Let's peek in here. Nobody into the top eight unfortunately for this team.
Your player of the year Ken Yukihiro coming close at 11 and 5 and with three
players on 10 and 6 so they're re-qualified to come back here and do
it all again. I would say slightly disappointing for only that many
people to have hit that requalification mark.
Next up, the Boulder money.
Yeah, so taking a look at the Boulder,
of course, this is a team of mostly Midwestern grinders,
but players that have been in the game for a very long time
and they had a fantastic start to the weekend.
We were hyping them up as doing great and look at.
This is incredible.
This.
Look at the number of players that
They were able to hit that re-qualification purely thanks to just how good their constructed
death was.
They had every single player on the team play the same deck as the Spellamentals.
They all made day 2 and 10 of the 15 players re-qualified.
Incredible and there you can see on your screen how did it all shake out the boulder.
What's our number one team in the room this weekend made up a lot of players from
the Midwest with a run percentage overall at 60.8% that is incredible, especially with
such a large team. The Italians coming in second place followed by Cosmos Heavy Play and Moriyama
Japan. Well, if you watch coverage this weekend, you know, Riley Knight can't be here with
us in person, but he is phoning in remotely and he graced us with his presence and some
really interesting Riley mass.
Phoning it in remote.
It was a little sketchy, Dr. Frank Karsten wasn't a fan of it, so Riley was like hold
on you know I'm gonna check my math again I'm gonna go back do some numbers and do some
more numbers.
Let's find out what he has cooked up for us this time.
Hello everyone it's your good friend Riley and I joining you once again from across the
Pacific from beautiful Queensland Australia I wasn't able to make it to the Pro Tour
to be part of the broadcast team this weekend but it has freed me up to keep a very close
eye on the numbers, on the stats that have emerged from this weekend, this
pro tour, and there are some very interesting trends that I'd like to
share with you now as we dial in on the top eight and attempt perhaps to
predict a winner. And if previous form is anything to go by when it comes to some
of these players there are, I say, some very interesting trends we can examine
here. As we look at Francisco Sanchez, who topped the Swiss, did very well
Indeed and we're looking at his day one win rate at recent pro-tools
It is 53.8% a solid win rate of course on day one
But it only gets better from there on day two Francis goes win rate jumps up to sixty five point two percent and then on day three
66.67%
So Francisco you would think hot stuff heading into this top eight
He made it all the way to second place at Pro Tour,
Pro Tour Edge Paternities of course, and looking to do one bit of this weekend
and those numbers certainly back up a strong performance from the Spaniard.
Tony Portolan on the other hand, well the numbers aren't doing him any favours
when it comes to day three performances. On day number one, Tony has the best
win rate in the field, 80.6%. This is not a joke.
Tony Portolan wins four out of five matches on day one
But unfortunately, this is not a trend that is maintained across following days.
54.8% win rate on day 2. Still respectable of course, by the time we get to day number 3
it's a coin toss for the Croatian. Coming forward, the pro to a final fantasy gives him a
50% win rate on day 3. Still a strong contender and someone will keep an eye on, but the player
I really want to focus on here is the friend from Cyprian Tron. Now the numbers for Cyprian
very interesting indeed. On day number one Cyprian has a 50% win rate. This is a fine place to be,
certainly you know you're not losing any more than you're winning at least. But on day two Cyprian's
win rate skyrockets to 87.5%. Now Cyprian hasn't played in a day three just yet, so we don't have
a day three win rate here. But if we are to extrapolate from the data available to us,
well once again the results are very interesting. Going from 50% on day one to 87.5% on day two
represents an increase of 37.5% in absolute terms right so if this trend continues Cyprian adds another
if Cyprian adds another 37.5% with the old win rate here. His day three win rate will end up at
125%, which is a very very strong place to be in any game, never mind just magic.
But it could be even better here. Because we are of course talking about percentages,
let's not forget that. And so if we look at the, going from 50% on day one to 87.5%
on day two, if we look at that as a percentage increase, that is a 75% increase
the old win rate there, if Sikren manages to increase the win rate by
another 75% heading into day 3 if there is consistency once again then his win
rate will be at the end of today 153.13% and isn't it interesting isn't it
interesting that yesterday when I came with all of these numbers that people
were laughing at me that people were being scornful about my prediction that
someone may win 1.4 pro to us well look yes I'll admit I was wrong
someone might win 1.5313 pro-tours this weekend and that that's someone is
Cyprian Tron. Best of luck you know who I'm going for and I'm looking forward to
hastily, you see a hastily cobbled together, one and a half trophies being
handed over to Cyprian at the end of the weekend.
Wow, if that's the trophy we gave to somebody, that is a nightmare, whoever made this.
I'll happily take it.
I don't mind.
I don't mind.
With the duct tape and Riley's face on there looking like that, that's on your mantle.
I don't like it to see Riley a couple of times a year, so being able to see him every
day, don't mind if I do ski.
Miss you, buddy.
Wish you were here.
Monty is Monty can't handle the math of magic that just went on there from Riley.
Sorry there Monty.
Let's try and cleanse this palette by taking a look at our bracket here because we've got
more magic to play in 1.5313 trophies to give away.
Take a look at what's happened here.
Our first quarterfinal, Christopher Larson took this down.
It was epic, three games to do over Francisco Sanchez.
So a lot more work to get done here in our quarters before we find some more semi-finalists.
Let's take a peek at our next quarter final that we'll be watching here in the future match area.
Eduardo Sajklik will be up against Zipred Antron.
Is it elementals up against Vant Eirbending.
Eduardo used to be on coverage with us here set next to me.
Right where you're sitting, Mr. Mani.
He top-aided a long time ago in 2012.
Our coach will return to Ravnicka.
So it's been a long time.
He's the limited coach for Team World Bank Council.
It's been six years since he played on a coach.
So he comes on back and he top eight.
Zipperman-Tron on the other hand,
his pro-play debut was at the Mish's
mythic invitation back in 2020.
He played Arena Championship nine and went 11-5
at Pro Tour edge of Eternity's.
Let's take a look at their road here to the top eight,
starting with Eduardo.
When 8-1 in standard, got one buy there
in the final round, walking up his spot in the top eight,
4-2 overall in draft, only one loss on day two
of competition.
But how do things look when we turn the tables
to Cipriantone and his journey here to our top eight Cedric.
We will dive in.
A two-in-one start in limited to kick things off
for the tournament.
And I see a win and mostly wins in day one of constructive.
Looks like Cipriant can go up against five different strategies.
Another two-in-one through limited means
that Cipriant had a four-and-two record
in limited, quite good, of course.
And then started off just win, win, win,
and another win again to make the top eight.
So a very nice constructed record.
It looks like five and four nine and one a construction with band air bending very very impressive stuff and now
To the top a place to be if he was thrilled to make it. Yes, he was indeed those are the players now talk to me about the decks
They brought to this tournament money. Okay. Well, we're going to start with Eduardo's build of
Elementals the stack is very cool
And it is one of the different variations that we saw this weekend
So the base goal for this deck is to just get these evoke elementals deck out as soon as possible
Ideally with a roaming throne already on the battlefield to double your triggers
And then you get cheap Thunder Floss and that allows you to really feast on Badger Mall hub deaths
Now the way you do that is using a card like Ashlee Brickindled or Flame Brader to really amp up your cloth
One of the biggest issues this deck has is it doesn't have that much
Interaction especially at an instant speed when you're going up against the combo deck
So I'm going to put some extra emphasis on those four copies of Bounce-Off that Eduardo specifically chose to bring in his build of Elements.
On the other side, we're going to go over to Cyprian's build of Bant Airbending.
Now, Airbending is a Batrimonet Cup deck, but not really what we're used to from Batrimonet Cup decks.
This is more of a combo deck.
Your goal is to use Dock Hourlock to reduce the cost of cast spells from Exile, which of course
works with airbending and allows you to do some really wonky things. Now, Anx Swift Savior,
excuse me, plus Opposite Fast Guardian with Dock Hourlock allows you to start going infinite.
Now, the big innovation for this deck has been the inclusion of interdimensional web watch.
This is something that when Bantair Bending Dex started, including it, it really took the deck to the next level
and brought it back into consideration for standard.
Again, big issue for Cyprian, not that much interaction, especially in the main deck, only one copy of Seam RIP.
So when it comes to the matchup, we're going to see a lot of ships passing in the night here.
There is a look at the players and the decks.
How are they feeling though ahead of this huge matchup here on top 8 Sunday?
Cedric had a chance to talk to the players.
I'm here with Eduardo Sajalic.
How are we feeling about our top 8 matchup this morning?
Honestly, I'm not sure, but I got the advice from the rest of the team on
Bant Airbending who collectively tried the matchup last night and
gave me advice.
I'm going to trust what they're telling me and hope that it depends on.
Good luck. I'm here with Cyprian Tron. How are we feeling about that top eight matchup?
So, the pros and some of our teammates tested the matchup during the night.
So I thank them and I think it's not great, but it's winnable.
And I have a plan. So I'm quite confident about it.
Confidence is good. Good luck this morning.
Thank you.
I have a plan. We'll take it.
Monty, who do you like in this matchup?
I think Badger-Mull Cub has just been heavily targeted this weekend,
and I do not like their chances.
So for Cyprian, being a Badger-Mull Cub player,
I think he's got a tough road ahead of him.
What about you, Cedric?
I have to agree with Monty here.
This is a matchup that, you know,
Badger-Mull Cubs have had a very tough time.
Eduardo played this deck because he does have a good Cub matchup.
This is, I don't want to say the dream pairing,
but it's certainly close.
Hard to pick against the deck that is going up.
that is going up against the Greenback and exactly wants to be going up against Greenbacks.
All right, let's find out who some more semi-finalists will be. I'm going to pass it on over to Ailey and Corey.
Thank you so much, everybody. Welcome on into quarterfinals.
Two, three, and four here, everybody. I'm A. E. Loney, alongside Corey Baumeister,
and we cannot wait to jump into the magic here and determine who the rest of our semi-finals
are going to be, our semi-finals, I should say. We've got Edwardo Sajigalec on
the game. So we're going to
play a couple of games. We're
going to have an elementals up
against Cyprian Tron playing
airbending. And it seems like
it's going to be a bit of a
tough road for Cyprian.
Definitely seems like it. You
know, these elemental strategies
exactly what Monty was saying
at the desk. They've been
very much taking advantage of
these style decks all
weekend. So got to like
Eduardo for this one. We'll
see. We're going to join
this quarter finals with
Cyprian Tron on the back
foot here, joining in game
already. So Cyprian really needs to rally here and pull the all
reverse sweep. Yeah, absolutely. So already tough going into this,
but of course, even tough knowing that we're jumping in with
Eduardo two games up here. So we do get sideboard now from
Superintron. So, you know, things could get a little better,
but on the flip side, the first sideboard card I see is from
Eduardo and it is three pyroclosin. So it could get
worse as well.
So, Sabrina and Kike, things off here with a Lenorels, and you did mention that there
are a couple of key sideboard cards that the players do have access to.
Yeah, absolutely.
That being one of them.
Yeah.
I would think pyroclosums are going to be probably the most important thing.
Like, even if we see a pyroclosum here, you've got to think that it's just about
the best possible thing that can happen here if you can just deal.
clean two for one on turn two. Eduardo would have assuredly fired that off. It was there, so
good news for Cyprian Tron. And in terms of the sideboarding, we know that Eduardo took out the
deceits. One pit of offerings, two winter night stories and brought into Sears the Stainful
Straps, Spellsnares, and Spider Sense. And then for Cyprian took out two Cubs, took out one
Aang, brought into Airbender Ascension and brought in the Seam Rips, Aven interrupters,
and get lost. Wow, didn't even bring in the pyroclasms. That's that's why I mean it makes a lot
more sense against rhythm decks where they're the bandai ring. There is actually three toughness
on a decent amount of creatures. You're not going to pyroclasm away dock or log for instance,
angst with savior type thing. So that does make sense. It'll be good at a certain subsets
of situations, this one being one of them. But yeah, certainly plenty of little idiots to
get off the battlefield here for Eduardo and he has two of them to deal with right now
Bramble familiar as well as Lanor Elves has named Elemental on Karen of Souls and is now holding up a piece of interaction
You have to guess as a supreme attempts to resolve a badger mall cub
It was his nothing spells those absolutely not
Belsner one of the best cards here from Lorwin Eclipse as far as the impact on standard
And that you can do about Angle who's going to air bend away our
friendly familiar yep and did have the option of let's say airbending away the
Badger mall cub and casting that later but really prioritizing getting fetch
quest oh yeah Anna that is kind of the combo here in these band airbending
lists and the really nice piece of synergy being able to ask the adventure
side for just tomorrow I mean if you can find a doc or log that's a free seven
spell. Yeah. Doc is quite good here. Yeah. And that is one of the combo pieces in play.
Still need a couple more. I mean, I was gonna say like, could he just have the combo now
if Doc Orlock is on the table? No, you did. You definitely need the last combo piece
of of ABBA. Yeah, could possibly hit the upper here, but no such luck just to interdimensional
webwatch and a second copy of Bramble familiar looks like. And very important here it is
creature enchantment or land no interdimensional webwatch being able to
so he just whiffed kind of another bramble from there I guess or or a land you
know sometimes you do just want to be ramping but that's about as close to a
whiff as it gets and the interdimensional webwatch was that
new piece of technology that we saw you know at spotlight Atlanta here
earlier in the month just the card that kind of gave it this deck a little
bit more of a boost yeah from the world championship where we saw the
deck have a 35% win rate. One card really was that important. It just gives you some longevity.
One card I do want to point out that I see in Edward's hand is Sunderflock and he
chatted to Frank Karsten, the head of this matchup and said that's what he needs here.
Even then it's not a silver bullet up against this type of strategy because of the air banding,
because of the flash speed interactions. So it's in hand. It's still very, very expensive
right now. Yeah, absolutely. That is perfectly well said. You do that against the rhythm
decks where you are able to bounce all their accelerants, all their ore boards, those kind
of thing. They have to spend an entire turn redeploying them. Here, if Cyprian Tron has
some mana available, you can just, well, replay an Aang, bounce a Sunderflock, and they can keep
sending each other to the skies, essentially.
Airshow at that point. We will now see Ashling rekindled, discarding Sunderflock there.
Incredible card here from major attorneys as well. We saw this in a good amount of debt. Yeah outside of just elemental shells even
Yeah, pretty good accelerator here seer now takes care of one of the problems on board and it's going to be the bramble familiar
So super into the land off of that fetch quest initially
makes sense yeah because of the thing is either take bramble familiar or the
land and a land can't get pyroclasm where the bramble familiar would be a lot
more vulnerable and if you already had one a bramble familiar you can just
airbend that one but now that we did lose bramble familiar maybe that might
be something that brings from what a regret seamer takes care of ashling so
no acceleration for Eduardo, but he does have the wistfulness in hand and looks
like he should be able to do both modes on that. Yep, blue, blue, green, green. Now
you could still Aang, switch savior to be able to bounce that, but otherwise you
are going to be able to get your Ashling back and come down able to
airbend out these two permanents? Yes, up getting Ang and seam rip into the airbended zone.
That was excellent, being able to airbend out seam rip, to then be able to just kill Ashlyn again
if you want to. Mostfulness of six five, so the block is on the other side of the battlefield,
don't have a chance of killing that as it stands. It brings down to 12, so you know,
Eduardo just during the good old beatdown. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely can two hit with that and 12 is actually a really good
For these elemental decks they kind of count by six if you can ever get roaming thrown with vibrance
You just get to deal six straight away
So even a even an attack with just the wistfulness
Cyprian Tron has to respect it but with all these one ones that are coming out casting stuff from the airbend zone
Yeah, you're gonna have a good amount of jump lockers here
Eduardo would certainly love to deploy that tactic of having a rubbing throne down alongside
the vibrance just to deal, you know, multiple bouts of three damage to the face.
Wistfulness gets taken care of, courtesy of Get Lost by Cyprian, so he's doing a great
job of keeping this battlefield clear.
Kenny capitalized now.
Does he have enough pressure to get this game won?
And he needs to.
If he loses here, that is his perter done.
I'm getting some attacks in there.
Then airbending deck, it definitely does have a solid plan B.
I think the plan B is on the rhythm decks or maybe more effective.
You really want to be going for the combo.
The plan A of the combo is just so
incredible from then airbending.
Played this deck a little bit last night before heading to bed.
There's so many different ways and
so much value to be gained off of playing this.
So the players who brought it this weekend
and who have perfected it
and know every little single in and out,
they're gonna be rewarded.
And we've seen that a couple times.
Just what in Atlanta, we're seeing it here now
with Cyprian, so.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's a deck that's not very forgiving.
You know, if you don't know what you have
to be prioritizing, you don't know what kind of hands
you can keep against certain matchups,
the deck can look very unexciting.
But if you know exactly what you need to prioritize,
and how to sidewall,
I think how to sign more feedback is probably one of the tougher things.
And Eduardo's hand there, bunch of blue cards.
And you know, I wouldn't even be shocked to see taking out a lot more proactive elements
from Eduardo and just basically turning into a control deck, because that's the element
Eduardo is doing here, is being the control player in these post board games.
Withfulness now, just paying the two mana for it, so that's not going to stick
around getting Ashling back.
Eduardo really really wants to keep this card on the battlefield draw and discard here
Both of its entries ability or such as a discard and draw
Another Ashling film. I think those are flame bringer. Oh flame birdie flame braider
They are yeah, and I mean anytime you get a creature that can
Ramp once great. That's Ashling on the other side any time you get a creature that adds to it's incredible. Yeah
especially now that you know supreme is targeting all of the high mana value
spells because we know sunder flock is a thing to be looking out for from inside
of things because basically everything in on his board goes bye-bye you know all
those lovely little one ones that oppa makes well they're gonna leave and
never come back yep if sunder flock gets to land absolutely yeah that is a
really great point you don't need pyroclasm as much when you can just
Sunderflock away all the tokens and Eduardo made a conscious decision here to not use the map with this extra mana
So Cyprian Tron should very much be able to think all right. There's something yeah as I'm seeing it
Looks like we have a bounce off now some reason to also not map on something as it could just get air bent in response
But looks like we are now
Now, going to flip and in response get bounce off.
That is just the biggest tempo play from here from Eduardo.
This is sped up just a little bit, but I bet that was just as fast going on the stack.
That huge exchange here for Eduardo.
Great, great interaction there from Eduardo, who now flips Ashling a rhyme bound and gets
to play Sunderflock, bouncing all of the creatures on Cyprian's side of things.
Devastating. Devastating turn of events now. Now Cyprian Tron trying to play from behind
and deal with a Sunderflock. It's so brutal. A lot of the interaction is you're just
playing seam rips. There's a couple of get lost. Actually, as I say, there's one get
lost, which was already cast. There's not a lot of ways to actually remove this
Sunderflock and I mean I'm looking at literal zero avatar's wrath I guess yeah I do not think that one would be
something along this matchup and angst with savoring a Sunderflock feels extremely bad yeah
so it it would make sense that Sunderflock is just as good against Bant airbending as it is
against the rhythm decks yeah yeah he's got flying flash creatures so he could just stick
them in the way and hope to kill it but you know Eduardo will have to have a plan for that and know
that that is the one of the only ways that Cyprian can deal with this underflog. Yeah absolutely.
Kind of just having the removal spell of player removal is probably the best thing you can be
doing here against underflog and that just means Cyprian Tron comboing off and here's the thing
we don't know the hands but if Cyprian Tron tapped out last turn to water bend and transform
Aang, that's a huge sign of weakness, that is not really what you're going for most of
the time.
Yeah.
Ashling rekindled, transforms, discard and draw, and it watered now, he's going to play
this a little slower just to make sure that he has a response for Cyprian.
We know that he's got Aapa in hand, he's got Aang's Web Savior in hand, I believe
Yup.
So both can be played right now. So that's the point is how do you play around both?
We see just painful stroke for the oppa, but we do not have an answer for aing
But I mean just attacking and yeah, and then just replaying Sunderflock would be perfectly fine
Let's see what happens basically is what Eduardo's going for here, but first things first wistfulness gonna draw a couple cards
Says we don't need both and
And we kind of saw Eduardo do the traditional stack, you know, hand signals there one on top of the other
That is the power that you can do with Ashling where you can actually get the two mana and then flip
So that two mana floating was able to evoke the whistfulness and yeah, we got to it's sweet
You get the best of both worlds with a transform card. It's all
And says big on Sunderflock so problem solved at least temporarily
Yeah, and I would think Eduardo is going to be very tempted to just recast that, and then
hold up the Stainful Stroke, but looks like with five mana you have one extra, so you
can of course first see if we have a land on top.
Now from Eduardo's side of things, he needs to also be caught as a life turtle, it's
at five.
Those are two creatures that can kill him in the air.
Yeah.
So we have to replay the Thunderflock just to get it off the board to not die.
Yeah.
Okay, that is an interesting interaction there.
So it costs two with airbending, but it still gets the cost reduction because you have.
So it is free there.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, Eduardo doesn't have a lethal threat in the skies to deal with here, but Cyprian
is looking like he might be able to pull it off here if he's able to keep that sunda flock under control.
Yeah, and we do have the ability if we have a land to just flip over
ang and then attack for six, which would be five five and then it gets a counter on it.
So if we have land eight, we can attack for six trample. That does mean at least one chump blocker
has to go in front. But the thing is you just tried this and kind of got wrecked by bounce off.
Do you want to try it again?
We know it's not there for Eduardo.
We don't necessarily know if Cyprian Tron had land 8 that's untapped.
Just going for the safe 2 damage.
Apparently he's winning the damage race.
And he's able to recast Apa and Aang.
Next time Sunderflock comes back.
And even if you have the mana to transform here, attacking, trading, Ashling, going down to 2.
And then Eduardo just Sunderflockes it back, and Sipper and Tron is tapped out and can't
deploy everything.
That's a pretty bad exchange as well.
So this is still a nice play from Sipper.
So from Sipper inside of things, like he's looking to end step and APA, hope that there's
no reach, no other flyers on the board other than the Sunderflock, and he should
pick up the win here.
And then Gopher.
Yeah, like we might see Aang Swift savior transformed if it's just lethal.
If it's not lethal, it's not going to be worth the risk.
Double Sunderflock now.
So now it is a lot tougher to get through in the skies, especially because Eduardo also
has the Distainful Stroke.
You can jam this roaming throne as well.
Definitely Eduardo clawing back.
Running Throne doesn't have a reach.
It's on the stack here now though.
Does the print have a response?
Yeah, and even if you airbend it out here with Aang,
you probably don't really need to recast it or don't want to recast it as you want to have
that disdainful stroke for, um,
What if there's two angs?
Because there's no, well maybe it works.
Two angs and then transform it, that's not enough to get through, huh?
Yeah, just the legend rule, if anything.
Well, yeah, ang bounce the one, keep the other, transform it, try and get through
if that works.
If you get the two flocks out of the way, yeah, it's just still seven, eight, nine
toughness on the ground.
I guess the one thing that's really nice is you can always attack with Aang and
if there are no blocks, you know, aka no flyers, then transform and get five
through in the air. So yeah, that actually is a solid thing that you can do if we
had the mana available. So getting Thunderflock out of the way somehow and
then attack no blocks, transform. That would be lethal, but you know we have
seven land right now it doesn't seem like that is a feasible plan yeah and
also the second flock that you know is just going to jump in the way it was
irrespective exactly now it's all it's just one club one short here because you
could attack with a force the block with sunder flock if you have an eighth
land and then transform but that would be a solid play it's right exactly that
would be a solid play if it was six six against five five you trample over
for one, you get to keep your end, but paying your whole turn to lose.
OK, all right. Now we're cooking.
Yeah. And at the crossroads here is nice.
So we can find Joe Siprian.
Oh, really? Oh, is that it?
Dang. Where are the dock or locks?
Where are the big hits?
I mean, that is that's so far two times that we have seen.
You know, those variants of the deck, like the fetch quest.
And at the crossroad, both have very minimal hits.
And now it is just the case of Eduardo
has to have this just completely locked up right now,
send or flock everything away, and that should just be it.
The raccoon is an elemental, right?
Yeah, I guess it is.
So yeah, that is a chump lock here
to stay alive on the roaming throne.
Six, seven, eight.
Block the roaming throne.
Yeah, a card that I feel like we're all just learning together is an elemental raccoon.
There's plenty of elementals, even some crabs.
Yeah, so that would be the trade.
I mean, sure.
I think if you're at one or you're at three, it's exactly the same.
Yeah.
Doesn't make all that much of a difference here.
Vibrant still closes the game by a mile, if that's something that we can find.
And especially if this Roman Thorn sticks around.
Yeah.
And now at this point you gotta think like what's the catch-up mechanism and and once again
It's the same as before you need doc into angst with savior
Yeah, you need the combo off and just not give it water another challenge exactly and there's just not enough mana to do it
So looks like next turn is probably gonna be Cyprian Tron's last turn of the tournament, but an incredible run and
So awesome to see oh, yeah huge reaction making into the top eight such a passionate
Magic player like if you just see he loves the game so much his reaction his interview off towards if you missed it like really
Go and give it a watch like I really hope we'll see Cyprian
Make it up to the top tables in future events even before we got the interview Cyprian Tron
You know it was a solid three four minutes of a tearing up kind of behind stage
Just the moment meant so much to him. It's incredible to see and it was
Really a special moment late into yesterday's competition
That's what we live for in the booth.
100%.
Or when I was playing these Pro Durs, it's what I live for, watching from the rails.
I was never in these moments, of course, but watching from the rails, that still gave me
goosebumps back then.
That is going to do it.
Eduardo Sajgulek, a three-in-o up against the Prince, Ron, who had an excellent run
here this weekend.
But these elementals, they are doing the work here.
his teammates gave him the ideas, the information that he needed, he said okay I'm
gonna trust him and let's get it done 3-0. Hey that's why you have a team you
know because right after you just played magic for eight days and you just made
it to the top eight the last thing you want to do is test your top eight
match you need to get some sleep you need to get some dinner but if you get
a team that gives you those great ideas you know it's a huge benefit there
and a big congratulations to Eduardo. Yeah shout out to team world counsel
there as well, backing up their boy. We have an interview with Eduardo after his
win, so let's go hear from him now.
I'm joined by the winner Eduardo Sajalek coming off of a huge win over Bant
airbending Eduardo. Tell me about that matchup. Well I think the matchup's
closer than it looks, probably on camera. CP Young got honestly really
unlucky in the games. Like a lot of the times managed to get a mil-7 or
or the 5-ang, right, and just air, like a bunch of times.
For me, Game 1 was probably the highlight,
because I'm like, winter night, draw free,
winter night, harmonized, draw free, wistfulness.
And Sunderflock's like exactly the right card
at the eighth card, just as he has missed on everything.
So like, give me Game 1, and then, yeah,
I take over as a result.
Honestly, I think the matchup's closer,
and just poor fortunes on the CKN Spark.
Well, as you move on to the semi-finals,
If you play the winner of Christopher Larson and Francisco Sanchez, if you had to pick
one, who would you prefer to play against?
I like playing against Lessons, it's a cool deck.
I think it's also very classic magic, right?
Like kind of value mid-range against spell combo, so that's kind of a cool matchup.
Historically, it's good for value mid-range by the way, that's why.
But whereas value mid-range against control varies.
So probably, but Larson's also a grand time to play against, so that'd be an
entertaining match I'm sure.
We're looking forward to watching you play.
We're gonna take a short break friends, but when we come back we've got two more quarterfinals
to get through.
24 long versus Guiliano Loupi is up next.
Welcome. It's great to have you. Thank you for joining us as we look to crown
another champion here this weekend. We've been through two quarterfinals. Let's
take a look at our bracket here, Corey, and let the players know, let the people
know at home how things have shaken out thus far. Yeah, absolutely. We got
Christopher Larson and Eduardo Satchelik into the semi-finals to battle that
will assuredly be an entertaining match here a little bit later, but of course
we're gonna see who is gonna be in the bottom half of the semis in a little bit
can't wait to see that semi-finals match up but we do need to get through these
other two quarterfinals friends so up next it is Guglielmo Lupi on five
color rhythm up against Tony Portolan playing teamer harmonizer or boring
harmonizer as team sanctum all like to call this oh yeah okay let's take a
look here first at Guglielmo's list this list or this archetype has
undergone several transformations. Tell us about this latest concoction. Absolutely, so this is the
deck of the tournament. This was a deck that was about 45 percent going in, different iterations of
course, and didn't necessarily have the greatest showing that this deck is really teched out. You
are a cub deck that you have a bunch of toolboxes here to get yourself the W in here. Most of the
time you're trying to get freighter of behemoth, but being able to get superior spider man or even
Champion of the weird that's kind of the new so cool that team handshake had it really cool stuff and here we have a team
Sentimentals latest brew team or harmonizer. It's a combo deck of course because why wouldn't they come up with anything else?
What is this deck from a table for the sake of combo?
Absolutely sure so you're trying to work the harmonizer
Then you can play a fabled passage couple triggers on the stack to double the power
You go full bore and all of a sudden you go up to seven power double that to more team
Double that to 28 and attack and can win as early as turn four
So a combo deck through and through and it's looked really really powerful, especially in the hands of Tony
Tony kind of makes everything look good though so far up. He's having a hell of a run so close to being player of the year last year
was a couple of matches away and now it just continues its dominance making the top 8 here at yet another pro tour.
Well, let's see what these players are feeling just ahead of this matchup. They both chatted to Cedric earlier.
I'm here with Guli Emo Loupi. How do you feel about your top 8 matchup?
I actually never played a matchup, but I got to do some research like yesterday and tonight.
I think I have good chances, I'm going to play towards what I think I should be doing, and hopefully it works.
Good luck.
I'm joined by Tony Porter while I'm turning. How do you feel about your top eight matchup?
I feel pretty confident. I think we went like 10-1 against Cobb in the Swiss part, and I'm on the play.
So I should be good, but I'm playing against a great player.
So I'm a bit worried about it, but hopefully it will pan out my way.
Tony, good luck.
Thank you.
Well, you know, it helps that Tony is also a great player.
So this should be one hell of a quarterfinals, friends.
So buckle up.
Let's get into it.
It is Guleama Lupi, five-color rhythm up against Tony
Portolan, teamer, harmonizer.
We are joining this quarterfinals.
Both players are up a game apiece.
So they have access to their sideboards.
Now we're going into game three.
It's going to be an exciting match between these two,
and Tony and the rest of Tony's team
doing extremely well in this matchup.
So you've got to like the chances there up top.
But just like Tony was saying, Guillermo,
aka Zampa, extremely talented players,
just on an absolute heater.
Tough to compare Tony's hot streak,
and all the full players have been just dominating here
in the later stages of last year
in the early start of this year.
As both players get set up here, we have our Lenoir Elmsdown.
We do know that Tony took out Wistfulness,
two Earthbender sentient, two SpiderSense,
brought in an Essence scatter, seer, and a Pyroclasm.
Any thoughts there, Corey?
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense,
bringing in the Pyroclasms here up against the Cup decks.
That's exactly what it's all about.
So I would think that is a huge advantage to Tony.
And then for Lupi, also known as Zampa Online,
he took out the Keynote Curator,
two G gene pollinators, one superior Spiderman, one champion of the weird explosive prodigy
and two seam reps brought in.
Geez, that's a lot.
One disainful stroke, one shimmerwild's growth, two arboroid, two okos, and two spider sense.
Yep, makes a lot of sense to me.
Get at some of those silver bullets out that are less than exciting.
The champion, as cool as it is, the same with the prodigy, those are very much for
different things, being able to kill Clarion Conkers and stuff like that.
So yeah, sweet little tool added to the toolbox here,
SpiderSense going to counter that stock up.
So now, Guleon Maloubi gets to untap with a Badger Mole Cub.
And let's see where he can go from here.
We haven't seen it much this weekend, to be honest.
On the feature match area,
untapping with Badger Mole Cub
or just seeing Badger Mole Cub here
in the feature match area.
So great start, of course,
but it did look like we had a mulligan here
from both players as Zampa's very low on cards,
but getting Auroboroid down
and being able to crank up the power here looks excellent.
Again, this is another card we haven't seen very much of.
You know, these decks started as an Auroboroid deck.
That is what it was called.
No, it had Jackal.
It would try and make copies of it.
There was a whole bunch of convoluted stuff going on,
but players eventually said, you know what?
We can do way more in turn four.
Why don't we just kill our opponents
with the Crota of Behemoth, you know?
Turns three possible even yeah, I think the first time I saw it was spotlight spider-man
Or it's a kill in pastore top eight with that cynic deck in the field of VV and then it really transformed
After having a pretty poor result at the world championship, and it is a much different deck now
Yeah, so so targeted then players came prepared for this weekend as well
You know lessons didn't have a great time the top decks that everyone expected
Well, you know, they weren't a secret anymore. So yeah, it just really shows that you know over the last couple weeks here since the world championship every time the big deck has been targeted. It has fallen, you know, and that is just the pure sign of an incredibly healthy standard metagame.
And it just shows that there's so many tools to answer decks and standards right now that there's a deck that's dominating and you very much want to beat it. You can.
Yeah, I mean how how I want to say how long but it took a while for like the air-bending deck for example to find interdimensional web watch
Yeah, that was there. It was face-up
Absolutely, but there's still tools to be found, you know, perhaps other archetypes to unlock. It just takes a little bit of work
Yeah, Kai Nelson taking down a spotlight the avatar in Atlanta with an avatar with an avatar themed deck
Well being a huge avatar fan was
It's extremely special, but that was where the tech really came out at the first place
that I saw it.
And since then, that very much changed the texture of the deck because, well, it was
just a creature deck that all you had to do was just pack as much removal as possible.
But now when you bring in a 4-man artifact that gives you card advantage, there's not
a lot of cards that both deal with creatures and interact with that.
A braid is basically the only thing, and a braid numbers were very low.
Man, Tony is doing some serious math here.
Yeah, well speaking of interacting with creatures
and dealing damage, et cetera,
are we not lining up for combo kill just yet?
So I think what Tony is doing is not math on,
oh, can I kill you with Harmonizer type thing?
It is a classic.
Can I take two with Steam Vents
to probably just chart the course with Kicker here?
And will I die to this attack here
with Auroboride giving two counters to everything?
Looks like we have eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13.
You damn it.
Well, Tony, round the numbers.
That's why you run it a couple of times because, well,
there's no wiggle room whatsoever here.
So goodness me.
I mean, he's lucky there wasn't like another land
into play with a cub, you know, because that would have just
been lights out.
Yeah, you don't even need another line.
You could just, you know, do the very rare earthbending
onto your land already.
Yeah, the already bent land.
But as it stands, Zompa was just like, OK, I just picked up
second counter spell.
Looks like I saw the Stainful Stroke and Spider Sense.
I could attack Tony down to one or I could attack Tony down to close enough.
You're dead next turn in air quotes and then hold up to counter spell.
So I would think this is very likely going the way of Zompa here.
I do too. So a very reserved attack there.
Understanding that the way he loses is by being tapped out of Blue Manor.
Yeah.
And that spider sense can, you know, prevent the triggers from either the landfall or from the creature, whatever it is that he needs to do, or just counter full board.
He's at 20, so he would be able to survive a hit from a hasty critter.
I saw a last four tournaments here for Zompa.
I mean, we know Tony a lot, you know, we've seen a lot of Tonys and Valtar last year, but Zompa's last four tournaments, won the mocks.
Top 8 and Narcy took second as Phylae Leon and now top 8 of the Pro Tour here in Richmond, Virginia.
Is that good?
He's cooking.
Yeah, absolutely.
An incredible player.
He loves to see it, man.
It's nice to see those players you know are extremely good start to have their results.
The Stainful Stroke says, no, thank you.
Yep, so the warp is 3, but it is the mana value of 4.
Yep. So that'll count to the harmonizer and that is going to be game number three going to Zompa
That was a big game and honestly Zompa's draw there
Pretty average, you know, I would say, you know, just got the cub here on turn three
You were able to protect it with the spell and then just one powerful creature or a board I'd go in the distance
Let's take a look at the what the players sideboard it in and out Tony took out
for game number
Four, Wistfulness, Earthbender Ascension, Spider Sense, brought in an Essence Gatter, Seer, and Three Pirate Plasms.
Yep, so it looks to be a know what changes. Essentially, yeah, both players seem to have very much stayed the same.
Yeah.
like a very not a very big play draw difference between this whenever you uh whenever you just
have these type of decks this kind of all-in combo deck versus this all-in kind of ramp deck you
don't see a lot of play draw differences you know gene pollinator kicking things off here for
gullima loopy tony portolan on the other side of things fable of pasaging early just to
make sure he hits his land drops and can interact with what Guglielmo is going to be putting down on the board.
Yep, and I mean we saw what that this was uh team sanctum going what 15 and one against uh rhythm deck
something something gigantic um but I mean so far being up two games and last game as far as the
first one that we watched it didn't look fantastic for Tony by any means. Like I know the isn't
and Spellamentals deck kind of were the winning team.
Yeah.
But I can't imagine that team sanctum
weren't far behind them.
Yeah.
I would tend to agree as well.
But yeah, the Spellamentals team of the Boulder,
they just put so many players requalified
and got a lot of their goals here.
Love this piece of interaction here.
Being able to put that enchantment on your land
and then tap it with Gene Pollinator
to get a little extra land.
Yeah.
And do that kind of with like unable to scream
on your opponent's creature.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like Jean Pollinator, you know,
trying its best to be Lana Warelv.
You can make men out of anything.
Exactly.
But when you have these kind of enchantments
in these ways to add any man of any color,
you're able to utilize it.
It's close enough to Lana Warelv.
But right now it's fine.
It's good to Lana Warelv.
It's got too toughness.
That is a very, very good point.
Zoppa's hand is quite bad, though.
It is two lands, Lana Warelv, and spider sense.
I think you need some rhythm in his life, huh?
Yeah, yeah, rhythm is just really the card.
This deck looks so different with just one rhythm
because, well, the first, the one card,
it's a one card combo in a sense
because the first rhythm always gets Badger-Milko.
And then the second one,
you know, you're faced with two options
and both are usually great.
Oh, I can count to 12 and I can put Behemoth
into playing win the game.
Or dang it, I can't get quite that high.
I get a Riddler, I get to refuel
and you get to go from there.
Or, of course, the alternative is you get one of these silver bullet style of effects.
You get a bright glass gearhulk.
You can get a lantern with that.
Like the utility of that card is just through the roof.
One of my favorite fetches with it is the mockingbird, which, you know, can just copy
whatever your opponent's got on the other side of things, too.
Yeah.
That's pretty great.
I mean, my favorite is very similar to that.
It's gearhulk to go get the mockingbird.
Ah, yes, yes, there you go.
It's not playing any Mockingbirds in this list though, oh no there they are three, they're
hiding, they were being impostered somewhere else.
Looks like they are double checking some interaction here.
I wonder what the question could be if we find out, we'll be able to let you know.
Yeah, looks like we were looking at the enchantment to be able to see if it can be strapped up to a starting town, which yeah, I don't think that seems like a problem to me.
It's any land right. Yeah, maybe just the interaction with gene pollinator making sure that you can tap that.
the power of power is gigantic.
G-jeans, no.
G-jeans are gone and right now,
the one thing we're missing is any kind of pressure
and that looks like we just top ticked
another shimmer wild growth.
So not bad, do some ramping
and then you can hold up your spider sense.
That's a Lenor else in the hand area.
That was the four curves that we had
before I thought we top ticked another growth here,
but maybe not.
I think maybe he's just got the two multiversal passages, the LAN URLs and the spider sense.
So yeah, Lupi needs some action quickly because sure, having spider senses is great and all,
but Tony's getting close to being able to combo off.
Well, we assume.
We can't see the hands.
We're not sure what he's got to work with here, but you know, multiple parts of the
combo probably available for him.
I think there is a couple of spell snares here.
I still do think that is the enchantment there I see
in that third card.
And that is the case with the starting town
and the enchantment on blue.
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.
Multiversal Passage naming Island instead of Forest
because if you were to play that enchantment,
it gets spell snared and you have no access to blue
and you don't have spider sense.
That feels a lot worse, so yeah, there you go.
Okay, you were right.
I just didn't see it the second time you turned up.
She's a little else gross now.
Now we can drop a Lenore elf as well,
have spider sends all fine and good,
but once again, absolutely no pressure.
Tony, we have been seeing it all weekend
when this deck doesn't have the combo on the turn.
It's like, well, you know what I'm gonna be doing.
It's gonna be stock up.
It's gonna be consult the star charts.
And I'm gonna do that over and over and over
until I have the I win button,
Harmonizer and go and fold your step one stuck up spider sense is no
Thank you because as you mentioned Tony's not really doing much else beyond that if he doesn't have it ready to go big draw step
Do we have any kind of pro activity here? Quantum Riddler would be excellent a rhythm
Lovely two cards draw huge that could have been a you know
multi-thousand dollar Quantum Riddler here for Zompa and that was Riddler into Riddler.
No way.
Yes.
Oh, so much power.
That is huge.
So much cards.
So if we're able, yeah, you play a land.
That would have been three cards.
Now the Riddler goes down to two.
How's two mana draw three going?
But wow, it looks like we just-
Just tapping out for it.
I love it.
Slam it.
Let's go.
So five mana, four six flyer, draw three.
Holy moly, there was a rhythm.
There's a rhythm.
Hell yeah.
Nice.
And now this is the classic, am I dead?
Yep.
If not, I would think Tony's probably in a lot of trouble here.
Because what's it like at base, it's 28 power, right?
So yeah, that's enough to kill him if Tony has it right now with a fetch land.
Yeah.
And technically Tony's best possible draw would be Harmonizer, Fable Passage, Sack,
Double Full Boar and I mean that the numbers, we would need Riley's math to
be able to get the exact numbers on how big that creature would be.
I'll just say it.
I'm glad Riley's a history teacher.
That's well said.
That is well said.
Miss you, buddy.
All right.
Can Tony kill Gugliela Lupi right now?
He's tapped up just a four-six body in the air, so at an effective 19, needs to get
20 points of damage over the finish line here to tie things up here at two games
apiece.
Harmonizer full bore in just one land the math there is just 14 that would force the jump lock with a riddler
That just would not feel like enough. It's very clear with the pause Tony does not have harmonizer
Full bore as well as a fabled passage style land. Otherwise the game would be over. Yeah
So now it's the what else can Tony do type of game and I I also see a certain eight drop
in zombie's hand as well.
Oh, hoof is early, huh?
Technically light, but early.
We'd love to see it in hand.
We'd love to just have it in the...
So that's seven.
That's seven mana with the Lanowar Elf, untap landmakes.
Eight.
Greater hoof behemoth with Quantum Riddler.
Both of those getting plus three, plus three.
Nine, 1012, 1314, 15.
Not quite enough anyways.
So we'll need a little bit more than that as well.
A bit more time.
No, bossing say, the only thing here from Tony,
activating this land, excuse me, earth bending it.
So yeah, that is a yikes.
We've seen that a couple of times this weekend
and it hasn't gone well.
Yeah, and I mean, that land is incredible.
It's a solid thing for plan B
and you can always earth bend onto escape tunnels,
fabled passives, that kind of interaction is awesome.
But for here, it's a classic,
I have nothing else I can do type moment.
Yeah. Let's see if we can get a peek at what's in hand here of Zompa.
We have a Quantum Murdler, number two off to the side, warped away.
Just imagine if that riddler was instead just a land that Zompa was just going
to land go. That was such a huge straw.
Now all of a sudden Zompa has five cards in hand or riddler in the warp zone
just shows that mulliganing, you know, dumping your hand on the table.
That card is just so good at restocking you.
So even just one can really reshape a game.
Certainly catches you up to where your opponents at in the current state of things.
Badger mall cub. Hey, buddy. OK.
The map definitely changed. Yes.
With the badger mall cub.
If we now crater hoof.
So let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
If we go untapped land, that's hope.
You have to tap everything.
You're still only attacking the gridler and behemoth, but now it's plus five.
So that's 10 15 19 damage that would be an attack for 19, but also with the negative two from the land
It would only be 17 so still would have to do more than this
But one other thing we know that we saw in hand is a rhythm. So mm-hmm. What does rhythm on cub?
Look like you get another fabled passage temple garden and
Multiversal passes that add six a land would make seven and you would not be able to cast crater hopes
So I think that's the math that Zombo was just doing there as he pushed the
Multiverse will pass it forward
Signifying that this is about to be air bent. It's so funny how these two decks are basically like dancing around each other being like
No, you go. No, no, you go. Yeah, please after you
How who gets dead the quickest?
Boy, I will say though. It does look like loopies setting up for an explosive turn
Next turn and Tony has got to have an answer for it somehow. Yeah, this is
is everything feels like one man ashore,
one creature short from winning this turn.
And I think that is the math that Zampa is double checking.
So much easier for us to do in the booth
when we don't have the lights and stress here
in the feature match area.
So now that is saying, okay, from Zampa's perspective,
what do I do to make sure that you can't kill me
when all I have is green cards in hand?
And that's what it looked like there from Zampa.
So this likely is going to pick a creature
that has some utility to disrupt Tony.
Oh, okay.
There's the Gearhulk, Bright Gloss Gearhulk
down at the bottom of the library.
What's he gonna go and fetch?
Yeah, and that's the thing is,
I don't know if Bright Gloss Gearhulk
really interacts with the combo in any way.
Like a Soulguide Lantern, that does nothing.
Getting a Seam Rip.
Nope, that's not on land, so.
Maybe.
He's playing JD, right?
Yeah.
So you got a couple of those in there.
Goes for the Gearhulk.
can get Melstra, Melstrider's Resolve as one of the one drops.
Insidious fungus is a one drop.
Also, every single one of these one drops that you can search up
just seem like they have no utility.
And looks like Zompa agrees because that's just two proactive elements.
Would you like two more cubs or two Riddlers?
Now he's just dealer's choice, right?
Yeah, could be two more islands too.
You could even just kind of ramp with them.
You can.
But either way you slice it,
From what we've seen in hand from Zampa, this is him saying,
I cannot win this turn and it looks like I can't interact either.
So it's like, Tony, you have one more chance.
Otherwise, Zampa is for sure crater-hoping next turn,
or at least trying to, and as long as there's not
a disdainful stroke or something like that,
the Zampa into the semis.
Tense moments here for both of these players.
You could see Zampa's hands shaking a little bit just to see.
Excuse me. Maneuvers all the pieces on the board.
I don't think Tony is sitting all too calmly the other side either.
I don't know if I've ever seen Tony not be calm though for what it's worth.
He is very chill.
Very, very composed.
That's for sure.
Looks like that is two blue floating.
Looks like that is now a flying island.
Nice. Here comes Gene Pollinator.
That is so many creatures on the board now.
Does he have blue interaction as well in him?
Don't think I saw spider sense. That would be the only thing is turn a creature sideways have spider sense
Is that a just stainful that is a blue card? Yeah
It's got a piece of interaction and it might be at a stankful stroke. Wow that can count to the harmonizer
It could if we left up to blue if that was to stank full stroke
And we didn't leave up the man at a cast it. There's an island. There's no other
Critter on tap. Yeah, the island doesn't add to her and Jean is new. Yeah, and Jean's new
Well, let's see what happens. Yeah, let's see what happens. Let's see if that is indeed the the card that we saw in hand
So and he just pointing out yes, there's an island. Oh
That looks like a mockingbird anyways, right? Yeah, you have one. Yeah, so that that was the other blue card
not a disdainful stroke. So there is no interaction. This is Tony
knowing it is time to go all in and wow. Okay. The bright black skier hook was actually great
interaction first strike prevents. Oh, I guess when it goes full bore anyways, it has six toughness.
But uh, yeah, there it is. Here's the combo from Tony. Yeah. And no way to stop it from
loopy side of things. So Tony is going to pull this out of the bag here.
Loopy was one turn away from hooping him to death, but it looks like we're going to get tied up here two games apiece
Lately, we wouldn't have it any other way than a game five between these two absolutely phenomenal players
Yeah, and not enough toughness to prevent
14 to 28. Yeah, yep. So the triggers are on the stack
So it's gonna be exactly 28 you're gonna attack only for toughness to block and it take 24 damage
You've heard of Pester Might and Splinter Twin?
Well, let me introduce you to Harmonizer and Full Boar, the new Splinter Twin.
Amazing.
Lovely.
Man, Tony must have just been sitting there the whole time being like, okay, please don't
keep up two bloop.
Please don't keep up two bloop.
Please don't keep up any interaction from me, otherwise I'm super dead next turn.
And now I get a game five.
And you gotta think.
I mean, there was one other option that Zombo could have done, and well, there
was a warped Riddler.
Yeah.
the top of the deck and just hope that maybe there was a
disainful stroke something they interact and instead you lose
the game and now you pick up a hand of five hearts for game
five for your pro tour life.
You know, but you know what? There are quantum
Riddlers in the deck. So you don't hate mulliganing as much
with this five color rhythm deck with something else. So
absolutely it does help a little bit. But just attacking
the gene pollinator. That's not a good side. We've seen
a couple of one landers from Zampa throughout the tournament.
All right, this one's not one of them.
Preserving the life total, nothing to do on turn two there.
So just attacking in for one, Tony goes down to 19 to Guglielmo's 18.
Yeah, and down to five cards, always brutal.
But like you were saying, Riddler can definitely help out.
And Tony playing the mountain first leads me to believe
that there is some interaction here,
but there's just absolutely no reason to kill Jean pollinator yet the one damage chip shot damage
That is not really what it's all about
But right here if we see a creature
This might be the time where Tony kills a Jean pollinator. So you don't get the mana nice
Jean pollinator team care of courtesy of burst lightning quantum riddler will draw a couple cards here for Guglielmo
Loopy or just the one if his hand is still stocked up
Stocked up is used
If he has more than one card, he will draw one card from Quantum Ridley.
I would assume it's probably still two, based on not playing a lot of stuff, but yeah, up
to three cards.
So it did only draw one card, and it looks like we have two lands, breakglass, gearhulk.
Speaking of stock up, look at that, two harmonizers.
Yep, that was harmonizers, pyroclasms, stock up, fourth lands.
I mean, that stock up kind of had everything, so that looks like
the type of stock up that is going to fill any kind of hole that Tony's hands needs.
We're going to see a combo deck with this pro tour.
And it's been a while since we've seen a combo deck in standard takedown. We've definitely seen
some combo decks. You know, even our last pro tour. Airbending kind accounts.
Yeah, even our last pro tour won by mono blue belcher, but that's modern.
You know, there's combo of plenty in that format, but
but it's your format of choice, yeah?
I love them all.
I love them all.
Good answer.
See a formidable speaker in hand now for Guglielmo Lope.
Does he go to it straight away?
Nope, it's going to be Bright Bloss gear hulk,
first and foremost, while Tony's tapped out.
Let's go get two one-mana options out of the deck.
Looks like Mockingbird's going to be one of them.
Yeah, and that's the thing.
As far as the deck, there's no way that Zampa
and the rest of Team Handshake were preparing against
Team or Harmonizer because it didn't exist.
So the silver bullets that they picked out
and they were prepared for is Soulguide Lantern,
Seam Rip, Mel Striders Resolve, and Insidious Fungus.
None of those interacted the combo
in really any way, shape, or form.
So you just have to get the proactive elements
of Mockingbird, which is good,
No matter what, now you have four mana, four first strikers,
basically until the end of the game,
but that is just not gonna be enough
most of the time against the power of Tony's deck.
And I mean, the game could literally be over right now
with Harmonizer, Full Boar, and Fable Passage,
if Tony has the absolute dream start,
which does not look like we do.
Yeah, because Harmonizer doubles the power,
it doesn't affect the toughness,
but Full Boar affects the toughness.
Exactly. It becomes six toughness.
So if he has multiple first strikers, then yes,
he can prevent himself from being dead.
Bingo, but that needs to survive.
Then you are just holding back your eight power as well.
And then at any point, if Tony just goes like,
all right, end step, sear one of them,
untap combo, then it's time.
All righty, I still explore, hits the board.
I'm gonna mill some cards, get some extra land drops.
Just a nice little, uh, nice little value play, a little value play, another piece of the engine.
And this is a card that we've seen a lot in the landfall decks, you know, trying to combo
there with harmonizer as well.
So I still in harmonizer finding their way into another shell is really cool because
this card is just incredible.
You can splashes in other formats as well as standard, making some birds get enormous
as well.
little chocoboes. All right, a multiversal passage now from Zompa. Takes two, 19 to 18,
are the life totals for those who keep track. A swamp, interesting. There is two cards that
utilize block mana here and is the champion of the weird which we know with side knots,
Spear of Spider-Man, which was not yeah, so that can go and get some things back from the yard if it is killed
Looks like we're just checking
Land and damage taken from those lands. He took two off of the first line he played the second one second shot came in tapped
So yeah, we'll be down to 16 then if he played that on yeah, I'm not a hundred percent that would make sense to me
Yeah, he didn't have anything else to turn to so it's just a tap temple garden. Yep. That's right
So now just getting some accelerants here mockingbird for another gearhulk and now you know we do have that
first strike wall
Completely blocked up here for the combo itself
But now we'll see if Zampa wants to just play that game right of just saying all right. I'm not going to
You know try to get aggressive or proactive and just hold back these gearhulks
And it looks like
Melstrider's resolve is not in the deck because this is the one time when this mockingbird to get a fight spell here for ice to
Explore would have looked great
So not searching that up and playing a lot of where else instead is a hundred percent saying I don't have that in my deck
Yeah, he didn't bring that there's one on the sideboard, but yeah, it's not cited in what have been great here
That's for sure, but in most other situations
Not good because it's a Tony doesn't really play a creature until he wins the game
A little mill trigger here, spell snare in the yard. Draw is it go time? Can we
remove one of these blockers and combo off? Oh my so we need we need seer plus
full bore here to get through. He's got it. He's got it. Tony has a way to remove
one of the bright gloss gear hugs to be able to push through the damage
necessary to get Guglielmo Lupi dead. Congratulations Tony Portolan, teamer
harmonizer, three and two in the quarterfinals. Wow what an incredible
match there. Even the last game which looked very very close for Zombo to
pick that one up just needed one more piece of interaction and Zombo was on
the way his way to the semi-finals. Tony was able to clutch up Zombo didn't
He finds it and wins two games to put himself into another semi-finals, incredible.
Congratulations Tony, you are on a streak my friend.
We got to chat to him after his match, so let's go and hear what he had to say.
Tony Portolan, a huge win in the quarter-finals, five game match, tells us about what was
a pretty lengthy and fun back and forth.
Yeah, so we split pre-cyber games.
It went as anticipated that I drew a bit of blank in game one, so they won.
And then in the post-bore games they have some counterspents, some interactions.
And basically game three they drew two of the three interactions, and they got me.
And then game four and five I managed to squeeze the win.
They were a bit unfortunate, game five, they're not going to be five.
But I think they weren't prepared for the matchup, so they were gold fishing a good hand.
And that seems kind of true about most people that you've played against with your deck.
Your deck is really taking people by surprise this weekend.
Yeah, I'm really happy about it.
However, my next matchup has some interactions, so it will be much tougher matchup than the one in the quarterfinals.
Well, we are looking forward to watching you play in the semi-finals.
Good luck, Tony. Thank you.
Congratulations to Tony Portolan picking up the win there.
Let's take a look at our bracket now, Corey, and see how the cards have fallen thus far in our quarterfinals here at Pro Tour.
or
These are how the cards have fallen and how the Cubs have fallen.
There are no more Cubs here into the top four, which is a very big dramatic story as well.
But we see Tony going to be facing the winner of Marco and Luis Salvatto, which we're going
to figure out here very shortly.
And of course the finals between the winner Christopher Larson and Eduardo.
Alrighty.
Here we go.
Our final quarterfinal.
It is Luis Salvatto, a playing at the MIR Excruciator representing Team Cosmos.
Heavy play up against Marco Balaca, who brought a sweet Jessica control deck here this weekend.
Representing the Italians.
Luis Salvatto, tell us about this list you're calling.
Absolutely.
I mean, this deck is the coolest.
We saw it in the hands of Christopher Larson as well.
This is the only deck that had two copies in the top eight of this list.
Who the fuck is it?
Nobody would have guessed that going into that.
I don't care who you are, except maybe the players that played this deck.
trying to play doomsday excruciator flip over the deck with and leave only six cards and then attack
with the restless reefs to be able to mill out your opponent or of course just play some value
creatures yep uh as well so on the other side of things marco balacca our overnight leader on
day number one undefeated player playing jess guy control another very underrepresented list
but a good call here for the weekend thus far tell us about this one jess guy control zoria's
control both have great weekends and as well and this is the classic definition of control
trying to kill all your opponent's creatures with day of judgments ultimates as well as have a
plethora of counter spells to be able to interact it's a draw go deck that plays just guy revelation
as the wind power well those are the decks these are the players we're gonna jump to the magic
but not before we hear from both of them who spoke to Cedric
I'm joined by Luis Salvatto. Luis, how do you feel about your top 8 matchup this morning?
Well, I'm feeling great. I think it's a good matchup for me. Also, Morgan's post-hybrid
means more duress to cast, so I'm feeling good.
Okay. Looking forward to watching you play. Good luck.
I'm here with Marco Balaca. Marco, how do you feel about your top 8 matchup?
It's not easy. The pre-sideboard game is fine and post-sideboard is much more difficult.
So to win, I need to win pre-sideboard and still one game post-sideboard.
Good luck this morning.
Well, you said it. He has to win both of the pre-sideboard of the game, Staten chance
against this deck because post sideboard Louise gets hold of plenty of hand
disruption spells, dresses, you know, whatever he wants.
He's got a couple of deceits as well in this list.
So let's jump into this quarterfinals.
Let's see how things stand as we join and see who our final
semi-finalist is going to be.
Both players locked in ready to rock and roll.
We joined in game three.
And would you know it?
Marco Balacca has done what he needed to do and is up two games to zero.
We saw Luis Salvatto against Marco in the round that Salvatto clinched the top eight,
and there was a big difference in that match. Well, he only played one pre-board game.
You know, essentially has to win three games now instead of winning both post-board games.
But the plethora of duressas and a bunch of hand disruptions,
quantum riddler, all that stuff makes it so much better for our 2017-2018 player of the year.
We supposed so stoked when he made the top eight. You could just tell the seat now getting to take a look at the hand here. What is the biggest threat in this hand, Corey? Yeah, so we've seen the Savado prioritize taking the Jessica revelations at most stages of the game. But this early on where it is the first removal spell. You usually want to take the card that is unique, the card that kind of presents the first problem. And that would really be stock up here. So that would make a lot of sense to me. Sure you can cast, consult the first.
star charts for two and just have that little look at the top two put one into
your hand, but not something Salvador's going to be worried about right away.
So I'm definitely going to stock up here.
There's certainly, you know, little windows of opportunity for Louise, you
know, to find other answers for what's in hand there.
So to see taking the immediate problem and stock up, which gets you the
most value, consult the star charts.
It's a later problem, but that right there is a big, big problem.
Oh, wow.
Torpor orb off the top is huge.
The one thing to mirror is not great at removing artifacts and you know salvatos
Every single creature has a come-into-play ability in some regard to see doomsday excruciate or harvester
Spite superior spider-man can put something into play, but here is the counter to that you can just evoke out to see
Sure, you don't get any of the abilities anymore, but it isn't two mana five five that stays so
Torporor give it and Torporor take it for sure.
That is such a funny interaction.
It is, yeah.
But now Marco, okay, sure, fine.
There's a massive creature on the board.
But now, stuck up, gets to resolve.
Also found that off the top of the library, right?
Yeah.
They weren't two in hand, so.
That was the two draws.
She played.
You know, I mean, you can't thought sees the top of the deck.
It's kind of what they say.
And those two draws from Marco are going really, really good.
And when we saw these two play in the Swiss,
The one thing that didn't happen. I mean so bottle had the same kind of starts rip apart your hand rip apart your hand
The one big difference there is Marco kind of drew what in air quotes is to be expected
Just a bunch of lands or something like yeah moments
Get to take a look again duress number two here in vertical commas the seat during the first bit of hand disruption
So take a look at the options for Louise. There's a day of judgment. There's just a revelation and get lost
I saw in Salvatore's hand a superior Spider-Man, so there's one option to be able to take the day of judgment play
Superior Spider-Man have two five-fives and just hope that's good enough swing for the fancies. Yeah, exactly
You know not the absolute greatest plan
The other plan is you could just like take get lost and hope that Marco doesn't find a fourth land
Or of course you could go long-term plan and take the revelation. I do think he's got elegant parlor
Oh, yeah, that is just a whole town.
Yeah, he just pulled it down as it's not enough.
Still a tap land, so at least, you know, that is one extra turn.
Yeah, it's a turn to pressure some damage in, so get lost.
Keep the creature that's on board in action
for one more turn at the very least.
So what this is really telling me is
Savato is never going to overextend here,
aka play that superior Spider-Man next turn
on second to seat.
Found it on type land.
It's just going to be the classic attack with this.
You deal with it, play another.
You deal with that, play another.
as we do see the doomsday excruciator, which will not
have to come into playability, which
is unlike any come into playability here in standard
of removing libraries from the game.
But the ability to draw two cards
still remains on that card.
Intimidation tactics is in Luisa's hand.
That's a dead card in this matchup for the most part,
right?
You have it all in turn one and you hit a Torporor?
Yeah.
And I think that is the respect to Torporor, like.
There's Kyoshi, the Anakia, Kyoshi Island, that's another hit, but yeah, totally agree.
Whenever we saw that from Luis Salvado pre-board in the Swiss, we cycled.
So that's kind of tough.
Yeah, at least it has a cycle ability.
Yeah.
We can tell you for game three taken out for Luis was three Harvester from misery, one
superior Spider-Man, Arch-Enemy's charm, requiting Hex, all of them, and two deadly
cover-up.
He brought in four Dureses, a cool cause heist, shoot the sheriff, three Quantum
Riddler, and then a gate.
to the land. We did just see, we did just see the cycle there of the intimidation tactics.
So Torpor doesn't shut down the ability to be able to make one of your creatures, but
there's really no point because it would just be a 4-4 deceit. So, Salvatto's just like
it's a 4-4 superior Spider-Man now, but let's say we saw a Quantum Riddler in the yard.
Yeah, that would actually have a static effect.
Exactly. You could exile that and have that going, but Salvatto doesn't want to
remove his own creatures from the graveyard. For Marco's side of things, he wasn't super jazzed
about the post-sideboard games. He took out an abrade, four lightning helix, and two ultima,
brought in two Toshonus tide binders, two torpor orbs, an exercise, the onagi of Kyoshi Island,
and a river churn monument. Makes sense. The river churn monument is huge. Could be big. Could be big.
You lose the library, so. Doomsday excruciating hits the board. Do nothing. That middle section
of text remove that that no longer exists with Torpor but now you have a 6x flier that says at
the beginning of your upkeep you draw a card which is very strong now so this is it I think
this is going to be a classic moment for Marco can I consult the star charts and just flip over
to a judgment and probably lock up a semi-finals birth with that big of an exchange and if not
probably heading to game number four and of course for anyone that didn't remember
Luis Salvatto ended up taking down Seth Manfield our reigning world champion in the player of the year
the tie when they tied to play off to see who actually gets it in 2017 and 2018.
One of only two players to ever tie and a win player of the year in that way which is really
really cool. That's sweet. You gotta figure out some way huh? You can't share the prize.
Consult the Star Charts, take a look at Shana's Tidebinder and a Hall of Land.
I think we saw this last time against Salvador, where Marco made this judgment call of,
should I just kick-consult the Star Charts, get two cards, or just cast it and try to find no more Lies?
Yeah.
And that time it backfired as he didn't find it this time.
It's kind of the same story as no no more Lies, no Day of Judgment,
Doomsday Excruciator is going to resolve, we just picked up a land.
And now we got five more looks at day of judgment for Marco to be a huge in the driver's seat here there
And if not this game is likely just over because well
We're gonna have doomsday excruciator a four-four spirits fighter man
And then the land to be able to get animated and restless reef there
To attack yeah, certainly enough you need to deal with both these creatures on the board
And that hand is not gonna cut it
One thing we very much might see is there is a Tishonis Tidebinder in hand from Marco so
Stop the land?
Stops the land and jumps the superior Spider-Man and goes to one.
Sure.
I guess that is a thing that could happen.
I mean if any deck comes back when you go to one life it's a control.
Yes, for sure.
So here's the top.
The only thing that matters is the last left so.
You're talking again.
It is.
Salvador just utters nothing again and that looks to be nothing again.
So that uses one time Corey it sure did but that is the one thing that those selections didn't look great
But the play I was mentioning earlier play land six
I don't believe we played a land this turn play land six to Shanna's tide binder the land and go from there as long as
Marco doesn't
Tight binder the doomsday excruciator ability and the upkeep. Oh, yeah
Yeah, because that would shut up that would shut off the flying
I mean, Restless Reef was the first thing on the board.
So I imagine that's his target here.
And Marko has to tie binder that, uh.
OK, huh.
Off to not to go for it.
So Luis picks up a win here.
Can he reverse sweep here in the portafilter?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Torporov shuts down the tie binders.
So that was not an option.
Oh, yeah, it does.
It does, yeah, of course, of course, of course.
OK.
Torporov give us a Torporov take away, as you mentioned.
Torbjörn is a universal effect.
There's just usually not a lot of coming to play abilities from the test guide side,
so the episode lot, of course, had that locked up.
Nice.
All right, Luis.
Here we go. Restless Reef.
Start things off once again.
Marco Balacca.
Two lines in play.
Interaction, a plenty from what we could quickly glean there.
Deceit once it's like a look and normalize says no.
Thank you. Get out of here.
The top plays hello fountain tapped has a get lost in hand there as well.
If anything does resolve stock up is allowed.
So it's going to sculpt the hand a bit more here for Luis and no more lies was big.
You know, normally deceits if you're just, you know, having a dress style of
the fact and you get a counter spell or it gets countered.
It's kind of the same thing.
Yeah.
But no more lies, exiling it is a big deal for the interaction with Spider-Man.
You know, it's great against all the graveyard decks this weekend.
Yeah, absolutely.
What else we got? The Kory Mountain Monastery.
We've got the Get Out, and another land I think it's all lanes too.
Yep, still a solid hand.
Looking like we're going to see a nice long game, but Marco looks like we might have been on the mulligan a little bit.
Only four cards in hand there.
Spellsnare, get lost, two lands.
Not a very strong hand at all.
And yet there we go.
We see the mulligan to six.
And well, how many four meta four four do nothing creatures?
Are we going to see from Luis Savardo?
This is not a deceit.
This is just what the card says.
And it makes a lot of sense.
Savardo just has another superior Spider-Man in hand.
So just trying to play to the board.
Now, that was a torpor about the top as well, I think.
And Savato's deck is not this Demir control deck.
It is a Demir tapout deck.
More closely resembles that than actual Demir control,
like we saw from Nisi for Duke this weekend.
We saw Savato, just having what he wants to do with this turn.
Hasn't said she will ever send in.
Has another Spider-Man.
So he says, you know what, I might as well.
Let's get this out there.
Rises reef for land for turn and the turn passes back Marco prioritizing sorry mountain monastery instead of playing
The Torpor and that was good. I wish he'd drawn that though. Yeah, that was good
Kind of a luck in air quotes there for Marco not having it the other way around drew the Jeskai revelation and
Cory Mount monastery the day of judgment. That was the other order
You know play that and day of judgment in the Torpor at least prevents
not having libraries right now so that was a huge hit from Marco.
Oh my goodness, Demes Day excruciator now presenting a clock here for Luis Silvato.
We did see one more piece of removal in the form of Jessica
revelation to bouncing that back to hand gain some life make some critters draw
some cards.
Yeah, and the type of game that Marco was talking with Cedric here before I
I need to steal, I think is the word that Marko said, steal a game in the postboard and
this feels like the start of how you do it.
That was a huge temple loss for Savato, playing a six drop that does nothing until you draw
your extra card or get some damage in and then Marko playing a spell that gets to draw
him two cards, bounces it, all this kind of stuff is a huge temple play for Marko.
Three reefs, now on board here for Luis, Walker does have a normalize in the hand
so.
Jessica revelation though. That's the main thing nice. Marco can just go bounce
excruciator for more damage to the face two more monks attack for four put
salvato down to six and that might be insurmountable that really might be too
much for our 2017-2018 player of the year to come back from here. You don't
really think you need to deal with the creature attack here for Louis
but he's gonna have to find a way to answer these monks now goes down to six like you mentioned Corey and
Marco is firmly in the driver's seat here. What can Louise pull out deadly cover-up?
That's really the thing that needs to happen deadly cover-up and then exile the cards in your graveyard get rid of the remaining
Just guy revelations. It might be cover-up or bust here. There can be a harvester as well
I think you took all those out. Oh
No, shoot the sheriff on one of the months.
All Marco has to do is cast two spells here.
And that is going to be a revelation again.
Marco Balacca picking up the win here in the quarterfinals.
Luis Lava putting up an excellent fight with Marco Balacca
playing Jessica control able to pull it out there.
I mean, what an incredible result there from Marco.
Also, you just really got a feel for Marco.
Went 11 and one at one point,
lost three winning ends in a row,
Had one last winnin' in, got there, now makes it into the top four.
What an incredible performance.
And now in the top four for anyone keeping track?
Four different decks.
Absolutely.
You love to see it.
Congratulations to Marco.
We now have our semi-finalists decided.
Frans, we're going to take a short break.
And Maria and the Desk are going to set us up for those.
Don't go anywhere.
I
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There's a Super Shredder with art by Chris Seaman for all participants and a foil
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Coverage Highlights will be featured on Magic.GG and Play MTG Social Channels and
And you can see the full Magic Spotlight schedule for 2026.
Oh.
We're getting ready for our semifinals here
at coverage of Pro Tour.
Lorwyn Eclipsed on top eight Sunday
live from Richmond, Virginia, $50,000
to our first place finisher.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the news.
That's Marie Betholdy, Lonnie Davoudi, and Cedric Phillips
hanging out with you here on top eight Sunday.
Let's take a look at our bracket
and find out where we are, in fact,
through our top eight this morning.
Take a peek here, you can see all the results
from our quarter finals,
setting up our semifinals,
which we'll head to momentarily.
Christopher Larson will be up against Eduardo Sajkulek
and Todi Portoana will be playing Marco Balaca
there in our semifinals.
Who will the finalists be?
We will find out over the next couple of hours.
Well, Lauren has certainly made a splash here in Standard.
We're gonna walk you through
our top 10 most impactful cards for the weekend.
So drum roll please as we get ready for our first card that we are taking a look at here in Lorwin Eclipse
We've got some really fun ones that have been added to the bunch
And I've been making an impact in a bunch of standard decks first one
I want to turn to is this gentleman
Cedric well thankfully not as good as the Simicoco, but still good all the same this three mana
Transforming planes Walker is a really fun one to play with here in Oko, Lorwin Leige
It goes up and down it goes all around doesn't dominate a game like its former self
but it's still good nonetheless, and I'm glad it is back in that
Next up we are going to be looking at seer pretty simple card just for damage to third feature or planes walker
And you know what that's just the type of card these sometimes need in standard as we see all of these is a dex
Considering it as an option when it comes to their side force
specifically up next we've got spell snare
Oh, I have to talk about a counter spell, but this one is great one man answer to cub if you need it
Mostly a main deck here at this tournament. By the way, best one in teamer carbonizer
We're gonna move on to card number seven
Requiring hex is another answer to badger mo cub and that is a kind of a reoccurring theme among some of these cards back
MoCup was looming very heavy over this tournament and a lot of players built decks to beat it
If you were playing black you had at least three main deck copies of this card in your deck
very powerful moves though.
And next, some very familiar faces.
It is a Shockland Cycle, not all 10,
but they have made quite an impact, just fixing a lot of the mana issues
that some of the decks we have seen in the past have.
CamplGuard and HowlFound is specifically a massive boon
for decks like Bantarabend.
Alright, and coming in at number 5, who do we get?
It's Ashling, a rekindled, and Ashling Rimebound here.
This is an absolutely fantastic turn to set up piece for these elemental decks and lets
you ramp into super powerful elementals later in the game.
Love this card.
Also in draft.
We are moving on to number four.
It is excuse me a couple of different elementals here in Whistleness and Vibrance.
Now we use these evoke elementals are getting pretty powerful.
They are price to move as far as power level is concerned but were they all going
to show up in the same strategies while a lot of players played elemental strategies
this weekend that had access to both of these cards, and then some of these evoke elemental
incarnations are really taking standard by storm.
And next up, Sunderflock.
This card has absolutely turned the tables, allowing the elemental decks to have a massive
answer no matter how wide the cub decks are able to go.
This deck has single-handedly formed multiple archetypes this weekend, and its impact has
just been absolutely massive on the format.
Coming in at number two, we have Deceit.
This is actually the most played main deck elemental here in the tournament.
I just love seeing this card in the decks, especially ones that are better running a superior
Spider-Man because if you tap your mana correctly, you can get both effects of Deceit when
that card comes into play, which is very cool.
Yeah, that card is awesome.
But so is this one.
Number one, formidable speaker, JED, that's the way to be.
This two-four elf druid allows these green decks
to kind of homogenize themselves,
make sure that their game plan is very consistent.
The untap another target per unit,
that one comes up the least as far as
what's important on this card,
but make no mistake about it,
all the pieces of this puzzle are very powerful,
just like Ajani Monty Wilder talk himself.
Well, we recently lost a magic Titan of the game,
And that is of course none other than Kai Budo.
We're all feeling that loss very deeply, I would say, at the tournament this weekend.
We actually got a chance to sit down with Kai last year in Amsterdam when he knew what
was coming to ask him about his magic life.
Ladies and gentlemen, actually found me.
So when I was in school I had a bunch of friends and with these friends I played
Dungeons & Dragons.
One of these guys was playing Magic, so we started to play some multiplayer Magic.
I got hooked, started to go to a shop, and there were like pretty good people playing
locally, like going to German nationals and that stuff.
So I started to play, get friends with these guys, and then I kind of moved up the ladder
from playing shop tournaments to playing PTQs, and back then regionals was a big thing.
So regionals, nationals, yeah, and that's how I got into tournament play.
I won a PTQ, and then we went to a GP in Switzerland, and Dirk debated that,
qualified for Porto Chicago, which was the same portrait that I was qualified for.
Going to Porto Chicago, we had no idea how good we were, because suddenly we were playing against these Americans,
which we didn't really have contact with before.
And then Doug won the portrait and I finished top 16.
And at that point we were like, okay, we are pretty good at this stuff,
like we are on their level, we can play with them.
And then in the same season, I played five GPs and won three of them.
And at that point we were kind of like, this is the thing,
This is the thing, this is something we could be doing for a living for a couple of years.
We are clearly good at this, we know we're good at this.
We can hang out with the best and that's how we got there.
Kai Bude, where to start? He is a true legend of this game.
Like, I don't think there will ever, ever be anyone that comes close to Kai.
The World Championship 1999 was the first World Championship I qualified for
and it hadn't been Japan. I've never been to Japan before.
I mean, back then I was 18, so yeah, I didn't travel that much.
I did top 8 that tournament, which obviously felt great.
It was my first pro tour top 8, back then we counted worlds as a pro tour.
And then when we saw the top 8, my mediocre standard deck lined up perfectly against everyone else.
The final against Mark Lepin was still the fastest finals ever, I believe.
It was best of five, and I think it was finished in 15 minutes.
So yeah, that felt really good, and I ended up snatching the players
a year title from John Finkel in the last minute basically. So yeah, that was a great
tournament. So my second quarter top 8 was Chicago in 2000. That was a standard only quarter,
so it was 14 rounds of standard, no other format involved. The top 8 was very strong,
that was one of the stronger top 8s in the history of the game probably. In the semi-final,
I played against Brian Kibler in the straight-move Dragon Deck. I think he's still salty that
he lost that match. I think it was a good match up for him, but I got kind of lucky
when everything played out and then a bit calmy connealy listen which is another
of the very great magic players of all time in the final and yeah two pros of eights two wins
it was a nice life back then. My most enduring memory of Kai is actually from my first pro tour
pro tour San Diego 2004 I walk into the tournament hall and I see Kai Durkinmark of Phoenix Foundation
and I read so much about these guys I followed pro tour coverage for years it would have just
blown my mind to learn that many years later I would actually be on my team I would play
I played test with them, I ate meals cooked by him,
I'd listen to him to complain about things
and complain about different things.
And it's just incredible kind of the magic journey
that took Kai from being this guy I read about in coverage
to someone who picked me up from the train station
when I got to Amsterdam.
So the probably best city for me to play magic in
is Barcelona in Spain.
I played two pro-tours in the GP there.
And I top eight at the pro-tour.
I won the GP.
And then in 2001, I won the pro-tour in Barcelona,
which was all booster draft.
At first it was super smoothly,
But then I lost two rounds in a row and I had to win the last round against a very good friend of mine, Marcus Yerpsil.
I did win Mate Top 8 from there, it was smooth sailing again, I had a great draft deck in the Top 8.
I beat a close friend in Patrick Mello in the semi-finals and then I played one of the really great players in the game, Alan Comer, in the finals.
But the matchups were so good for me and that was third quarter, third quarter Top 8, third main.
So a special place for me are always team events. Two of the closest friends in my life
were Dirk Barbarowski and Marco Blume. I played a lot of team events with them, we did super
well. One of them was a pro tour in New York in 2001. Again, teams, we played so much magic
together, we prepared so much for the stuff, we were really good at team watches the
draft. Yeah, Kai, you know, he's, I was seeing an incredible player, our lead of
us to ever play the game. And when I started playing the Protor, he won the very first Protor
I played. He won. He beat me in my first GP and NPT finals. And even the first time I
beat him, I was like kind of a small miracle. So that's kind of funny. I had a really good
matchup, but barely beating. Just like, you know, the juggernaut, just incredible
player. Just it seemed like he could never lose. He would never lose in the top eight.
So my fifth Prototopei attempt in New Orleans again in the year 2001.
This time we actually had a great deck and this was one of the events that Dirk sawed.
We don't have a good deck and he didn't actually travel.
We ended up doing super well in the tournament.
Our deck matched up against pretty much anything that other people brought.
Yeah, it was super smooth sailing.
Benedict Glauser and me made the top 8 matches.
The quarterfinal and semi-final were not particularly close.
The final was a very long game against another good friend of mine, Tomi Wallamies.
It was super close. In the end, I had to draw a morphling at the correct time.
I did, and I won that one, so now we had five debates and five wins.
If Magic had to have a best player, we're so lucky that it turned out to be someone like Kai.
Kai shows how we can use competition to bring out the best in ourselves.
So, for me, Kai stands for hard work, integrity, respect, honesty, fair play.
Kai is one of my heroes.
So, one year later, Boston 2002, another team pro tour,
everyone kind of saw that Dirk Babarowski, Mark and me, were favorite to win.
Obviously, we weren't 50% to win, but we were the most likely team to win.
Then we lost the first two rounds.
At that stage, we had to win every round to win the tournament,
Which we ended up to so six porters six porters of eight six
So kind I have a
long history he used to beat me a lot as in
eight or nine times in a row until I finally
Stopped the losing streak
One day I think was
After a GP GP Beards, he came to my house where I was living with my parents and
And my mom asked him, are you Kai? Are you the German guy that beats my son all the time?
He's like, yes. Please stop it.
Protosshikago 2003 was an eliminated proto and it was a Rochester draft.
Rochester draft most people probably don't know about it.
You put the pack on the table and everyone picks the card.
I was really good at Rochester draft. TV proto's are all done in Rochester draft
so that was probably my strongest format.
This Swiss pre-aliminator answer to turn it around went super well.
I think I was sitting at the 11-1 and then the top eight draft I got
Very lucky had an insane deck and yeah now we are at the seventh quarterback
You know, it's funny
Like I said, like there's always that question John or Kai John or Kai it's if I don't show them for a little bit
You know, I went to him like to cut it was said like like I know I have no clue
He's like yeah, I have no clue either. It's like, you know, we both have no idea whatsoever
You know, however, I will definitely say that when you're looking at the goats. There is no doubt
the guy booty is the Michael Jordan of magic because nobody's peak sustained
dominance will ever be what he had he won seven pro tours he won I mean was like
three in one year you know though the only person I can think of like that is
is Michael Jordan like his his peak in his dominance I don't think will
ever be you know replicated you know I might you know end up putting up
Well, another top eight here, another top eight there.
But I'm in second place, I think,
with three Protor wins, Kaius seven.
But Kaius seven, it's just, he's just incredible.
He's a lot of fun and we've gotten to know each other
really well.
And you know, it's just been a real treat to get to know him.
So after my pretty good run of seven Protor wins,
I started to slow down a little bit.
People around me left the game, Marco,
When Dirk both quit playing professionally, I played a couple of more events, but eventually
I also picked up a job and started to do other stuff.
I was still playing a little bit here and there.
Eventually I got voted into the Hall of Fame, which I'm very thankful for, which meant I
had three Protor invites.
So I started to use these and play about one event a year, because I mean, I still love
magic, great game.
2010 I went to Protor Amsterdam.
I didn't prepare that much, but fortunately my good friend Gabriel Nassif tested with
me.
He broke it with a wide-aggressive deck.
Paul Ritzel was also working with us,
and Paul actually ended up winning the quarter,
and Gabriel's deck carried me to an undefeated extended record,
which meant I was in the top eight of that quarter as well,
where I lost to Brett Nelson in the quarter-final.
I played about one event a year,
didn't do so well for most of them,
and then the music championship in Las Vegas came around,
where I did very well,
think I finished third or fourth,
I don't exactly remember how that worked out,
but yeah, that was a high-profile event.
It felt very good to have another top finish,
And then fast forward to 2023, Barcelona, a modern pro tour, again working with the same
people.
We picked up a couple of new faces, but essentially the same group.
Everything was great.
I picked a great deck, Edgar Mahales built it for me.
It was a Cascades rhino deck.
Again my draft record was okay.
My record in modern was great.
I picked up my, I believe, 10s or 11s pro tour debates.
It felt incredibly great.
such a long time that's four prototypes and four decades of playing Magic.
Which means I'm playing this game for a very long time.
And yeah, that was awesome.
Kai just brings that organization to the room.
He brings that respect and that knowledge, right?
So if you're doing something stupid, right?
You make a bad play or you bring a deck to the table that doesn't really make sense,
Kai will be straight up with you.
He will shut that down. He will keep us on track, right?
Like, he is the no-nonsense kind of guy.
And when Kai speaks, you listen.
So I can't even imagine my life without Magic together.
I picked it up when I was 15.
I started to find friends, played Magic with them, found more friends.
My entire circle of friends is essentially Magic player at this point.
I got my jobs through Magic players.
I'm still working with a lot of Magic players.
I'm 44 years old, I'm playing the game since I was 15.
I mean, I assume my life would have been completely different
if I never got introduced to magic.
It's just incredibly important for me.
I think one of the things about Kai that really,
like, follows his career is how serious and how intense he is.
And so no nonsense, and so, you know, intimidating.
And one of the things I love most about Kai is when you get him to love him.
It is so unexpected, but it is so joyous and it is so heartfelt and you feel like you just got a gold star.
And, you know, I haven't done it nearly enough and I hope I get to do it, you know, again in the future.
But like it is, it's like those are the laughs you remember.
In life, everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. That's what people are saying.
Obviously, for me that's magic.
That's the only thing I'm well-known for.
There's several PD wins, there's seven GP wins,
there's four players a year titles.
One of the PD wins is a World Championship title,
so these numbers might not be beaten.
Right now it looks like there's just people
are just so good at this game.
There's so many great players,
so that someone goes on the street like that,
seems somewhat unlikely.
I did get diagnosed with very likely
lethal cancer a year ago and that kind of makes you think about what you did in your life and what
your accomplishments are and in my case that's clearly magic and I'm a tournament player I'm
very competitive and these titles these results that's my legacy and I'm incredibly proud of that.
Well, they say Kaibuta doesn't lose on a Sunday, and here we are approach her Sunday, and we have certainly lost something without him in our game anymore.
a little bit teary-eyed after watching that, but we've got a tournament to play here, so
we're going to turn our attention to predictor, nothing like cold hard numbers to get you back
into play in some magic. How does it look, Monning?
Okay, well, a little reset here, as we have four players eliminated, and that means 25%
is our new average. So let's take a look at of our four remaining players, but who
are the Stash Billik, doesn't really have many good matchups remaining in the call
So for him 18% he's a pretty big dog at this point. Next up Tony Portolan
Tony does actually have pretty decent matchups except for here in his semi-finals match
So 23% for him just below average next up Marco Bologna
This is primarily inflated by the fact that he has a great matchup or a decent matchup here against one for the one
It's a 28% for him, but the new favorite, according to the predictor, is Christopher Larson.
I think he's pretty happy with the remaining deaths in the top four, and as of now, since
one Damir excursiator that has fallen, it is Larson the Dane, who is the new favorite
to win the tournament.
Okay, thank you so much for those numbers, Manny.
Let's set up our first semi-final here at Pro Tour at Lower Wind Eclipse.
We'll be watching Christopher Larson on Demir Excruciator, who we just talked about as great
odds in his favor up against Eduardo Sajglik, who's on Is It Elementals?
Christopher Larson top eight at that pro tour murders at Karlov Manor, where he came
in third.
He has 10 Grand Prix top eights, including one win back in 2017.
Eduardo Sajglik, for him, he's in print on the pro tour for a hot minute.
It's been six years since he played a pro tour, but he does have a pro tour top
eight back in 2012 for Return to Ravnica.
Let's take a look at Christopher Larson's
year pass to the top eight.
It was a bumpy one for him.
He was our last player in coming in as
our eighth seed into the our top eight
here today did go 6-0 in draft 6-4 in
standard. What about Eduardo's road to
the top eight here? Cedric going to
take a dive in here.
You'll see it to one starting limited
for the limited coach of his team and
then picking up four straight ones
before closing out day number one
with a loss to police.
Salvatto on Demiric's
position over to another 2-1 in draft and then just a handful of wins with that
elementals deck that he is playing this weekend to lock up his spot a little bit
early. Didn't even need to worry about round 16 and there's a look at the players
and their road to here on the Sunday stage. Talk to me about this matchup
though, Monty. Okay, we're going to start with the mere excruciator in the
hands of Larson. The only deck to put two coffees in our top eight and
Larson is the lone remaining. Now this is a control deck with a bit of a
combo finish, and as we take a look over to the sideboard to see what tools Larson has
available to him, the name of the game is going to be all of this removal in order to
just stop Eduardo from being able to ramp up early and have those explosive elementals
because Larson just has the better late game on the other side as we take a look at Eduardo's
Is it Elementals deck?
Now the primary game plan here is to use Ramp in the form of Flame Breader, as well as Ashlyn
Ritindal.
So the fact that Larson's deck is full of removal to ensure these creatures don't live,
that is a massive problem for Eduardo.
As we go over to the sideboard to see if he gets much help, the answer is not really.
Ultimately, when it comes to the matchup, this is an inherent matchup between midrange
in the hands of Eduardo and control in the hands of Larson, which has historically been
control favored. But Larson's act also goes over top with that excruciator combo, so this
is going to be a tough matchup for Eduardo.
Okay, so, Mani, if we're taking a look at both these decks, everything equal on paper,
you think it's just going to be too difficult for Eduardo to overcome?
I'm not saying he doesn't have a chance. He absolutely does. But I think just
given the nature of the matchup, given the familiarity that Larson has with
is that given the past experience that they have from Luis Salvatto playing Eduardo on day one,
I just think there is a very uphill battle in front of them.
How about you, Cedric? What do you think?
Yeah, I'm going to agree with Monty on this one.
This is a very difficult matchup here for Eduardo.
I think that this is a pretty good spot here for Chris.
As mentioned, Eduardo has already lost to this matchup against Luis Salvatto
to close out day number one.
Teams are, of course, working on the side, getting players prepared,
but I think Chris feels pretty comfortable in this spot.
So I'm going to go with the big game.
All right, well it's time to find our first finalist.
I'm going to pass that on over to Marshall and Paul.
Yeah, thank you Maria.
Welcome back to the booth here.
We are just about set for semi-final number one.
That's Paul Cianna.
I'm Marshall Seckler.
Thank you so much for joining us
for coverage of Top 8 Sunday here from Richmond.
And we've got an interesting matchup this time around.
Paul, it's funny.
You know, when we were doing our pre-show,
we were looking at the metagame.
And you know, there's all these kind of on-board
creature decks, Cub, stuff like that.
But things have changed quite a bit here in our top eight.
We've got Demir, Excruciator in the hands of Christopher Larson
against Is It Elementals in the hands of Eduardo Sitchgallik.
So, what do you make of a matchup?
As we see our players join the future match area here.
Yeah, I think Moni did a really good job
of kind of breaking down the matchup here.
The way that Eduardo kind of gets ahead is,
you know, you're relying really heavily
on those two mana elemental cards,
really kind of turbocharger it starts, get a bunch of mana going and then get a roaming
thrown in play and then a bunch of elementals and get a bunch of value.
But I feel like a lot of what Eduardo does, Christopher Larson doesn't really care about
too much.
As long as he can control the early game, make it so that Eduardo can't get up to
the most explicit to this it starts and then kind of gets his doomsday excruciator
combo kill going, it just feels like from an approach to the format, I just feel
I feel like Christopher Larson kind of has a fundamental edge here.
All right.
Give me a second to-
Hugs and handshakes all around.
Great sportsmanship from both of our players.
They're friends.
They've known each other for a long time.
They're also two of the most popular and nice people out on the pro tour.
They're just really friendly.
Wow, you guys have a really amazing name, right?
That's pretty funny too.
Yeah.
And as you can see here, Christopher Larson with the turn one intimidation tactics,
incredible card in this matchup as Eduardo's deck is almost entirely creatures.
So you're going to be able to exile one of these cards. Let's see here. And Christopher Larson also
has the Requiting Hex in hand. So likely going to take here the roaming Throne as if Eduardo
goes with the Ashley rekindled in the hand. Christopher Larson can clean it up with the
Requiting Hex. You saw Christopher Larson pause on pit of offerings and a little chuckle
from Eduardo because that's a pretty good one here, actually, a land that exiles up to three
target cards from graveyards when it enters the battlefield. Actually, choosing to go with the
Ashting here as the Ashting does allow Eduardo to rummage, and because Chris Larson does have a
deceit in hand, you can feel happy about being able to get that roaming thrown before
Eduardo can play it on turn number four. Eduardo places land, passes the turn back,
back of the starting town, though.
And we're just going to see to see it here.
Yeah, and it would actually be pretty good here
because you might it would just take the winter night
stories possibly because Eduardo did draw that,
which would be a really good replay.
It's not.
And Eduardo says it's not a bad draw.
Pretty good one.
Yeah, that would leave the roaming throne in hand,
but it can't come down next turn.
So that might just be a problem for a later version
of Christopher Larson.
Let's see what he decides to do here.
It's really annoying to watch.
Right.
He had a really clean.
Right.
And I get why Christopher Larson did what he did.
But now you're thinking, well, this is quite
an excellent doing anything.
Did I want to just hold this to kill the Ashling?
And then he would have been able to basically deal
with all the threats that Eduardo has.
Once roaming thrones in play, that war two makes it really, really tricky to actually get off the battlefield.
Christopher Larson would need to find.
Okay, he is going to think long term here and take the roaming throne.
That does give Eduardo something to do this turn.
And he drew another roaming throne.
He drew a backup point here.
And disruption, not proving itself to be very effective here against Eduardo as he just continues drawing exactly what he needs.
Wow, and two vibrance and wistfulness. Look at this curve.
Yeah, likely going to be discarding one of these elementals.
Now vibrance would be able to kill a doomsday excruciator if
Eduardo first plays out that roaming throne. Could be something you're interested in.
Meanwhile, wistfulness is just a way to kind of get some card advantage.
We have a big, big decision point here for Eduardo, but we do know next turn he is going
to run at that roaming throne and then follow it up.
I wonder if he's considering this creating two cards.
Nope, just gets rid of the wistfulness here.
Okay, and that is an answer to a roaming throne, but Christopher Larson, of course, doesn't know Eduardo has one at hand as he did take the one that he saw out of Eduardo's hand, but I imagine Eduardo is going to run it out here.
here.
Going into it again.
The same element.
Yep.
Larson kind of smirks at it.
Yeah, well, I tried.
Now Larson did draw the arch enemy's charm.
However, needs to wait until he gets to land number five to be able to deal with the roaming throne.
Is it a three-man of removal effect?
Ward 2.
Ward 2?
Got to deal with the Ward 2.
Now, there is, what is it?
We see a superior Spider-Man.
There's deceit in the yard.
There is deceit in the yard.
And Christopher Larson does have watery grave,
but deceit won't be able to pick up the roaming throne.
As again, it does have the Ward 2 here.
But you could get something out of Eduardo's hand
by doing so.
You could also copy Wistfulness,
if you just want to draw two and discard one.
But I think he's interested in, basically,
it's like you probably have one good elemental
in your hand.
I want to take that out of your hand.
Yeah, for sure.
Oh, never once.
Well, okay.
Oh, was it Wistfulness?
Yeah, he took the Wistfulness here, actually.
And he did play Blue Blue for it,
so he's gonna get through his library a little bit.
Right, so now Eduardo will be able to run out a Vibrance.
Wow, he has doomed the excretioner in hand.
He does, he does, but will Eduardo have a little too much pressure?
Oh, because he's possibly looking to just cast it here.
He has two land drops away from doing exactly that.
So Eduardo now does have the ability to play Vibrance,
get two lands, kill the deceit on the other side
attack and just put a lot of pressure, forcing Christopher Larson to really try to go for his combo.
Now Arch Enemy's charm also has the ability to return creatures from your graveyard to your hand.
Perhaps if the game goes a little bit longer, you can get back Spider-Man possibly also to
the deceit for a little bit of hand disruption.
But I imagine there's a really good shot.
Chris Larson wants to go and use that as a removal effect
for the roaming throne.
Yeah, which would mean that right now is the time for Eduardo
to get his value going.
Yeah, I think the other consideration here,
if you're Eduardo, might just be, what if I evoke vibrance?
That's six damage.
Then I can cast bounce off to pick up the vibrance
once again.
Is the burn route something that I
would be interested in, although casting the vibrance also seems good. I mean if
you evoke out the vibrance you can keep up the bounce off to save your roaming
throw potentially if Chris Larson does have a removal spell to cast on it next
turn. This has been a long tank session here for Eduardo and the judge in fact
said, you know, gonna need you to make a play in it or I said I don't know but
he recognizes this is an absolutely critical juncture in this game. So six
to that. Get two lands. I'll attack for four as well. 14 and getting two lands.
He's trying to speed things up. Eduardo knows what's up. Yeah. The reason, you know,
there's a reason he took that long. He actually plays very quickly normally.
Yeah, but we are now into top four and this is one of the most pivotal turns
of this game. And you just don't want to mess it up here. And finding value
engines here getting 40 mountain monastery and a thundering falls don't
really need cavern of souls or anything like that like that in this
matchup just because really aren't there really is encounter magic that Chris
Larson is playing so you just want to get the value lands in this case
He's going to shoot in the back.
Those feel like that's what we saw.
Eduardo's predicting something there.
I didn't hear what he said.
Well, it doesn't matter as he's completely tapped out here.
Could be dead.
Oh, I think he's considering deadly couple, right?
Yeah, that's what it is.
Let's say there's only two of those and Chris does have two.
Yeah, but Chris does not have it in hand here, so just going to kill the roaming throne
right and it gets exiled and he'll be taking four for the vibrance
Eduardo might just run out of Sunderflock here just to put a little more pressure here on Chris Larson
There's also winter night stories in hand so you can go
Sunderflock it doesn't pick up your vibrance then tap down to Sunderflock to play winter night stories
I mean, this is a four man of five five.
You draw a bunch of cards.
Larsen is down to 10, right?
And then if you have a way to get that excruciator off the
battlefield, you can just swing in for nine.
Get you down to one.
And he's got a bounce off at least.
Right.
I only think of bounce off on his own creature.
Right.
I mean, this is a four man of five five.
You draw a bunch of cards.
Right. I only think of bounce off on his own creature.
Right.
Turns out it has another mind.
Yeah, you can interact here.
That would not be lethal, though.
Like, would Larson have the ability to...
Like, he has a reef, right?
Yeah, he does.
Yeah, but I might not do your harvester.
It still wouldn't be enough, though.
Right.
Sorry, these...
Well, this one doesn't really matter.
You can't get it back.
Let's see.
No, yeah, I've covered it.
Cover up.
This is that pit that we talked about before.
Taking expensive cards out of Chris Larson's grave.
Just in case of collect evidence on deadly cover-up.
That's what Carson does want a sweeper, okay?
Finds a bitter triumph, okay?
So that is a way to get Sunderflock off the battlefield here.
Is it better to stock up and bitter triumph here,
or is it better just to windmill that excruciator on the battlefield?
Right. I mean, if you stock up and find another bitter triumph, right?
You can certainly pitch the requiting hacks,
maybe cast both and then just
Eduardo would have no board here.
And if you look at his hand,
I mean, he doesn't actually have any pressure, right?
It's not at all.
It's four lands and a bounce off.
Gosh, and he's completely tapped out right now too.
So the bounce off would not be available.
This would be the window.
But if you miss,
Yeah, it feels like the riskiest line here.
Yeah, it feels like the riskiest line might be
to just play the excruciator.
I think stock up.
is something Chris Larson might be interested in.
He would need to hit stock up land.
Landbidder Triumph.
Bidder Triumph land, I'm gonna say.
To kill both, yes.
But if he kills the Sunderflock,
that is a three turn clock.
Like, that would buy him a lot of time.
He did find a deadly cover up.
Ooh, okay, that gets even more interesting.
And was that a superior Spider-Man, maybe?
And to play around bounce off, if you have a removal spell, you might want to cast it right away.
Yes, though he didn't.
He didn't, okay. I guess getting the Sunderflock bounce off isn't too bad because then you replay it and then you play the deadly cover up.
Yeah, come up.
So attack.
Attack.
Yeah.
That's what he might have in here.
I don't believe going to one is where I'm going.
We're winning line, yeah.
You don't want to go to one against a deck with four copies of vibrance.
So since he drew the Spider-Man, is he just going to discard the demon now?
He can or the Requiting Hex.
That's the other option, because if Eduardo just plays a two-man and plays this turn,
you can still get it with the deadly cover.
But actually does go for this part of the Excruciator.
And with Eduardo drawing another land here, he's just like,
I need to just keep putting pressure on the life total.
It's pretty clear you didn't have cover up last turn.
I really hope you didn't find it with this stock up.
But we know that he did and he does replay it so.
Alright, so Chris Larson will stabilize here at the end of the way.
Eduardo's on all ends. He is on all ends.
So Chris Larson going to fire off this deadly cover up.
Kind of hold his breath here and let it rip. There it goes.
Absolutely. Oh, and he has enough in there.
Eduardo not happy about this.
And now you can use this to exile all the vibrance is most likely
so you don't get burned out.
That's right. He's at six.
I'm going to guess you're not getting these so.
Now deadly cover up yes does have the option.
You can choose a card in the graveyard and look through the graveyard, look through the library and get all copies of that card and remove it from the game.
What does Eduardo have going on his side?
A bunch of lands.
Does he have any value lands?
He does have a core amount of monastery in play. That's what he fetched previously and he's gonna have to use it now
There are all the vibrances
There's pretty sure it's playing for pretty important
card. That is not a good sign for you.
Who likes your kids?
That's reasonable. If the half-holder...
I guess wistfulness would be a lethal threat.
Yeah, wistfulness would certainly be fine here.
But his other creatures aren't. Yeah, at least not on their own.
This roaming throne is a thing.
any creature would be good here at least a 2 turn clock outside of his two
drops
here
whoa oh the top it's whistfulness okay perfect draw that is gonna get some of
these lands out of his right absolutely this can produce blue holy
smoke so that's the one I mean that's probably the best draw here so now
whistleness draw to discard one if you find something like a winter night
stories who wow wow okay but that is a lethal threat now Chris Larsen does have
a restless grief that he can use to activate and block if he can't find
anything he also has a superior spider-man right in his hand an
And the excruciator managed to stay in the garden.
And excruciator.
To trade.
Oh, and he actually just topped that one here as well.
So he can just hardcast it if he wants.
And then save perhaps the Spider-Man
to copy something else in the graveyard.
Holy smokes.
So now he's trying.
It's interesting, because he went from thinking,
how can I not die?
I think he's actually thinking about if I excruciate her and I can get a reef hit in like could I close this game out right?
Oh, absolutely
I mean that is absolutely something that can happen here and the nice thing Ashley the fact that Chris Larson has the requiting hex is pretty big
If Eduardo can it plays a two-drop or something that would give you a way to gain life
Yeah, that's true right, but if Eduardo here finds bounce off. It's to get to get the excruciator
It would be game
Is there a backstop?
Eduardo has two draws here to find it.
Yeah, where he can find stories.
Sunderflock is one of course.
Sunderflock off the top that would return.
The excruciator to hand.
And he attacks for lethal.
The perfect.
Wow.
Holy smokes.
The rest of his hand was just all lands.
Yeah, it was.
I mean, that's the thing too, right?
You know, Eduardo did have a very timely draw there,
But he also drew a ton of cards and with that had a bunch of lands as well.
So, you know, it's kind of those things where yeah,
he was likely to draw some action there.
But of course, extremely well timed there.
Wow. His draw steps for
whistfulness into Thunderflock. Now there was some other stuff.
There's some lands in between. Yeah.
I don't want to downplay it too much.
But if you're sitting in Larson's seat, you got to be like,
you got to be kidding me. Right. Yeah.
Oh my God. Oh, no.
Oh, God. At least we still have more fun.
Yeah, I would guess. Elemental, please.
All right, Chris Larson on the play this time has the nice, cheap interactive spell here for the Ashling that Eduardo has in hand.
You can also lead out with a deceit here, but actually chooses not to, thinking what's
the worst thing Eduardo can do on turn two?
Play an elemental and you do have the removal effect for that this turn.
Now Eduardo has the seat in hand but doesn't actually have the black mana to actually
use the kind of the thoughtsies effect on the card.
Yeah, actually Eduardo choosing to go for the evoke on whistfulness instead of playing
a two-man elemental there, which is kind of the typical play pattern.
But when you play against a deck with four copies of Requiting Hex in the main,
you have to think it's very likely that they had it.
He just carded a Sunderflock there as well.
Now the deceit comes in.
Oh, wow. And does not find a land off the...
Whoa!
I think they get hard.
Yeah.
All spells.
All spells. No double green here to get a land with the Vibrance either.
You might want to be interested in actually just taking the Ashling to prevent Eduardo from drawing lands.
I think it's not fucking out of the board, in the way of Spectrum.
That's fine.
It's just the deck.
What do you expect?
It's not even all elementals.
This one will get there.
Chris says, really?
And Eduardo says, well, I am playing elementals.
If you're going to deceit me, what did you think you were going to see?
It's elementals.
And Chris Larson does have Superior Spider-Man here.
can play the seat for blue, blue, black, black next turn, if you like, and yeah,
it's like you have so much action, I'm just going to take whatever it is you can
actually play next turn, and that's just the ash lane. That's right. Now we know
that Eduardo can start using the evocability here to at least do some
things. Yeah, winter night stories did not find a land, so man, found all the
lands in the previous game, played a whistfulness, engine for turn, and failed
to find a land and he can't actually evoke no and and here we go I this is this is going
to be a fully kicked the seat here with the superior spider-man oh wistfulness might be
better actually yeah 4-4 he's thinking yeah because you can choose that or the or the
the seat but he wants the cards here he has another one here he might get that
to see it after all right Eduardo needs a land oh it's a thundering fall
that is brutal there's gonna be a land there too yeah so Chris Larson's plan B
coming into effect here the superior spider-man elemental beatdown package
just what he drew up I mean Chris Larson has already found some ridiculous
ways to win in the top eight so this one it seems a little more normal and that
spider-man doesn't get thunder flock now right yeah right yes their element
kind of funny he's gonna chip in for four here we go to see take your best
car basically just take any type of interactive spell you might have in
hand and right now vibrance doesn't deal with these cards roaming throne is the
only thing that can even block so yeah so you take the roaming throne and as
if as it is a 4-4 anything else Eduardo plays can't actually block these
4-4s quite well okay can you go double vibrance surprise yeah land so you
could go double vibrance if you really wanted to kill one of the 4-4s there's
There's the seat but I don't think you're at that point right now so yeah
He might be interested in just kind of playing some defense here killing one of these. Oh, no, he's bouncing. Excuse me
Yeah, yeah, but oh is he gonna bounce it and then the seat
Another to see oh just bounce both. Well, you were right though Paul. Yeah playing defense, but I kept up
But Lars is gonna get it again. You did right
if he wants the roaming throw.
Could take Ashling or a deceit.
Yeah, this is just delaying the issue.
But Eduardo just wanting to do anything he can just to continue
try to try to hit his land.
How does it work if I take this and play this and play this?
You get both.
It's always if you think elemental.
That is hilarious.
He's actually considering going for the roaming throne.
And then on the following turn, copying the deceit to go to turn himself into a
Demir excruciator elementals back.
Yeah, the problem, I mean, there are already two deceits in the yard.
So like, right, but doesn't really solve a problem.
But yeah, but getting a four for war two creature is quite nice.
It's better.
He's going to keep it simple and go for it.
I'm just going to take one of the cards in your hand.
I'll take the wind gun.
Okay.
Alright, so if Eduardo draws a land, I mean that does give him a 4-4 in play and some
life to gain.
That isn't a pepland.
Alright, so he has one play.
It's just play out the vibrance.
I mean, alternatively, you could just kill the superior Spider-Man, but then all
All you would have is a Sunderflock in your hand.
Yeah, really tough spot here for Eduardo.
Yeah, it's not supposed to be very good.
I don't know why I got it there.
It looks very bad out of context, yeah.
That was a little weird.
Larson found his superior Spider-Man over in the graveyard,
but it was supposed to be bounced to hand.
Right, right, right.
So he grabbed it.
Oh, he's just getting a land here.
OK.
He drew one.
Play it.
Oh, right.
Yes, because he knows about the second Spider-Man.
right. There's a vibrates now. How many cards? Not really as bad. Yeah. But if Larsen's just
interested in getting some power and toughness going, he can still do it. Yeah. Interesting
play there by Guardo. You would still just get a 4 for you. I mean, Guardo's had 18,
I suppose. He's not quite dead just yet here. Chris Larsen has winter knight stories,
has a lot of action in hand as well.
This is just a really, really tough fight here.
Chris Larson might be looking to cast the stalk up, he just drew.
Maybe he finds another intimidation tactics,
perhaps another copy of the seat.
It goes for winter night stories here instead.
So you're playing my deck.
Likely discarding Harvester of miseries
Or a couple of copies of the required hex that he has in hand.
Yeah, two of the three.
Larson knows about this under flock and the Fibrins, but not the breeding pool.
Did not find a land here possibly.
Harvester of Misery in the yard.
Oh, really?
Who's got seven spells in hand now?
What it seems like.
Now he's loading up a stock up here.
Once a land for sure, oh and there's a deceit there as well, but can't fire that off, so it might be deceit land
As the cards that Christopher Larson chooses to keep here
Still no intimidation tactics, right?
All right, 14, yeah.
Attack for four.
Oh, OK.
Seven cards go.
It was excruciator land.
OK.
He got excru- and he played the restless reef out of his hand.
So six cards.
There are seven cards in hand, all spells.
I'm going to go back up for 14.
OK.
The life of the Maddox.
I don't know what to do.
I'm writing up five minutes, three to the face.
I don't know if your life matters.
It's more matterable, I suspect at least.
Oh yeah, the Fundering Falls is already in one of the Great's lands now.
Big Dragonland.
I know, yeah.
It was embarrassing.
Alright, here you go.
This is just looking so tough for Eduardo.
Just can't get much going.
No.
Chris Larson is just up on so many cards, right?
So many of the seeds, right?
All of the seeds and, you know,
Guardo's Elemental is kind of betraying him here with the Superior Spider-Man on Chris Larson's side.
Flambrader is the discard there.
Now, while his hand does have a lot more action in it, finally.
It does, but now, I mean, Chris Larson is at 17 life. He's got a ton of mana available.
It's not going to take much for Chris Larson to actually go for the combo at some point here.
Oh, yeah, that's much better.
Yeah, do this. Perhaps a discard the excruciator, play Spider-Man maybe.
That seems to be the excruciator.
And it's like, how can you actually kill me from this spot?
So we got six cards left.
Six cards left on both sides, and Chris Larson does have an insatiable avarice in hand.
He doesn't have the land drop to give here though, does he?
He has a multiversal passage in hand.
But six cards left. Remember, there's also a Restless Reef, and yeah, I don't want you to sanderflock me.
I just want to keep the board as clear as possible. Eduardo, you need to have bounce off to deal with the Restless Reef.
That is the only instant speed interaction that Eduardo has.
And that doesn't deal with either of the two attackers that he's got.
You can take free, go to the 14, and I'm at 16.
What am I doing? Should I keep the super nice antenna up?
I don't know, I don't know.
Alert to my library. Wow.
Not great! And he has seen enough. That is game number two going to Christopher Larsen as he picks that one up.
He really just overwhelmed Eduardo with value there. The deceit after deceit after deceit really got the job done.
the superior Spider-Man's just doing so much work in this matchup.
You know, Eduardo has to be kind of careful with when he kind of evokes out his elementals
because at any given point, Chris Larson can just play the Spider-Man and just kind
of take the cards out of Eduardo's hand.
So again, this matchup just seems kind of rough just from a strategic standpoint, but it's
still 1-1, so it can go any direction.
That's right.
And we're going to come back right after a short break and find out exactly what
direction it goes in our first semi-final match.
We'll be back with more right after this.
And welcome back to Carvage here of Pro Tour, Lauren Eclips, I'm Marshall Cycliff, I'm with
Paul Cheehan and we are well and truly into our top eight here on Sunday.
We are watching our first semi-final match.
This is between Eduardo Sajgulik and Christopher Larson.
They have split the first two games.
Of course, we're playing best three out of five
here in the top eight.
And that means that the players have now
got a chance to consult their sideboards,
and they're going to be playing post-board games
for the rest of the way out.
Very difficult to predict this matchup.
Paul, these games have played out.
The first two were very different from one another.
And it's kind of hard to say any anything to grab on to for our viewers about how it may go for the subsequent games here.
I mean, I think things will improve pretty decently here for Eduardo's side. You have a lot of those under flocks, which are not very effective in this matchup.
They just don't do a lot. And Christopher Larson actually has the ability to kind of shut down the cost reduction because he has so much removal in his deck.
So I imagine those are those those get boarded out soul guide Lantern is a card that gets brought in by Eduardo Sagiclet
Which is gonna be very good at breaking up any superior spider-man nonsense
So if Christopher Larsen wants to win with the excruciators
He's gonna be half he's gonna be mindful of soul guide Lantern and be looking to maybe just hard cast excruciators instead
By the way, he's staring at a soul guide Lantern right now as it turns out. Oh
Yeah, and spider sense can't counter creatures
but you can counter the triggerability of the seat.
So the seat gets evoked here,
and you don't get to look at my hand.
I see. So you let the triggerability
that says sacrifice this thing,
that one gets to stay around.
Right.
But you look at my hand one.
That would be bad.
If you misclick there.
Yeah.
Flambrader is the follow up.
Yeah.
Very powerful ramp spell.
Already see two sideboard cards here out of Eduardo
and the spider sense and the soul guy Lantern.
There's an Unagi of Kyoshi Island as well in his hand.
Very difficult to kill threat, especially
against the Demir deck.
Better triumph, better pay Ward 4.
Chris Larson does have the cheap interaction here.
Does have the ability to use Requiring Hex on the smoke
braider.
Eduardo, however, really wants land number 4 here
to be able to play out that roaming throne in hand.
We're going to go for an upkeep for equiting Hex here.
Kind of interesting for Larsen, his postboard plan here,
especially now, heavily on the control side.
He's got two removal spells and a sweeper.
Yeah, I mean, there's two more shoots,
the sheriffs that come in out of the sideboard,
and also two copies of duress to help fight
through whatever counter magic Eduardo might have.
And look at this, yeah.
Both were equiting Hex and actually found targets for both.
That's a card that can get awkward late in the game.
It's just so important for those flamethrowers to stay on the battlefield, but in this field, it's not easy.
Everybody is prepared to deal with Badger Mill Club, so on the same token, everybody was also prepared for a turn-through flamethrower.
Insatiable Averus is one of the cards that you get access to because this deck is monoblack in nature.
It isn't literally, but it's Landsar.
Alright, finds a land here, though, gets the roaming throne in play.
Now Chris Larson, however, does have a deadly cover up.
Does he want to just use it here just to kill the one creature?
Also has better triumph to kill it, but I believe he has the ability to collect evidence and remove all roaming thrones.
He does. Yeah, there's a deceiving the yard at the least.
Oh yeah, and he's going to want to get rid of all of the ones in Eduardo's deck.
Doesn't have any in hand.
So this was this one?
See him. I'm definitely destroying this one.
I don't see him recollecting this at the others.
He says, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and collect yeah killing the throne seems nice
It's one of the more annoying creatures to deal with and now he gets to take a look at the hand here
Still a solid grip of cards here from it from Eduardo
You have the wistfulness and you have the a nap. Unagi, but he does not have to worry about double triggers from the roaming throughout
As Ken do you mind if I shuffle he was like no you shuffle shovel the whole thing and it took a shuffle
Not really what I meant.
So Eduardo would just love to probably just maybe find an untapped land here just get that wistfulness and play
You're good with these cards by the way
Yeah, we'll knock you off the fence.
Yeah, we'll go through.
It's a final hand, but it is a tapway here.
It's a prop.
I'm just going for the winter night stories here instead.
Ooh, that's it.
Ooh, another winter night stories.
And a deceit in some lands.
Right?
The seat does look like it would be pretty nice,
but doesn't have the ability, can he cast it? Oh, does also have a pit of offerings in hand.
But this is tough because every creature is good. So, oh, and it does enter cap though,
so you can't play at this turn, but every creature is good. So it's like, what do you want to
discard, right? It's like, right, I wanted, like every single one just gives you so much value.
Figured now the whistle this is
Just a six five and it does draw you live
Okay, this card to the seat here the deceits the winter night they have to be here because this is
Yeah, because it's because of the colors
Larson right points out that if the seats already blue and black, right?
And remove the deceit also makes it so all right
Land off the top means that doomsday excruciators gonna hit the battlefield here. Is there a restless reef in play I
Don't think so I don't believe so but there was an insatiable avarice. I believe
Yeah, there is there is one in hand here
Yeah, now the pressure is on that wistfulness not looking so great anymore
Wow tough spot I will not have to
Blue. Not have two blue for this one. I would like to play a five mana six five. This is where I'm at. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. If you pay two blue, you have to draw the two. But all these options, all these lands have the option to tap for colorless as well. Draw an extra card.
You don't have a Relsis, do you?
You don't have a Relsis.
Does have an insatiable avarice.
I will give the thing a stock up.
A stock up no longer needed.
I think he's going to wait until the final turn to fire off that avarice if he needs.
Right, that's a lot of mana. You don't want to give Eduardo any extra things.
Yeah, there is the unagi, but if you play the unagi, I think you have to draw extra cards
You do that is like if you play it now and the excruciator draws Christopher Larson an extra card then Eduardo would draw two cards
So that's kind of dead. Yeah
Wow, there are instances where this card is good, but I think this excruciator is just going to get it done with the
It is I mean Eduardo look down at wistfulness and unagi and is like, what am I doing? Yeah, I
Mean he's playing the tactics like kid you can you just play out to an agi here?
Don't think he can afford to even do that four cards. Is this four cards left? Yeah, it's four. Yeah, it's two two for Larson
So Chris just wants to see the hand make sure the coast is clear
You can target your opponent with insatiable avarice there Eduardo doesn't have anything that has hasten is that exactly he'll draw
The last card for the turn and then and then he'll be that on the following turns exactly so he can just fire it off
I guess I guess I'll play you knocky
No, no, no, no, it does cost
serpent but yeah
None of these do anything your
Naughty is it is literally gonna have just dead to turn yeah, there is no roaming throne
You can even just keep the excretion or back the block. Yeah, you need to do anything with it
Chris Larsen just wondering should I wait to do it on my turn exactly or give you the full grip of cards
Is there a world where you can somehow play?
Yeah.
Are they all the vibrances, for example?
Is there something weird that can happen here?
Yeah, I guess you just wait.
You just say go.
But then what if Eduardo draws a counterspell
for the insatiable avarice?
If he draws a counterspell, you draw your two cards
for the turn.
Eduardo draws.
Maybe that gives you time to play a bunch of creatures.
Yeah, I hear you.
I mean, Christopher Larson is very, very much ahead, but it actually does just the way here.
It kind of interesting.
Because half he... okay, he drew...
Also, Eduardo's at five, so he actually just did attack here.
Oh, sure.
I just have you dead next turn, no matter what.
So he can kill him in the air or not?
There's multiple routes to victory here.
That's better, because he can't draw a counterspawn and a removal sprite.
Yeah, you draw two and have a choice.
You can run out to the seat here first, if you'd like.
Yeah, and this is...
But this is why Christopher Plano this way is he has, he has to see it just to be extra
sure because there is one other card.
He has every single base covered as Christopher Larson.
He gets to look at the hand and that was the Stainful Stroke and...
I mean there was a glimmer of hope there for Eduardo right?
If Larson had no cards left in his hands, he needed to have insatiable avarice as
the last card.
Holy smokes, that was another close one.
I like that demon once it comes out, like everything.
The game, it's like,
all right, two games to one now for Christopher Larson.
He is one game away from a seat in the finals.
Christopher Larson does have a shoot the sheriff here.
Eduardo, just going, please, can I just have one of my two man
of creatures survive just one time?
has both flame braider and ashling as an option
It does need to find land number three actually once again
There's no killing it immediately the mercenaries
Good does Eduardo find a land here
That's question number one right if he does then you can just play out flame
braider plus land and try to set up well set up for a turn oh it does okay all
right more no couldn't see it making us nervous here right intimidation tactics
we'll take the best card out of the hand here there's a roaming thrown in two
copies of vibrance but no land can't play the roaming thrown next turn
Technically but but the issue is if you take a vibrance Christopher Eduardo would still be able to play the other one
The reason he can say that is because he certainly would use it had he had it
No, anyways, if he had a removal spell he would kill the flamethrower take the roaming throne, right?
It would be very easy.
That's what he would do.
The fact that he's tanking, Eduardo
can surmise that there is, in fact,
no removal spell here from Christopher Larson.
These two players, they both have a flair for the dramatic.
They're both just really fun to watch.
This is a dream matchup.
Testing must be really fun.
It's all I'm going to say.
Yeah.
He does have a land to play here.
and then you have to turn back.
So if he plays the vibrance here and did find a land actually,
so you can actually, if you play the land,
just play the roaming throne first, right?
Maybe set up for a double trigger on the following turn
off the vibrance if you'd like.
And we are still two turns away.
We are two turns away from deadly cover up, right?
Chris Lawson is only on three lands.
But he's just going for the vibrance,
getting the value immediately.
Yeah, he was talking about maybe I
could try to string something together here.
But boy, it's got to be tempting
because the vibrance gets you the land too.
Right.
It kind of just solves your problems.
It isn't aiming the absolute highest that you could go,
but.
But Aurora in the tank here.
He really is thinking it over.
Yeah, OK, going for the vibrance.
It's just guaranteeing value.
Take three.
Some pressure, get whatever value land I might like.
You could just get a surveil land here, right?
Because you're not playing anything else this turn anyways.
I don't know if we're at
Corey Mountain Monastery territory yet.
And there's nothing too relevant in the graveyard here.
So I don't think he wants to go get the land
that removes cards out of the graveyard.
Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Eduardo gets the thundering falls,
tries to smooth out his draws here,
as that is going to be his land drop for the turn.
And Christopher Larson right now,
nothing for next turn, just the winter night stories.
That would be a very poorly timed removal spell.
I'll hit the fire now.
The very, very next level.
Oh no, another deem in there.
Well, I guess one can go away.
Would love to find a rash here.
The fouls that were quite... Oh, two required Xs.
Okay, gonna fire one off, surely, on the Flame Raider.
Funny enough, just to turn late. Big difference, though.
Christopher Larson does have a superior Spider-Man in hand, so you can play that if you want.
Copy that excruciator if he needs.
Elemental.
Oh, is that another Vibrance? Did he just find another Vibrance here?
That seems to be the case.
I mean, that's a lot of damage, right?
If you play that, Larson down to 10 life here.
Larson doesn't have a sweeper.
Puts him down to two.
Then any additional vibrances becomes a lethal vibrance.
Granted, there's one egg's out.
So there's only one vibrance left in the deck.
But of course, then bounce off also becomes an out-to-victory
as you can just pick up your vibrance
and then deal three damage.
Yeah, Larson doesn't have a sweeper right now.
He does have superior Spider-Man.
But boy, it being a 4-4 makes a big difference here.
Even if it copies a doomsday excretiator,
we still have to trade for vibrance.
Deadly cover up.
Deadly cover up would be nice.
And that is another land.
Yeah, I figured.
Yeah.
So six each.
OK, six each.
But this would just trade.
And Larson doesn't have a backup here, right?
No, he has the rest.
The reef.
Oh, reef, there he is.
But Larson's at 10.
So this is going to be a close one.
Yeah, can't play out the winter night stories anymore now with the restless reef in play here
The only play Eduardo has is just running out roaming throne and attacking with both creatures
And then Larsen trades goes to six there is a lethal attack though with the roaming throne
So if Larsen just activates with the restless grief Eduardo will still have one card left
He will that will not be enough can't do that for the win here
So Larson still needs to find a way to deal with at least one of these threats
But he does have the ability to just hardcast actually doing the excruciator
But it's a watery graven hand. So if you cast it, he's gonna go to four
And one of the four four still gets in for the win
So he needs to find a swamp untapped land or a sweeper deadly cover-up right or a spot removal spell
There's a lot of good cards here for Christopher Larson
untapped land
Sweeper removal spell.
Bitter triumph.
Superior Spider-Man.
Deceit.
Lots of good cards here for Chris Larsen.
This is close.
Another Shockland or Arrested Screef.
Those would be some pretty bad draws.
But even if he does, Eduardo still could be live to some of those.
Especially if this is just an untapped land.
Yeah, absolutely.
Bounce off for the win.
Speed. It's just one.
This gives him hope. He has a blocker.
Okay, he has a blocker, can Eduardo find a bounce off here?
Bounce off, something, some way to get that thing out of the way.
By the way, you can just cast Winter Night Stories here
and just go for the win, right?
Oh yeah.
Because the rest of the screen is going to go off anyways.
Might as well draw the cards out and find an answer
to go for the win here.
Do you have a Vibrance left in your deck?
Do you have a bounce off?
Deceit good enough?
Don't think there's much else I can do.
Deceit would also work?
Yeah?
Lots of outs here for Eduardo.
He's got four cards left.
It is library.
All right.
This does have your color.
What is left?
I thank you for that reminder.
Just being super careful here with the mana.
By keeping up two blue, you can play this seat.
I definitely need red, red, blue, blue, right?
He needs red, red for vibrance.
Vibrance for red, red because that would also be lethal.
Vibrance.
Bounce off.
Bounce off?
Those are the free cards.
That's it.
So we came up with two, Eduardo.
It is very rare that you cast my games after.
You could also draw Ashling.
And if the last card's bounced off,
that would also work if you played it.
All right, here we go.
Oh, he's gonna keep him face up.
Oh, what else?
Oh, there's just C.
That is the one he needed.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Game five.
Game five.
And I told you, these guys had a flair
for the dramatic of course.
Woo!
Number five on, unbelievable.
That was the last card too.
That was the last card.
Oh, what a game.
I mean, look, when you play the excruciator,
it kind of forces your hand.
Eduardo goes, all right, let's go for it.
Let's hope I have it out.
I mean, he had a lot of draws.
He had a lot of outs.
What a game.
Dress on turn on here for the person.
All right, lots of counter magic here.
Holy smokes.
It takes the spider sense.
They know how to press their shoulder.
They sure do.
Chris Larson was kind of hoping that maybe
Eduardo had a two-man creature here.
He's got that shoot the sheriff.
I can thank him later, maybe.
We might actually just see a turn three
insatiable avarice just to draw some cards here
from Chris Larson.
Good.
I start here.
Noggy off the top, starting town.
It's a little bit slow though.
Okay, keeps up, shoot the sheriff.
Yeah, ideally for Larsen,
Eduardo would find Ashlyn or something like that.
Absolutely.
Flambrader probably would be
the best case for Christopher.
And the thing is, there's not really another good play here
if you're Eduardo, right? Just looking at his hand.
his hand you can't just info stroke something next turn anyways right yeah
actually rummage something away yeah alternatively you can also just get a
land with the vibrance I suppose oh if you think I mean Chris Larson has at
least six removal spells that he could know better nine removal spells that he
can cast from this point so if you want to just strand the two mana that
Chris Larson has up maybe just go for a different play here than just running
the two drops and Larson has insatiable avarice here too so he can reload yeah
all right very nice Eduardo 21 sorry it takes a pain from the start of the
house yeah so now Eduardo will get one of his many utility lands
probably something up okay yeah when I play GPS I was just looking at the top
card yeah I did it I just got to see yeah it was like you're cheating I'm
like it's one I should have checked I should have checked
this is matter that my my card my my lover is shovel I have nothing on the
well like that yeah all right here Christopher Larson almost certainly gonna
fire off this insatiable avarice here right just cards roll this is painful
though you do take five damage here with the watery grave but this does gas
you up and Eduardo has no pressure cards great collection of cards there
found a superior Spider-Man and a deceit back up to the full seven here for
Larson yeah and now that he's tapped out he might be interested in playing out
a two-drop no just drawing more cards here just wants to be
beneficent so what are the stories but now the coast is clear here for Chris
Larson to run out the seat see what Eduardo is working with here there's
also superior spider-man which you could cast but copying a vibrance isn't
particularly strong. Might take one of the counter spells or the Unagi.
The last time we saw Unagi it was arguably a liability but looks a lot
better here. Yeah, but can't play it next turn. So you could play the spider,
so if you take the disdainful stroke now, right, and the next turn you play the
Spider-Man popping with the seed, then you could get you Nugget. But of course we
also know that Eduardo has the pit of offerings which he could use to exhaust
of features in Graveyard.
And Larson knows that, too, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Many considerations here for Larson.
Definitely not straightforward at this point in the game.
Yeah.
Run out to the seat.
Keep up the shoot to sheriff here.
Tough spot.
It's like, you have to just kind of imagine,
this is really tough because there's
seven cards in Eduardo's hand.
How do you see this game playing out?
There's lots of different directions this game can go.
Do you think this is going to be one of those games
where that Unagi actually matters?
Or is it going to be one of those games
where if I enact my game plan and just get that excruciator
and play it, will I just win the game from that spot?
He decided to play a tapped reef,
so he has effectively tapped out this turn,
but he didn't and taken his day for a stroke third ball.
Yeah, OK.
So likely to go for Spider-Man on deceit next turn.
right. And try to take away that unagi at the least. Okay so not keeping up
shoot the sheriff this turn. Right he played a tap reef instead. I suppose I
suppose he thinks if he goes for it Eduardo can maybe just save the creature
anyways with the bounce off. So might as well save maybe this is a good
opportunity to kind of preserve your life total and play a land tapped.
Uh, that the seat for sure.
Yeah.
Right.
And Eduardo knows exactly what's up.
Yeah.
Eduardo doesn't really have any recursion here, so.
Just want to make sure that he can tap for all the colors.
So I'm not copying fling greater.
Definitely won't be doing that.
It's more important that I prevent.
You thinking about collect evidence or something?
Yeah.
Okay, so that cuts off that line of play now from Larsen.
Okay, that is a deadly cover up, but don't think you want to use it just for Nashling
here.
Kind of want that Unaji to hit the battlefield before you fire it off.
So he's just going to shoot the sheriff.
Eduardo letting it resolve, but hey, Chris can just play it a little bit slow here.
Still no pressure just yet.
Now if you're on Eduardo's side, you pass and go,
hey, well, I know you know I have it,
but what are you going to do to stop it, right?
Or do you just run out a wistfulness here,
develop your board, still have a six-five.
Now with this reef and play,
Chris Larson does have the ability here
to just play out a doomsday excruciator next turn
he wants and Chris has nearly perfect information here. Yeah, know that the
Unagi is a card that Eduardo has and has the bounce off as well. I mean it gets a
little awkward here if Eduardo decides to go for an argue right he just goes
land go and then Chris just goes Tuesday excruciating so if you really want to
feel like that is something if you feel like that is likely to happen then
perhaps it's better to draw your cards now and just play the wistfulness
this turn. It also interacts better with the excruciator. Right. Being sixth power. This is
yeah I feel like if Eduardo could see his hand that would be right here. He is having to try
to figure out what the chances are of these different things happening. There's no excruciators in
the yard. Yeah this is a really tough spot for Eduardo. This is going to be one of the most
important turns of this entire match. Two go to 18. What five drop he chooses to play this
So is it go?
Oh, and he passed the turn back.
He says go.
This is not going to work out well for Eduardo.
We talked about this in the prior game.
Once the demons on the battlefield,
if you do play the Unagi, you are forced to draw the X.
So when for it, he took the demon does.
He took the disdainful strokes.
He's like, all right, let's go for this.
And he's going to play out the Unagi.
He's playing out the Unagi, and he has a bounce off.
Can Eduardo Saggoli get 15 points of damage in here?
Remember, there is a reef for Larsen also, so that will be one turn fewer.
Right, and you can bounce off the reef, but if you bounce off the reef, you can't even attack this turn.
Right.
That's a vibrance that is a way to finish off the excruciator.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Okay, he's going for the bounce off. A cat for five puts you to 10.
Play vibrance.
Which does actually produce lethal right right actually you can oh no you don't want to play whistle on this because then you
Wait just no blue no blue. Okay. I was like you just playing a six five
Okay
So now there's no more pressure here coming in and there's that restless grief that can go off
Next turn here. It just needs to get in once after that
One attack and bounce off is the only card
that Eduardo has. How can Eduardo possibly come up with 10 damage from this board?
He needs to draw another bounce off, right? Yeah, it's got to be another bounce off and
then a vibrance to get some damage in. But even then, I don't know if it's enough,
Chris Larson has more threats in hand here. Soul Guide Lantern, that's a redraw.
Yeah, that is. I mean, he has to go for it. There's also a thundering fold so you can
can surveil, see if you do have a bounce up, but you're just trying to survive at that
point.
At that point, are you even putting pressure on Chris Larson?
Larson also has the excruciator that he could replay if he just needed a blocker, but really
he needs to get that reef in there the one time.
Yeah, because if you play Soul Guy Lantern in Sac to draw a card, you won't have the
mana to even cast the Vibrance this turn.
Right.
That's just no creature.
And the reef is that, like, next turn lethal.
Right.
If he gets his mana sideways, you're just dead.
Exactly.
manna for the bounce off as well. So that's three hole manna. Oh man. It's really feeling
like there's no way out here for Eduardo. This is game five of our first semifinal. And as
we've seen time and time again, once doomsday excruciator hits the battlefield, every single
turn has an amplified importance. Okay. And then now he surveilled that away. Now
Now we're going to cycle away this old guy lantern here.
What is he doing?
I guess he's just looking.
Oh, he's just dead then, right?
Yeah, those are two lands in the vibrance.
Yeah, if there's no bounce off then all,
then he's just going to get hit by the restless reef
and that's going to leave him with no cards left.
He's going to pass the turn.
I mean, so I think he's just posturing at this point.
Yes, certainly Chris Larson.
I mean, given all the digging,
He was given all the digging.
You have to think Eduardo Saggoli likely doesn't have it here.
He's looking to see if there's a deceit somewhere
because he just drew Superior Spider-Man.
Yeah. I mean, Chris Larson is at 7 life.
Is there another way to win? That's what Chris Larson's thinking.
If he has a bounce off, is there a better option for me this turn?
Because you have the ability here to play,
I don't know if you played a land drop,
but you could even play two Superior Spider-Man's.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't think he's played a land yet.
So that would give you two different blockers, right?
So this is the big decision if Chris Larson activates the restless reef then it will win this match
Right if his hand was vibrance and bounce off Chris Larson would die
Yes, that would be exactly seven. That's how he loses
Now he doesn't know it but Eduardo does not have the bounce off. Is he going to go for the
Reef? He's not. He's going to go for the double superior Spider-Man. Can he pay not blue for
these? Yes he can. So two four fours. Yeah, he names dinosaur. Passes the turn back. But Eduardo
had nothing left right oh he didn't I saw two lands in a vibrance yeah so just
playing it safe works he wants the label of dinosaur and that's gonna do it
Christopher Larsen finishes the job and beats Eduardo Sajgali to advance to
the finals back and forth I mean we had Eduardo you know doomsday
to excruciate are also going to both directions, right?
Chris Larson played excruciating in the previous game
and Eduardo's still finding a way to win
with just a couple of cars left in his deck.
So yeah, I mean, just some incredible back and forth.
And I will say, you know,
whatever you want to say about this excruciator deck,
it makes for some entertaining matches.
It really does.
It just seems to amplify everything once that thing hits.
It's like, especially with that reef, you know,
that reef really does apply maximum pressure
because it doesn't even need to get through, right?
He just needs to get turned sideways and all of a sudden your opponent has like a turn maybe to kill you
And they have to get through a demon as well
Really impressive stuff from Christopher Larson who advances to the finals and who is with Cedric right now
The big day in Chris Larson huge win another five game match against Eduardo. Tell me about that one
Win is sweet Eduardo is another friend of mine and like it's just I have never played against it
mental deck and I got my team came and gave me some good advice. I took the advice and
I threw it out of the window and I did something else. That's not entirely true but some of
it is. The mental deck is like rough, man, it does things. Those new cards are really
good but in the end when they have six cards left in the library it is hard for
them to get there. So going five games against Eduardo was just for everyone around
here getting the full experience but for me to sit around here and just play magic
It's definitely for me.
And this is great.
Well, we're loving watching you play.
You've got one more in front of you.
You win that one.
You're a pro tour champion.
You've made some deep runs before.
How are you feeling right now having the finals?
I feel ecstatic.
I'm excited.
And I'm just happy to be out playing Magic.
I just love this thing.
Holy, I love this thing.
Well, there are a few people who love Magic more than Chris.
Chris, we're looking forward to watching you the finals.
Good luck, my friend.
Thank you very much, Cedric.
Give me a hug.
Man, I want one of those Chris Larson hugs.
I mean, that's a real hug right there.
Chris Larson takes our first final seat.
We're going to take a short break when we come back.
We'll be filling the other seat of Blader.
May 8th through 10th and Chiba Japan May 29th through the 31st.
More details including how to register are coming soon.
Can't make it to the event?
Individual organizers will be live streaming the event on their channels with dedicated
broadcast teams and commentary.
Need a TLDR?
Coverage highlights will be featured on magic.gg and PlayMTG social channels and
you can see the full Magic Spotlight schedule for 2026 over on magic.gg slash spotlight.
It's one of the best days of the year.
That is Pro Tour Sunday here in Richmond, Virginia for Pro Tour Lorwin E. Clips.
We are working our way through our top 8.
We have one finalist, but we need to find him and opponent.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the news.
That's Maribeth Oldley, your host for the weekend alongside Monty Davoudi.
How are you liking our top 8 so far, Monty?
It's been a lot of fun.
I think the big thing for me is coming into the day, I really had no idea how
it was going to play out.
I think it's a top eight full of surprises.
The one thing I expected was we had two players
playing Badger Molle Cup in the top eight.
Right.
I expected them to suffer.
They both lost in the quarterfinals.
That made sense.
After that, it really felt like anyone's game.
Ooh, excellent.
Let's take a look at our bracket to remind people
where we've been so far today
and where we have yet to go on our way
towards that trophy match.
Check it out.
Christopher Larson has made himself our first finalist,
but he needs somebody to play, of course,
and you'll find that opponent either in Tony Portalon or Marco Balacca, but who will it
be?
We will find out.
Oh, so very shortly before we do, though, if you've been watching tournament coverage
here all weekend long, we've been seeing a lot of sweet decks, not only of course
in our top eight, but out in the field to and money.
You've got some deck lists for us to watch.
Yeah, I don't know if it's possible for standard to be too diverse, but this
format is certainly making a case for itself because we have so many viable
And there is no consensus on which one is the best.
Andy Garcia Romo is its spellementals.
This deck still has the best constructed winrate of the weekend.
They absolutely figured out the Badger Mall Cup matchups against all the other anti-cub
decks.
Who knows, but it's still a really powerful deck.
Next up, Julianne Henri.
Now, this is the SoulTie Elementals deck that is almost a bit of a scam package, featuring
cars like Not Dead After All and Undying Malice, and of course, four full copies of Jean-Emmanuel
de Croix.
This build of Elementals is really cool and quite explosive.
Next, Pettisaharic, really a throwback build of Demir midrange.
You can see builds like this going all the way back two and a half years at this
point, but they still have the tools to get the job done, deep cavern bat, very powerful,
kaito, incredibly powerful, and of course in daring curiosity ensuring you've never run out of cards.
And finally, we're going to take a look at Arna who should bet. Is it Blink, one of the builds
that team handshake Moxfield brought this weekend? Just another variation of Dex trying
to take full advantage of one of them. Riddler trying to ramp it out early using a card like
actually or just work it into play and then keep it with splash portal.
There really is so much you can do and standard,
and I don't think even by the end of this weekend,
we are going to have anywhere close to it.
And sense the sensor on what is the right thing to be doing.
Hey, that's an exciting place to be money next weekend.
What are you going to sleep up? So.
Reanimation.
How did that do this weekend?
I don't like when I mean, apparently.
It isn't actually my favorite deck too, so I'm right there. I'll be there losing right
so on side. I'll see you in the O3 bracket. Okay, I'll see you there. Let's set up our
second semi-final. Everybody, Christopher Larsen needs an opponent. Who is it going
to be? Tony Portalon or Marco Balaca. This is a team of harmonizer, Jess Guy, control,
matchup. Tony Portalon has just been blowing doors off of magic coverage the past year.
He's third in our 2025 Player of the Year race, has two pro tour top eights, lost
season alone in top 16 at World Championship 31. Marco Balacca on the other hand has also
been no stranger to the Pro Tour. He played all of them last season, made day two, two
out of three of those events. His best finish was 11 and five at Pro Tour Ether Drift, made
his goal this weekend of 10 match wins to re-qualify. He certainly did that and more.
Let's take a look at 20 Portalons at road here to the top eight on the Sunday stage.
He actually beat Marco in round number 13. So this is a bit of a grudge match here
for Marco 17 and two in standard with one five. Let's take a look at Marco's journey here
because it's a bit of a different one, but it was pretty outstanding on day one.
Yeah, it started out absolutely fantastic. And then you could see in day two is when
the wheels started falling off after that 10 Oh start, a loss in draft right at the
ship initially. And then it was loser winning it, loser winning it, loser winning it.
we've seen that story time and time again. You have to make sure the mental is not going with the losses.
And fortunately for Marco was able to get that midnight hour matching his Andy Garcia Romo and get himself into the top eight.
There's a look at the players and their journey here to the top eight. Now tell me about this matchup, Manny.
All right. So we're going to start with team a harmonizer from Tony and team Sanctum of all.
This is a really cool deck that they brought and it is essentially a combo deck
This is teamwork twin. You're trying to warp out a
Harmonizer and then you cast you play a land put the landfall trigger on the stack ideally a fetch land and fable passage
Fetch it put the trigger on the staff pull bore your harmonizer and that's 28 damage
Take you look at the sideboard all you're doing is just trying to shore up some of your weaknesses a card like
This Syrac goes a long way when it comes to these control matchups.
On the other side, we have Marco's build of Jeff Sky Control.
The name of the game is Keep the Board Clear.
Make sure that your opponent is not able to resolve anything or not able to keep a feature
on the battlefield, and then eventually grind them out with Jeff Sky Revelation.
In the sideboard, more high-impact parts, but the biggest weakness coming out of
this chest pad control build when it comes to this matchup is there isn't that much
MCC removal. Get lost will have to do a lot of heavy lifting because cards like
Lightning Pillars just don't deal enough damage to get rid of the harmonizer. So
which of these players do you like better here? Who's gonna be other finalists? I
think it's a really close matchup but I do think I want to still give the
slightest of edges to Tony. Okay well wait for this everybody here you go.
Well, Tony Portolan live in harmony or a Marko blocker take control. We're about to find out
I'm gonna send it on over to Marshall and Paul
Hi friends
I was just reading from your joke there. Okay that
We'll work on I think it was supposed to be Marshall and Paul, but they heard that pun from me, and they're like, yeah
I'm out. I'm out sending the other two
So, yeah.
Well, good friends.
Ailee learning alongside Corey Balmiser to bring you
the second semi-final.
It is Tony Portolan representing Team Sanctum Ball up against Marco Bellacca
who has had one hell of a pro tour thus far.
One of them is going to face Christopher Larsen.
Any predictions, Corey?
You know, I mean, Monty was saying slight advantage to Tony
and Tony did win in the Swiss here,
but the matchup just doesn't seem that great to me.
I would say slight advantage to Marco as there is just so much interaction and then the fact
that Marco gets to represent a threat on Tony's end step.
If Marco doesn't have to, you know, get lost on a harmonizer, those kind of things and
can just just guy revelation on end step.
I would think that kind of dynamic favors the control deck.
Let's see if that is indeed how things play out here as play gets underway here
in semifinals.
to Chris Larson is waiting to see who are these players he's going to face off against if you're Chris. Who does he want to face?
I would think Christopher would probably want to play against control more as a yeah, I don't know that's close to because the two pre board games we saw with Marco and
Salvatto that look brutal too. So I think it is pretty close probably still Marco but you never know. All right. I also think it's very fitting that Christopher goes to the finals of a pro tour
waiting for a dinosaur label. I hope he got it. I hope he got it too. And framed it. That's gonna
just live in my brain for now. Did he get his dinosaur label? We'll never know. Maybe we'll
find out. Next on Bro-Drew at Lower Winning Clips. Tony Portolan gets a turnback now. He is checking
a bunch of things in the yard. Escape tunnels are plenty. Just to get all the colors he needs
to pull off his combo. On the other side of things, Marco just contends to wait
We're turning to do something of importance and count for it. No doubt exactly. So Tony is going to be doing a lot of setup in this games of stock ups
Consult the star charts those kind of things and then it's really going to be
It's going to be interesting to see if Marco tries to counter all of those card draw spells
And we're just save as much interaction as possible for the big turns
Earth bender ascension on the stack no more lies says no, thanks
I don't want you getting benefits off of just playing lands
so
Turn passing back now and we're gonna rest in peace. So no land shenanigans from the graveyard
Largely
I do nothing spell in this matchup exactly. It's going to shut down ice till explorer bringing lands from the graveyard back
But that is really it. I would imagine that is probably a card that gets signed out. Oh, yeah
post board games. I bet that's the first thing he looks at when he goes to
sideboard. Just reminded that this is best three out of five so the first two
games the players don't get to sideboard in anything and then come game three
they'll get access to those cards. I think that is advantage to Tony by the way.
The two pre-board games here you know Marco has to leave in some less than
ideal cards like resting piece for next game as well. Even Spellsnare
Tony's deck very much goes from three and one that has the dangerous spot
So spell snare is not that good except against the card consult the star charts where it's excellent
Yeah, but outside of that there's still gonna be some cards that Margot just doesn't really want like this is you're playing again up
Against a air quote creature combo deck at this team or harmonizer
But it's not the sense where you play a creature say go so the day of judgments the ultima's those are also bad
So that's already six cards that are just really bad day of judgment rest in peace ultimate
Yep. As it stands, Dave Judgement doesn't really affect Tony because he'll just get the Fable Passage back.
He can crack that in response. Ultima, however, will result in another land on Fable Passage because it can't be cracked.
Will result in the land not coming back once it's Earthbended. Just because it says End of Turn.
No dies effects, no exiles effects, nothing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just get the trigger.
Bender Ascension gets a trigger off of the land fetched from Fable Passage as well as Fable Passage returning to the battlefield
So on to three now
Earthbender Ascension doing a great job of ramping here the Earthbender Ascension
Even though it's not putting any counters on something right now
Just getting that large enough that if you kind of play any threat, it's going to be impactful. Oh, yeah
Yeah, this is kind of like plan B or C from Tony if he doesn't get the combo guy
then you know bossing say earth banded land try and get a large attacker from
that avenue yeah stuck up on the stack does Marco allow it
it's got lightning helix in hand I saw an ultima consult the star charts and
then two lands it looks like so relatively unexciting here so this
looks like this is just Marco trying to play this so there's less
opportunities for Tony to have a spell snare but ooh already has it. Nice. Oh this feels so
good when you're able to do that. I mean spell snaring a four drop there essentially is unreal
value so huge exchange and that may be the one big reason where I know you are a huge fan of that
being the best card advantage spell in standard that might be the one reason why I give it back
to stock up as so many spell snares are around that it's just really brutal when you get this exchange
free spell snare i would agree if vaginal cub ever leaves the format and two drops on the be all
and end all you know then all the star charts might be able to run free again absolutely
but either way now marco's hand is just helix couple lands ultima that feels horrible here
from this situation. So, Marco very much just wants to find more card advantage, and then into
counterspell. So, Stock up here would be the best draw, another consult.
Elegant Parler, does he like that? No, get that David Judgment out of there, doesn't need another
board wipe. And I think I might have saw a get lost as well there from Marco, so the ability to
do a little bit more defending.
But we've seen Bangs bossing say be just OK here
in the previous matches.
But this feels like the type of match
that it feels pretty strong.
Every single time that Tony just doesn't have anything to do,
has an extra format of laying around.
Yeah, put a couple of counters on the land
and either start attacking in there
or do this fabled passage trick.
Yeah, I like targeting the fabled passage.
Because if there is a removal spell,
then you just sacrifice it in response.
Exactly.
life gained from Marco's side of things and you just keep playing this you know
pressure game where eventually Marco will be forced to answer it yes he's happy to
get on to one life but you know he can't just ignore what it is that bossing say
and now earth bender sentient are doing exactly it is the classic when you're
playing a combo deck you distract them with something that is you know gaining
some minor exactly and then when they do go to fully deal with it then
you're like okay well now I have the combo and you're able to pick up the win
with the full bore harmonizer combo and now I think Marco has you know Helix it's
like you really want to Helix a 3-3 fabled passage it's not going well for
you doesn't feel great normally Helixing a three toughness creature that's you
know an amazing exchange but so Tony had another consideration there for
another landscape earth bent ultimately went for fabled passage do you think
He was trying to stagger it in such a way that the fabled passage left behind would give
it forepower.
It was the classic, do I want to get aggressive or do I want to get value?
And Tony was waffling between that of like, all right, do I actually want to start getting
in there for three or do I want to have the ability to do this exchange which we just
saw and with perfect information how things worked out here, much better to do it
on the fabled passage.
So Lightning Helix not gaining any life there for Marco, Earthbender Ascension now proving to be quite a pesky enchantment on the board.
Yep, and of course the table passage still does get to come back even through a rest in peace just because of the templating on Earthbending.
Yep.
As it's when it goes to the graveyard, or Exile in case anyone is wondering.
It's pretty neat that it works around that.
Yeah, it does kind of seem like it would be like, all right, that would shut down Earthbending, but they definitely
didn't want the field ads from Earthbending if you lose your creature.
Yeah, and the limited format would be it.
Something like that, yeah.
It would have been way less fun if the lens you were using as your army just all went bye-bye.
Yeah.
And now just being able to do this bossing-say trick every single turn on fabled passes just seems like a great way to
to get all these basics out of your library.
And Tony does play a lot of them
and a lot of different kind of them.
Yeah.
And also, you know, every draw step
where he's not actually deploying anything else
to the board besides the land,
he just gets to sculpt and have far more resources,
card advantage, aplenty.
There's just got revelation in hand for Marko BTDubs.
Yeah. And the main phase consult the star charts
that felt like it either is Tony
wanting that to be perceived as bait
or it was indeed bait, like okay, you counter that
and maybe I go harmonizer full bore and win the game
or you think it's gonna be harmonizer full bore
so you let it resolve and maybe Tony didn't have anything.
That's kind of the mind games
and the questions that each player has to be asking themselves
when you play a sorcery speed instant like this.
Yes.
No answers in hand currently for,
from Marko I should say.
In terms of countering any spells, get lost, Jessica Revelation and the ultimate in hand.
Yeah, and the Revelation looks great. Top tech of land and you're going to be sitting pretty pretty going into the next turn to have some interaction.
Now Tony does have two spider sense in the main they can interact with.
But I think this is a spot for Marco where Marco is just like, yep, you have two of those in your deck.
I can't just be main phasing Jessica Revelation.
I think Marco has to just kind of concede that battle of just saying yep, if you have it at
Tony's end step
It's just gonna get countered because Marco goes for it in the main phase
You open the door for the harmonizer full board to just kill you out of nowhere
Table passage once again
Comes a 2-2 creature
So pretty productive turn there for Tony sculpting his hand finding all the odds
he needs like you mentioned the spider sense because it is getting into Jessica
revelation territory now and Tony will be well aware of that yeah and Tony it's
face-up now that you just took to you know it is as much as you know we can
see it and we're aware of it it's just as obvious to Tony that it's in hand no
real reason usually to shock that in but at the same time high-level
competitive magic at this levels. It could be well
shock it in any ways because this chip shot damage game
doesn't come into play that often. I mean, either way, you
slice it, Marcos did to 28 damage if it were to resolve so
that is factual. Wow. Okay, just to pass the turn, I would
assume a spider sense here. Yeah. No, thank you. So one
problem dealt with and no activation of bossing say or
anything from Tony I think that's kind of alluding to you know you're not
really wanting to sack too many fabled passages you do still need those when you
start to combo off so there's a point when you don't want to actually search
out all the lands in your deck for sure you need those multiple landfall triggers
thankfully though with airbending you know you are able to get a landfall
trigger off of that when it dies and comes back even if you felt true
So true. Yeah, but still need to and eight basics is the count three islands three mountains to for us.
It's got all the islands out and then on the forest so.
And this is pretty much double demonic tutor when you have this many lands in hand as you are just looking at so many cards and getting to pick your best two.
Hey, we do have a demonic.
Hey, nice.
Job whoever's working the cards in hand there
So what it feels like when you just have 10 when you're looking at the top 10 and we just saw another consult the star chart
That got fun. Yeah, so I mean that if you don't like those cards enough. I saw full bore in there as well
You just consult again. It's pretty clear
It's a hundred percent sure Margot doesn't have a spell snare you would have fired that off
Yeah, pretty clear
You don't have any other hard counter spell and Tony just got to this point in the game
Where the only real counter spells available for Marco are counter unless you pay three no more lies and
It's just not available as long as Tony just never fully taps out
And so if Tony is able to go for the combo with some counter spell backup
You know, he's free and clear to go into game number two here
Or even not even counter spell backup just the fact that if you have three lands available
Well that is kind of like counterspell backup.
Wistfulness.
Tony not wanting to put all his eggs in the one harmonizing basket, so.
And then of course, exiles first, so that rest in peace, technically exiled.
Very minor of course, I'm not gonna sum up.
I think he does keep his graveyard sideways.
I'm just saying whistledness exiles rest in peace not destroys it. Yes, so it should be with the other exile cards
Looks like we're gonna discard burst lightning instead of the land
But Cory my damage to the face
Yeah, yeah, not usually exactly what this this card doesn't go to the face very often it goes to a badger mole cub
And now there's a little bit of pressure from wistfulness. Nothing that is going to likely just solo the game here
But once again, it's one of those distractions. Yeah
Also another thing to put some counters on too, so
No attacks there from fabled passage. I think just to keep it back there
That was a consult the star charts that is an excellent draw and then as far as Tony's perspective
There's three cards that can counter that
the last spider sense and then two spell snares. I guess we saw one spell
snares as well so there's two cards that can counter this and Tony's seen a lot
of his deck already.
Now Tony asking what he's paid and how many cards are in hand here. Does he
want to do anything about this consult the star charts? Is he more concerned
about what Marco finds, decides, nope, I don't want you having access to options.
So spider sense it is.
And once again, we're, you can just really look at, like what Tony is thinking by the
amount of mana efficiency and how many lands are left on tap every time.
You'll notice the last couple of turns, Tony just conveniently hasn't used that last
three mana, because at this stage of the game, getting a big spell no more lies is
Usually leading to I made a mistake, you know if you have this many lands you just be patient and never run into that card
Marco doesn't have it, but Tony is doing an excellent job of playing around it if it was there absolutely
Sometimes you forget that it has the unless it's control pays three on there, but Tony certainly not doing that
And now we'll see if it's combo time
time, consult the star charts, or if it is just, all right, let's start bossing, say,
unfabled passage and attack for 11, you know, a lot. Yeah. And there's double bossing say,
so if you really want to get busy, you can either put all your eggs in one basket on
one fable passage, start going wide on separate islands. Really any avenue that
Tony takes all look excellent right now and look very painful for Marco. Exactly. Land for
turn, news of forest. Should be a trigger on earth bender ascension. Definitely should be for sure
something that you can miss. Yep. And we played the land no spells are cast so I would assume
There's a little problem there.
Oh my goodness.
Stuck up, burst lightning, land, lands, organizer.
At this stage of the game, consult the star charts, makes dig third time look like a cantra.
My goodness. And this is why I like it.
I don't think I've got access to all the cards.
There it is, one of the most iconic cards
and one of the most powerful cards in consult the star charts
just has extra flexibility, no real drawback
of having to actually have cards in the graveyard.
Really shows just how powerful this card is
when we look at an all star like that
and the impact it made on standard.
So the world is Tony's oyster at this point.
He's got all the pressure on the board.
He's got far more cards in hand than Marco.
Curious if he'll attempt to go for it here
or risk these creatures dying
if he's got the counterspell for an Armageddon or a Ultima.
Yeah, we're gonna go to game two shortly.
Yeah, and at this point with how many consult
the Starcharts we've had,
I mean, Tony's probably seen every card in his deck.
You know, the cards on the bottom
are probably in random order from consults and stockups.
So you got to think as long as there weren't
any mistakes made in selecting the cards out.
We should be ready to go here.
Cuckoo, cuckoo, combo time.
My thumb harmonized on the stack.
And now you can also just sacrifice this, come into play.
You can just target wistfulness.
You're first.
Double that power.
Yeah, double that.
Plus one, plus one counter.
And I think you're, you know, we still missed putting that counter on it.
Tony pointed at it, didn't do it, but didn't do it.
OK.
And remember, you know, I mean, this is a spot where these players
have played a good amount of magic today, but they've played a ton
of magic here throughout the weekend.
And then.
So now.
Eight sixteen.
So that's creating a lethal attacker there.
And then what Tony is almost assuredly gonna do is, you know, go full bore on the harmonizer as well.
Yeah.
To present maybe another lethal attacker or just back this one up.
All right, get lost.
Spellsner says no thanks.
And that is gonna do it.
Marco Balacca, not able to find an answer or multiple answers here.
Tony Portalon keeping an excellent control of his card draw.
or limiting the quadro, I should say,
from Marker's side of things.
So game two, no sideboarding.
Now Marco is on the play.
And I gotta say that looked pretty convincing.
That was just Tony surgically picking apart Marco
one turn at a time, playing around no more lies,
even though we didn't see it.
And probably could have went for it
and won a turn earlier, but just made sure
you always ask yourself the question,
like there's no pressure on me, how could I lose?
And it's overextending, tapping out,
getting your spell no more lies.
Instead, what's the risk is the question you ask yourself
in your brain of just waiting to go till the next turn.
And Tony had that risk-reward ratio going on in his head
and then took up or took down game number one.
Paid off for him big time there.
So, excellently navigated with the Croatian.
Marco Balaco on the other side of things
has two lands available to him.
No white just yet.
Let's see what Tony goes for on the turn 2 here. Nothing. Passes the turn back, ready to counter or whatever. Marco may attempt, but I think it's just going to be a lot of, oh no, land go.
I was going to say, you're pretty much a blue-white deck, so it's a big signal if you only have blue-red lands on your first two lands.
You know, so I was thinking like, God, this could easily be a hand where you don't have a white source, but I'm not far enough off the top.
We are playing magic here.
Yeah, that's relief for Marco.
Yeah, because I at least saw stockups do that or yeah,
get rest in peace down again.
But yeah, it's the second match.
So we're a second game, so we can't do anything about it right now.
If you draw it, you can't play it.
Yeah.
But if you have like stock up to play or something like,
I think I'd rather do that.
Even if you, I mean, Marco almost assuredly would have
eight cards in hand after that.
I'd rather stock up and discard rest in peace than play it.
been played, but it is not completely textless, and of course does do some good work against
Ice Tulip.
Well he's going to have to have an answer, or at least somewhere to interact with.
This creature on the board here, so might form a harmonizer, Sun's combo.
Believe it or not, you can just hard cast that one as well, and now look at the
situation that Marco is kind of in now by not stocking up last turn, now you have
to find your land drops, where if you stock up last turn,
maybe you go a land that you found off the stock up,
get lost on harmonizers, say go with a normalizer,
something available.
I think that was a bit of a risk for sure.
Because yeah, we see lightning helix get lost in hand.
There's a plethora of interaction,
but Marco's definitely prioritizing making land drops here,
which you definitely need to do from the control side.
I want to be behind in that department and he did miss a land rep says playing catch up here. I like a parlor
This game can just be okay. It could just be over right now
Marcos tapped out look at one card, but this was unfortunate. Yeah, just a dexterity area looks like we actually saw two
They resolve the talk of
So they know the bottom tree and everything else is minor things, you know, I've been playing at the prom tour
I've probably done this, you know, ten times.
Had opponents do it about ten times.
Just the moment your hands are shaking a little bit, you look, you see one extra card.
Usually easy fix, shuffle, any known information.
You keep those cards there, randomize the deck, and continue playing.
All that being said, all Tony really has to have here is like fabled passage plus full bore.
We go to game three?
Yeah.
another land in to exile there even just fable passage I think might be legal
lethal oh boy well let's just do that double double
she's Louise we're gonna need Riley's math on this one quick math there from
Tony as you get to double, double, double, double, four, so 64. Tony knows his multiplication,
his multiplication to four table for sure. All right, well, Marco will be a little relieved
here that now we get to go to the sideboard here. This is how the players have sideboarded.
So Tony took out Thunder magic three burst lightning into the flood more one seer and one full bore brought in
Suraki elusive hunter essence gather two spell pierce quantum riddler sand band shifting scandals at 10 times fast
Yeah, and song craft a mage. So definitely going more blue taking out red and some removal
So Tony's deck looks to be improving quite well
With that one. So yeah, it looks like some great changes for him
Let's see what Marco has leaned on here from the sideboard taken out a rest in peace
A braid two lightning helix two day of judgment two ultimates nice and brought in two Toshana's tide binders those be clutch one exercise
One the unagi of kiyoshi island two bazaar bounding spring and two voice of victory
Very importantly to note that that is one rest in peace coming out and one staying in and what that tells me is a large
Screaming I do not have enough cards to bring in I need to leave something in as we've seen how rest in pieces looked quite average
But that's the thing is you know
Tony you want to guess how many times Tony has played against a control deck and testing probably a good amount right yeah
How many times you think Marco has played against team or harmonizer and how prepared is their sideboard guy ready to go for this?
None because this deck did not exist and that is the big advantage that you gain from playing a brew like this
at the Pro Tour. Now there's risks of playing a brew like this at the Pro Tour. What if you're
wrong? Yeah. And all of a sudden you're playing a deck that might just be not up to the power
level. Yeah, we see a fair amount of extremely good brewers and players bring their, you
know, their pet deck or their creations to the Pro Tour this weekend and it hasn't
worked out for a lot of them. Surprisingly though, this is the Pro Tour of the brews.
Yeah. A lot of them did well. It's the established deck. The people that played
it's safe. Those are the people that actually got punished, which is kind of wild. Usually
do not see that very often at a standard pro tour. Stuck up attempted there by turning
portal on met with no more lies. And now Marco Balacca. Is he main phasing a consultant star
charts main phasing consult? And that is because of spell snare. You just have to
respect it. That exchange is so bad, but I'm going to feel like a broken record
Sanchez again. Marco could just die next turn. Sure could. The harmonizer full bore play,
but and if that is the case, then Tony is our second finalist. And that would be in quite
dramatic fashion. Let's see. Do we have a harmonizer? Yeah, you need harmonizer full bore and fable
passage. So it has to be about as perfect as possible. Doesn't look like it. You're
never starting with fable passage when you do that. But I mean, maybe Tony just goes
for the same kind of play of harmonizer, or this is the first game where a turn for ice to explorer looks excellent
Because you can also get back a fable passage untap blue in case you have
Or if you have another like a spell pier through something
Spells snare spider sins calm be used there's an into the flood wall. Yeah, and then the two
spell pierced that we brought in so
Two drops and expensive spells are not safe.
Looking at Marco's hand, I saw two just guy revelation,
lightning helix, two lands, and one other card.
None of those will counter anything.
Nope. You have to double spell here just to kill this guy.
Looks like an exercise.
Already find one? Okay.
That is able to deal with that straight away,
and that's great, but I still explore,
even if you exercise it now,
it's still like you're getting two for one because
Tony did get a free land drop, so
No, no way, it's powerful, right?
Not toughness
Oh, okay, absolutely, yeah, so
It would have to be able to do that either
If he did have two lightning healings, it would have to be those two
Yeah, there's just no way to kill the ice pill explorer
It just gets to hang
With the two mana removal spells you have in hand, that feels pretty bad
And now it looks like Marco is just leaning on the Corey Mountain Monastery at end step
or he doesn't have the exercise to be able to kill the creature that does get pumped if Tony goes for
The combo here how that's a sorcery
Exercise is a card that we haven't seen played a good chunk of time. Yeah, there's the
Helix to the harmonizer if you were to do that and then you can like try to
Do some damage to it
Yeah, absolutely anything's the moment. Yep, that is brutal. You really need it just get lost to be able to interact. So it's brutal to even have Helix in your deck. But I think that is just another product of Marco does not have enough cards to bring in.
Yeah, this is not a matchup. Like you said that people tested against because this deck was not a known quantity before this weekend. Exactly. Now Tony just getting two free land drops from the graveyard.
So in a sense, I still explore kind of already true three cards
Part is really phenomenal
Okay
Port not monastery on the end step
Anything Tony wants to do have time to respond right after the reveal right? Yeah, you can reveal and then I get the clarity back
Yes, you do
Okay, so I get the priority. After I see I can do something.
Well, after it's exiled?
No, no. It's exiled, it's fine. I want to do...
So the priority press is doing right?
One, two, three, four.
Yep, that's exactly how it is.
And now that you see the card and you get a little extra information,
you can then choose what to do.
I mean, Tony, realistically would be doing this no matter what you see,
But of course the tight technical play is just get the most information first
That gives you the ability to make the best possible choice you can have with your consult and that looked like a lot of goodies
Ailee was a lot of goodies. What are you taking out of that pilot?
Hey, I mean it's all contextual to the half, you know
If you don't have a harmonizer you take that if you don't have a full bore you take that
Yeah, and if you need more cards you take consult and there were also counter spells either way you slice it
But this matchup kind of seems like it's really bad for Marco where it seemed pretty close.
Yeah.
Kind of looking at the deck list.
I mean, yeah, Tony thought the first time they played yesterday that he got away with
it, you know, winning that 2-1, I think.
Yeah.
But yeah, it just seems like the removal just doesn't line up that great from the
just guy control side.
It seems like what you need to beat a deck like Harmonizer is something like a deck
That would be good against like to mere mid-range something where you have good cheap efficient removal for the creatures
But you can also present a threat. Yeah, like kaito. I mean it like kaito seems like a nightmare for Tony
And you know ironically that is the matchup that got him into the top eight against petter
Archives surveilling there for Marco
Five lands
and we get to go Jessica revelation you know with five mana available we know
the cost is relatively clear Tony doesn't and the one thing you don't want
to do is get hasty yeah and try to just go for it now but also if you're like
wow just guy revelation actually would interact with me next if I went for
it on the following turn then you're like okay let's do that before you
have just guy revelation mana available but let's say you have a spell pierce in
hand you're plenty fine one man it's a counter seven minutes spell exactly you'd
be plenty fine having a setup turn and then on the turn where Marco would have
seven mana then you go for something and have the spell pierce available type
thing turn passes back here to Tony after fetching his land milling earth
bend recension into the graveyard I still explore lives to fight another
turn. Does he get a friend?
Okay.
What was that?
That looked like Sandman.
Sandman?
Shifting Scoundrel.
Shifting Scoundrel.
Also another card.
Great against the Cubdex.
Yeah, this is a gigantic creature.
We haven't seen a lot of this card making an impact in standard
and it is just a one-off here in the sideboard for Tony,
but a lot of one-off creatures,
which is pretty interesting.
It's a lot of answers for different things
three one-off really spicy creatures
Songcraft image being one of them
I know what works in for three
He's three minutes, but he gets to stay
That's pretty good and also able to get a land and this card back from a great
Yeah, so basically that is a card that never dies. It has to be exiled so exercise is gonna actually find a grand target here
The best possible target
You would think
So it looks like we almost untapped there not
Wow doing that instead of activating quarry mountain monastery is very interesting when both players are at 20, you know
Like that's essentially
No, I don't think so.
Zero, really.
I think this is maybe some luck.
Yeah, it's really some luck.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have a shot for yourself.
So that's meaning, 70.
23 to 17.
Arts.
One tap.
Board white.
Board white fails, then exercise.
I wonder how many ounces Tony has to removal spells here.
It feels like we're starting with exercise,
and if there's any spell snare or something.
So it looks like we're doing uncounterable here to just deal with
Mr. Eyes Village allowing exercise to become uncounterable.
Yup.
Solid plan as, you know, that creature could definitely go the distance if left unchecked.
So while exercise seemed like a card that maybe doesn't have a lot of targets, this is a big one.
Yeah.
Big enough.
Yeah.
So shifting the scoundrel returns and target line caught from a grip to the battlefield tap.
That can be done at end step if there's nothing else to do. Just FYI.
Yeah, if it was indeed in the graveyard. Yes.
Yeah, that card's incredibly tough to kill if you're just playing. Yeah, non-XR removal.
Yes, exercised so no returning shenanigans to be had there, land go alright.
And now Tony has to know the information that well the most interaction that Marco
could have is a two-metre counter spell backed up with a spell snare so you
essentially think the best that Marco could do here to interact with what I'm
doing is like get lost spell snare or no more lies spell snare those aren't the
most difficult things to play around from Tony's deck when Tony has this much
mana available so this feels like this to get a turn job yeah he's on such a great
job you know navigating around these counterspells or even potential
counterspells from Marco yeah he just hasn't slipped up once yeah I'm the in
the one thing that Tony has just had a plethora of his time mm-hmm Marco has
Never put a threat on the table that has a tony in any kind of
You know stressful situation the inagi at kiyoshi island is something that seems like it would be very important or
Trying to resolve just guy revelation, but man in these post-bored games having to play through now
Six counter spells including spell peers, which is a one-man a way to deal with your seven-man a bomb that just feels
Like this is a really difficult matchup
I need one more, right?
I need one more, yep.
One more, are we bossing saying?
Looks like.
Yes, I need to pay.
Is that four lands for that?
Yep.
Let's see if Tony still wants to go for that.
Big thanks on this turn.
Okay, instead is wanting to keep
Okay, I think I need to see what's happening here Tony instead of bossing saying here is going harmonizer
Leaving three mana available to pay for no more lies one for full bore and one for spell snare
Is is what seems like basically checkmate. So we'll see if that's what Tony has
Any portal on seems to be just moments away from clinching a final spot here at
Pro Tour, more when he closed.
He's done it in spectacular fashion.
Yeah, just like everybody would be calling going into this Pro Tour,
you know, full bore and demir
excruciator being the backs in the finals, of course the staples of standards.
targeting I still explore to double the power there mill off the land there goes a quantum
riddler so that is a doubled one so he's got four power that's good oh it's double on the ice till
yeah okay two counters on that that is very much saying my ice or my harmonizer is not
getting in there but with ice kill explorer here you are able to have four
land drops so yeah two to four four to eight ages 16 16 to 32 without full
bore and this is having some mana available for presumably at least one
piece of interaction quite possibly my mind by possibly to with two blue
source it could be spelt snare and Pierce I think he's got all his bases
covered here. You haven't seen him go forward once without having a back up line.
Yeah, at least not in this matchup.
One, two, three, four, eight to 16.
And then with the fabled passage that is air bent, wow, you can actually get it to 64.
Because the fabled passage comes back and you get it on the land. So you can technically make
five land drops on this turn. My goodness. That is enough, I would say.
Just a 644 coming in three just got revelations in hand.
Nothing.
Of course, you still got to remember all your trigger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Still keep it clean.
I don't think Marker has anything to do.
About this enormous creature coming through.
This is a double check.
Make sure I have enough basics.
Double.
not search so this is just 32 and that is gonna do it Tony Bartalon picks up a
clean 3-0 here in our semi-finals we have our second finalist Christopher
Larson knows who he's facing it is none other than Tony Bartalon yeah wow what
an incredible finals here at the Pro Tour and we saw Marco just show the
hand of three just guy revelation Tony did have the one spider sense as well
there's one piece of interaction but Marco I don't have anything. I had 21 mana value worth of
spells and nothing to be able to cast. I mean it's super unfortunate for Marco you know he just
didn't have any real way to deal with you know instant speed threats like that because by the
time he gets to a boardwarp he's already dead so. It seemed like what you really need against
this combo deck in in particular and really every combo deck to beat them is pressure
Mixed with disruption. You can't really have one or the other as the deck's too fast and can beat pressure
Versus the deck is to resilient if you only have interaction
So I mean the deck just looks great and in this matchup as well like his pressure is Jessica revelation
And if he doesn't have a backup spell if hasn't got a land for it
Yeah, then he's just getting countered by spell pierce with now looking forward
You know there is a lot of interaction from Chris and there's pressure at least in the library
with the excursion. So this is going to be a great finals.
Can't wait for it, friends, but before we get there, let's hear from Tony.
He chatted to Cedric after his win.
Tony, last time we spoke, you said that this matchup was going to be more difficult
because they had interaction. You made it look pretty easy, my friend.
Yeah, it went 3-0 pretty easily. I think game 2 and game 3,
my opponent got a bit unlucky with the deck,
I think it's unfortunate with the control deck.
And even game one, I chained my cardrobes spells
while they couldn't resolve, like the one
when they tried to resolve it, I had a spell snare.
So yeah, so I think this version of the control deck
has a poorer matchup than, for example,
blue-white control with counter spells.
So yeah, I had a game plan, especially post-cyber games,
when I don't need to go for the combo,
just kill them with the creature on the board
and then play the harmonizer, and it went like that.
I'd say it went quite well.
So as you move on to the finals, you
could play against Christopher Larson, playing
the Mirrocks Crusader, or Eduardo Sajelic,
who is at Elementals.
If you could play against one, who would it want to be?
I played against both of them, Eduardo and Limited,
and Christopher in Constructed Day 1 against Christopher.
But I'm not sure.
I think the Elemental Dex is a bit easier match-up than the Demir one, but I'm rooting for any of them.
They're both great players and great people, so whoever is in the finals deserves it.
Well, you're a great player as well. We look forward to seeing you in the finals. Congratulations.
A deserving finalist indeed, it is Tony Portland up against Christopher Larson.
And the finals of Protor lore when eclipsed are up off to the break.
the
305 players now only to remain left in the tournament and it's finals time.
Welcome to the news that's Marie Bartholdi and Monty Bibby here with you for a
very exciting finals indeed. Let's take a look at our bracket and find out how
we wound up here on top eight Sunday here at Pro Tour or when Eclipse. Take
a look at all of the action that has already happened here in our top eight
today leading us to this finals over on the right side of your screen.
Christopher Larson up against Tony Portolan, two players who have a very
storied history here in Magic the Gathering, and it will become even more
storied for one of these players by the end of today.
Let's set up our finals match here in the building Pro Tour.
Lauren Eclipsed, it all comes down to this. The winner goes home with the
trophy and $50,000 as well of course as the title of champion and a
beautiful trophy it is indeed. Take a look at the two players who have
made our finals. Christopher Larson on the mere excruciator up against Tony
Portolan on teamer harmonizer. Christopher Larson has top eights at every
single kind of magic event you could imagine, including a top eight at pro
tour murders at Karlov Manor, where he came in third. He has 10 Grand Prix top
eights, including one win for an incredible run throughout his story career.
Tony Portolan as well has an incredible career. He was third in our 2025
player of the year race had two pro tour top eights last season alone starting off
this season with another one another great start for Tony Portolan let's take
a look to at Christopher Larson's road here to the top eight he had the most
difficult path of any of our contenders coming in and our eight seed he did
manage to six and no draft one six and form standard and yes played against
Tony Portolan in round number 12 where he lost so a bit of a grudge match
here for Christopher Larson in our finals. Let's take a look on the other side of
things. Tony Portolan, how did he get here, Monty? Okay, well he had a pretty
smooth day one, a 6-2 record, and then for day two he said, I don't really want
to do much losing. So he started off with five straight wins, picked up a loss to
Francisco Sanchez, who was our first player in the top eight, but then got
it done around 50. There's a look at the players and their road here to
the top eight, but what about the decks they've chosen for this tournament? How does it shake out
in our finals here, Monty? Okay, well this is two as different decks as you can get. They are both
delightfully weird, just different. Let's take a look by starting with Christopher Larson's build
of Demir Excruciator. This is a control deck with a combo finish. It has a lot of removal.
It's trying to get Doomsday Excruciator onto the battlefield by casting it, of course,
whether that involves casting it downright or getting it off the battlefield in a cheaty way
with Superior Spider-Man, but the name of the game is to doomsay both players and then mill your
opponent out with a carbon incisional avarice or restless reef. The matchup should be really
good for Christopher because he has a lot of instant speed interaction. On the other side,
we have Teamur Harmonizer. This is the sanctum of all deck that I've ever seen on
This is teamer twin. This is a deck that is trying to combo kill your opponent.
You have might form harmonizer. That is the key centerpiece of the stack.
The play pattern you'd like to do is warp the harmonizer, put a landfall trigger on
the stack, two ideally with stable passage, and then in response full
board it to hit your opponent for 28. The deck has a lot of tools around
this to interact and find and assemble your combo, but it can be weak to
and speed removal so that definitely gives the edge to Chris Larson.
Alright, thank you for that deck overview there, Moni, but what did the numbers say it's time to turn to the predictor one last time?
Alright, well, surprisingly or maybe not, depending on how you look at it, the predictor has been doing pretty great this weekend.
And we see six players are now out. We are down to two players and it's close, but it's not that close as we bring up the last two numbers.
Christopher Larson 56%, Tony Portilon 44%.
But I am going to be really honest,
it can go either way so easily.
All right, well, let's find out what happens.
It's time to crown a champion.
I'm going to pass it on over to Marshall and Paul.
Thank you, Mira.
Welcome back to the booth here.
It is time for the finals.
That's Paul Cheehan.
I'm Marshall Slechler.
Thank you so much for joining us.
And we've got a really interesting match up here.
These are not two decks that we had on our radar coming in to the weekend as ones that may find themselves in the final Demiric
Scroogeator in the hands of that man right there Christopher
Larson from Denmark is playing for Team Cosmos on the other side of the table team or Arminizer
Tony Poirot has decided to sleeve this one out. He's from Croatia playing for Team Sanctum of all
the trade park hug
I don't need to tell you that Larson is one of the most popular players on the Perotua
Everybody loves him. He's gotten the hugs from like every player he's played against.
At this point it's not even clear if he knows his opponent. He just starts things off with the hug.
Handshakes and hugs all around from Christopher Larson.
Hey, you made it to the finals of the pro tour. Great reason to be ecstatic right now.
But of course, one key match left to determine the champion.
Yeah, both of these gentlemen seem to have really enjoyed their run as well.
You know, it can be one of those things that it comes at you kind of fast, you know,
and maybe you're a little nervous and that kind of takes over and then you can
look back on it. But in this case, they both seem to be really having a good time.
And yeah, we've actually seen this on camera before.
It's a little bit of a weird interaction, Paul, that deceit there and the spider sense.
Tony Portolan keeping a hand with double earth bender ascension, no green source.
So can't play this out turn three so he doesn't have a whole lot going on here
And so if you're on Christopher Larson side he's like
No green source for Tony right now
So Tony can't actually go for the combo next turn the way that the combo works is you need to be able to warp in the
Might form harmonizer with a green mana then you play fabled passage into the full bore
So as is I think this could be an opportunity for Christopher Larson to fire off a card draw he's about here
And there it is. He gets a thumbs up from Tony.
You're almost certainly going to put that excruciator into the graveyard here. I think
it's going to be really tough in this matchup for Christopher to actually spend the full
six mana to get Doomsday excruciator in play without having any sort of disruption.
Once you get to that phase in the game, it's so likely that Tony is going to have
of the combo pieces in hand.
I think Christopher wants to get that cost reduction,
get Superior Spider-Man going.
I mean, is that happening right here, Paul?
He's going for it.
And he says it resolves.
So we have a Tuesday excruciated Spider-Man
on the battlefield.
That means that both players only have six-card libraries now.
Christopher Larson senses weakness.
No green mana at all from Tony Portolan.
No card draw spells here.
We have an excruciator in play.
And now both players with only six cards left
in their deck.
And look at Tony's hand.
He is not close to the combo.
I mean, is that game?
I know it's not literally, but from what we can see here,
how in the world.
And remember, Tony can put together absolutely absurd turns
where he does huge amounts of damage in one turn.
And that's also starting from nothing.
But he doesn't have the resources for that right now
and still no green mana.
Right.
Christopher Larson will be drawing a couple of cards.
He does have the insatiable average actually drew the second copy here of
average. Yeah. And it looked intimidation tactics.
I believe it's going to miss here. No actual targets. Like, wow,
this hand I am not scared of at all.
So the satiable average, as you can see,
you can pay three black mana to have target player draw three cards.
Tony on six. I mean, that's how we do it.
That's nice, Tony said you don't need to write it down, I'll just keep it face up for you for now.
Right, but it is really dangerous here to just run it out this turn, right?
Give your opponent three cards, they can potentially kill you.
But, if Chris is drawing two cards every turn and Tony is sitting at 20 life,
you can use the insatiable avarice also as a burn spell, right?
If it doesn't deck your opponent, three hits from the excruciator.
It's only a 4-4, though, right?
Excuse me, you're right.
It is only a 4-4, so that doesn't quite get it done.
That is a normal game plan, though.
6-12, 18 plus the 3.
Starting town.
Go.
Chris?
But I mean, Larson, kind of not
going to have a choice at some point here, right?
Because he only has two more turns left here.
Can attack for 4.
Can wait till the next turn, actually.
Actually.
and go double avarice here for the win, right?
Oh, okay, that would just end the game on the spot.
Yeah, as long as he has the lands.
Does he have another land?
No.
Does he have another?
I like to go to end step.
Okay.
He wants to go to end step here.
Yeah.
He's got eight cards in hand, it looks like.
And this card here, probably just pitching stock up.
Control three.
Oh!
He's just firing it off now.
Oh, okay, I've missed that.
Okay, one, two.
So this is his way of saying, in case I don't draw the land.
Right.
But he is saying, Tony, you must kill me here.
Right.
But Chris Larson also has the better triumph here
to break apart the combo too.
So he needs to fire this off now so he can guarantee
the kill next turn.
Yeah, and he didn't even, Tony wasn't even
able to put together the combo, even if he had it.
Then Christopher Larson had the answer.
And that is game number one.
Very quickly, a combo kill.
really turn four. That was it. Christopher Larson got to use
Superior Spider-Man.
Yeah, just went for it off of a stumbling manna. Yeah, start
there from Tony. Yeah, I think again, that is that was such a
kind of heads up maneuver there from from Chris from Christopher
Larson, recognizing that there wasn't a green source in place.
We didn't have to be scared of the combo. So he could just
for it there, right? You know, it's easy to just kind of play that control game, sculpt
the perfect hand, but sometimes you have to pick your spots. You have to know when you
can go for it. That was the perfect time. Wow. It has to feel so good for Larson to,
I mean, you feel like you just got spotted a game. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, but you know
But this is why we have best of five.
We saw just to start the entire tournament.
Christopher Larson lost in approximately five seconds
in game one.
And here we are in the finals with him being up a game.
So it can go any direction here.
Tony Portolan with a bit of a rough hand there
the first time around.
You can see the players are just shuffling.
They're not sideboarding yet.
We're going to play best three out of five games here.
In fact, we do that for all of Top 8 Sunday
and certainly for the final.
And that means that this game is not
going to include sideboards.
Now, any games that we play after this one will.
Right.
Look at that trophy too, Paul.
Yeah, we saw one at the World Championship.
Yeah, that one was a little taller with the gold,
and this one still.
It is nice though.
It is gorgeous.
Can you imagine having one of those things at your house?
I can't, Marshall, I dreamed about it,
but at this point, I'm gonna keep it real.
Now you're here with me now.
Yeah, we're, I'm your second place prize.
We can watch a lot of people win these trophies.
That's right.
Yeah, both of our players, really interesting.
They have different personality types.
Tony is a little more chill
and Chris is pretty out there,
but they're very similar people.
It's driving me crazy,
on the car to life.
Both all about their family.
They talked about that in interviews
over the course of the weekend.
Yeah.
Christopher Larson pulled the ultimate move
and said, you know, I think I'm
going to put my magic career on hold after this one.
One last ride and now he finds himself in the final.
Yeah, he's got a couple of young kids.
If you want to give yourself a good shot to do well,
you just go, this might be my last tournament.
I think I told you before, I said the same thing.
I was talking to Eduardo the other day,
and he said, you know what?
I'm just here to have some fun.
Fun all the way into the top four of Pro Tour Richmond.
Yeah, we'll see you at all the other PTs at Rordo.
Yeah, that looks like a mulligan here, Chris.
Yeah, I don't care.
I always look.
Yeah, I always look, but I like a good sweat.
No.
We are talking about.
I was looking, even if I mulligan,
and it was like all the lens of the, I'm like, eh, it's fine.
Yeah, it's the same.
And if I look at it, it's not the, I'm like, heck, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, most people approach it the opposite way.
I think it's ex, I've done polls on this before, Mark.
It is basically 50-50.
People that look and people who don't.
And most of the people who look also know
that it doesn't matter.
It's just kind of, you just get to see.
I don't trust my final brain.
Yeah, like I can tell you it doesn't matter.
And like, I believe Chris when he says it's like,
I'm good?
I don't trust him.
All lands, my opponents just like,
especially in a spot like this, right?
We're in the finals here.
There was no looking.
But I feel like for Tony Portolan,
I feel like this was just kind of a long time coming, right?
He has been absolutely crushing the pro tour,
nearly the player of the year in 2025.
And here he finally is in the finals.
The shot becoming a PT champ.
Yeah, it's funny because, you know, we say your players
like knocking at the door right there.
He's just been kicking down the door for over a year.
Let me in.
Right.
Tony's one of the best limited players on the pro tour,
and that has helped propel him to the success these have.
It is actually unbelievable what his limited record is.
It's nearly 80% with a fairly large sample size.
He has a deep, deep understanding of limited,
which gives you a huge edge in this event.
Larson has kept his just on the decision about what he wants to put on the bottom.
Oh, he is going to five here.
Oh, sorry, I thought he said I'm keeping us.
Oh, and he did look.
I had four lamps to demons.
Ah, that's mine.
I think we all...
A drone spot.
That's mine.
We did ask our players before the tournament started about if they had any advice for trying
to qualify for the first pro tour and Tony said learn limited.
Yeah.
That is where you can probably get one of the biggest edges here.
It's a lot more difficult to just truly come up with a deck that completely takes over
a field.
It can happen.
And when you do, it feels great.
lessons was fantastic at the world championship.
These elemental decks have been doing very, very well.
But oftentimes, you know, there's two or three well-known decks.
Everybody kind of knows how to pilot them.
And so it's harder to get a bigger edge there.
Whereas in limited, there are oftentimes even these top pros.
Sometimes they focus a little too much and constructed.
Maybe get a little rundown from their teammates.
Do like 10 drafts.
And that's basically all they have.
Larson said, don't forget to drink water when we use it.
Well, it would have to be a glassy.
Tony's the one who brought his water bottle,
so I guess he took the advice.
Chris has got two down there, two bottles.
Oh, there he is.
So he's taking his own advice, too.
He's also a very good limited player.
All right, so he has kept five.
It is actually important to know what the bottle is.
And where?
You're basically tutoring.
I mean, that is funny.
If he ends up getting an excruciator down,
those are cars that are very relevant.
Is he allowed to take notes on what they are?
Probably.
And like.
OK, that's a one lander here.
Uh-oh.
Can Chris Larson go back to back lands here
to fire up the seat and to stock up?
Or we're going to have?
No.
Hex, and this happens when you mold it to five.
Sometimes you have to be willing to take
some extra risk and Larson certainly willing to do that here.
Oh, and this is a stock up here.
This is going to resolve and yeah, I mean, these first two
games fairly one sided affairs here at this point.
I mean, even if Christopher Larson has to draw land here.
Fire up that the seed find a blue source cast stock up.
You can see why he kept that five.
It has the tools, it just, you know, and interestingly,
it has the tools to win, right?
Like that's, that is a five that you're gonna wanna keep,
but you do recognize that a good percentage of the time
you just don't draw lands and that's, and it's over.
A card like stuck up is exactly what you're like.
Oh, flips it straight up,
and that is land number two for Lars and Ezy K.
I mean, it's basically do or die there, right?
If you don't find a land there,
it's gonna be so, so tough here,
but Tony Portolan does have two card draw effects here
consult the star charts and stock up Chris Larson will be taking one of these
You think if Larson flip like a demon there. He just concedes or very close. He did it. He did that in the quarters, right?
Okay, all right gotta be looking for more card draw ice till explorers doesn't need more lands. Oh
This is not a strong. Okay. There is a stock up there at the very end
Okay, but like and get it going he's kind of just not doing anything sure well
You know, he's just trying to kind of put together the combo pieces here
He does have the full bore already and he does have the escape tunnel in hand
So really just looking for a might form harmonizer if he can find it
Larson at a cool 20 and the nice thing too is he does have spells snare in his hand
And most of the ways to kill might form harmonizer in all of standard all are to mana effects
We're looking at better triumph get lost cards of that nature
So, you know now that Tony is able to kind of build out more of his mana base
He can go might form harmonizer
He can go full board and keep up spell center and get the fetch land to protect the harmonizer at least against a singular copy of better triumph
All right. Oh, the sock above the top. Chris Larson did play out a deceit. That was his
draw, but the action continues here for Tony Portolan finds an ice till explorer here that
will get him some value. If you can get some lands in the graveyard still needs to find
might form harmonizer to end this game as quickly as he can. It was an incredibly stocked up
graveyard there for Portal on. Look at that. Four of them in there. Is that all four and a consult the
star chart? Yeah. Card selection city for Portal on. He hasn't done anything to, you know, on board yet,
but like you said, he can win out of nowhere with this deck. It plays out. In fact, in some ways
these decks are similar in the sense that they both have a game plan that could win
with a big combo available so I think with this amount of mana available Tony can possibly just
cast consult the star charts not for the kicked value which you is something that you would be
interested in doing because all he's looking for is might form harmonizer here right all right and
now he's tapped out so he is definitely going to run out this consult if he finds a might form
harmonizer he will have the win next turn you you warp into harmonizer cast full board that's
7 power play escape tunnel sack escape tunnel get a land 28 damage coming in you
can see where it is can you find it he's looking for harmonizer burst lightning
there it is and that's the harmonizer right there and I think he's just gonna
show it to him yeah because you can see the rest of his hand over on the side
with the full board there and as long as he has the escape tunnel that's
going to be GG. So two quick games to start things off here in the finals. Really not a
lot of interaction so far. Hopefully we'll get something a little bit better there as
they split the first two games and are going to now consult their sideboards.
Yeah, I mean, this is just part of the game, right? Sometimes you're going to have to
mull again. You're going to have to keep some subpar hands, especially when you go
to five. So you're just going to have games like this. But the nice thing is
we are playing best of five. We have sideboarded games. There's going to be a lot more
interaction from both sides here as well. So excited to see what these players can cook up.
Yeah, it's interesting because do you consider this like a combo mirror in the sense of
they kind of go past each other or is there more interaction available between these two?
Well, Christopher Larson just has, I think the big edge Christopher Larson has are those four
copies of deceit, right? Because he can interact with the combo because it's a creature-based
combo. Not only does he have the four copies of deceit, he also has all those bitter
triumphs. So, which is why I think a lot of people think he has a small edge. And
then after sideboard, all of a sudden you get to bring in more disruption. You get
to bring in two copies of Shoot the Sheriff. You get to bring in potentially
four copies of the rest to kind of get the counterspells, get some other
card draws spells. So, I feel like, you know, if you're going into this matchup
you have to like Chris Larsen. I think both players came into this event
looking to beat on the Badger Mall Cup decks. And guess what? They did a
great job of doing so. But now, in this head-to-head, you have to like the
excruciator deck just a little bit. That's right. Great stuff from the feature, hopefully
upcoming as we've got round games 2, 3, and maybe excuse me, 3, 4, maybe 5 for you here
from Pro Tour Sunday. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll have
our post board games for you. Don't go anywhere.
We'll be right back with the
next episode. Welcome back to
coverage here Pro Tour lower
way eclipse for this Virginia.
I'm Marshall Cycliff. I'm with
Paul Chiang. And if you're just
joining us, you're very good
timing. We are in the finals.
We had two quick games. Very
one sided games if we're
honest out of the first, but
they split them. So that
means that we're going to
available to them. We've got Christopher Larson on the left there versus Tony Portawan on the right
to experience accomplished players.
What are they gonna arm ourselves for this thing? Probably go to the restroom.
I'm guessing it's a little bit of a rest and break here. Now we get to see Mason Clark and
of 10 and Grace, do you battle here?
Yeah, if you take a look at those two gentlemen there,
they are our cards in hand spotters.
They have a very difficult job.
I've done it before.
They've got an iPad and they actually
have to stand behind the players.
And as they draw their cards, they
punch them in so that we can see them on the screen.
They do excellent work for us.
And it is a very tough job.
You're on your feet and your brain's going the whole time,
especially, you know, there's some decks,
like, don't even get me started on is it lessons?
I have no, they're discarding drawing.
And remember, when they discard a card,
you have to signal that too, so it's always up to date.
It's a very difficult job.
It is a tough job for sure.
And I mean, imagine even looking at modern decks, right?
Where you're just, or even older formats
where you're just constantly cycling through your deck,
casting brainstorms, all kinds of stuff like that.
So it is not an easy job.
You have to know all the cards,
but hey, at the end of the day,
you can just play, hey, just show me your hand.
because you've done too many things here, so let me know.
Yeah, they're just a small portion of our production team here
that does an excellent job out of these pro tours.
We thank them for their hard work.
It's a big crew behind the scenes here.
If you've ever make it out to a magic con
where we have one of these, you can come kind of swing through
and you'll see what a big crew we've got going here.
But yeah, the players, you know,
they're going to take a short break here.
And when they come back, we'll
be back into the action.
Paul, we've gotten a chance to look at Demir Excruciator.
I gotta say, you know, when you look at the deck,
it looks a little bit like a meme.
You know, you're kind of like, yeah, that's cool.
It does some neat things, but really?
And it's been like, yeah, but really every single time
that Excruciator hits, whether it's natural
or with Superior Spider-Man, the entire dynamic
of the game changes almost immediately.
And there's many decks that just go,
I do not have the ability to get that amount of damage
during that amount of time,
and it just needs one little bump,
make you draw three or a million for four and it's over.
Yeah, I think it was an incredible kind of
metagame choice for this event.
You just have all these people that,
it seems like one of the best decks
that are actually good at attacking the decks
that are also trying to attack the cub decks, right?
It's, you know, a lot of decks
are playing a bunch of cheap removal.
This deck doesn't care if you're playing against a deck that has a bunch of cheap removal.
So all of those cards are kind of that early on.
But not only that, I just think the introduction of the evoke elementals from Lauren Eclipse
have just completely shaken up the metagaming.
We didn't think that was necessarily possible because we're in a much more powerful standard
environment, right?
We're in an environment where there's kind of three years of sets coming out here.
And so, you know, we didn't think there was going to be a huge shake-up, but I
mean, we've seen brand new decks.
I mean, both of these decks, but even the decks that we've seen previously, so many new archetypes because of what you can do with the evoke elementals, particularly with Superior Spider-Man.
Yeah, it's funny because, you know, what we were talking about coming into the tournament was the Cub decks.
That made up the majority of the field. There's a few different versions of it, but that made up, I'm pushing half of the metagame, but it looks like the decks that decided that they didn't want to lose to that deck did really well.
And then we got to day two, and even furthermore here in the top eight, and it's a bunch of
decks that are built to beat that one, and now we have to figure out how to get that
check with each other.
Absolutely.
They were really good at one match, but you're just not Japanese enough for them to work
as Ken was.
Yeah.
So it looks like they're going to continue sideboarding here.
Yeah, it looks like Tony has mostly sideboarded here.
out like I mentioned a lot of that debt removal that would have been good at
killing Lanawar elves taking out three copies of burst lightning thunder magic
two copies of seer none of those cards particularly great at dealing with a
66 demon if it enters a battle field
yeah I'm looking what you said yeah Sorok elusive hunter a really nice way
to kind of maybe shift gears, you know, Chris Larson is going to have lots of removal, lots of
hander-trupsion, so with this Iraq it puts pressure, but if you do kill it, it still draws you that
card, right? So just you want more threats like that because you want to be able to potentially
play a fair game of magic. Look, Earthbender Ascension, just a solid card to play, right?
It ramps you, gets you that 2-2, and then you get this, you have this Iraq, and then
you have the quantum Riddler. So, I mean, I'm taking a look and I mean, Tony is bringing in
something like 10 cards in this matchup. So it should get a lot better for him after sideboard.
Players just taking one last look, now getting their libraries randomized appropriately. Take
a look at Tony from Croatia. I mentioned before he plays for Team Sanctum of All
and teamer harmonizer seems to be the most sanctum of all deck
Yeah, they always have a flare. Yeah, no they do and it's just awesome to see every time there's a poor I go
What is sanctum playing because it's usually some kind of two or three card combo that has some card filtering it?
Just enough interaction to survive whatever is happening in the meta game
right then a combo that just kind of kills you out of nowhere and
And it's really great, a kind of surprising people, especially when you're kind of playing
in the Swiss part of the tournament where a lot of players just won't have a lot of time to,
despite it being open deck list, you're just not going to have the time to really react
and really game plan for this matchup. Yeah, it's funny that I was saying that
the excruciator deck looked a little bit like a meme, like you're like,
is that actually going to work? Team or harmonizers like fully in that camp too, right?
It's like Paul, you know, if I came to you and I was like,
like, hey, Paul, in standard full bore plus that you just like, yeah, dude, okay,
but that doesn't really come together. Right? Like that's not,
you don't want to be putting all your eggs in one basket like that,
but it turns out this shell around this deck enables it,
make sure that you have the ability to protect it.
And it also has that added benefit of keeping your opponents in that
defensive stance. They never want to tap out.
They always want to represent something because they're worried you might
kill them out of nowhere.
Yeah, I mean, that's precisely why they kinda call it the Splinter Twinback, right?
You always have to respect the combo, so it's really hard.
Even if you have a stock up on the draw, can you even play it turn three?
Right.
But Chris Larson, however, does have the benefit here of having all that hand
disruption, right?
We're talking about double intimidation tactics for duress, for deceit.
So for him, it's gonna be a lot easier to try to disrupt this combo and
resolve spells safely.
Chris Larson here with a duress.
All right, and we are underway.
We're going to see that duress straight away here from Larson and see what Porto
on's working with.
It looks like just to stock up here.
We have the full bore for the combo likely not taking that here.
I think it's just going to be stuck up here.
Tony just facing up.
That is a hand on the right side.
Yeah, those are all cards in hand.
saving a little bit of time here, just so Chris doesn't have to write down the contents
of the hand.
Then, on Tony's side, just thinking, alright, which land do I want to lead with?
You can lead with the bossing, say, because you do need a basic land in play for that
thing to come into play untapped.
Land go here from Larson.
A little jockeying for a position.
Now, Chris Larson does have some hand disruption here.
Turn three, winter night stories.
discarding the seat and then playing a superior Spider-Man to copy it. That could be an option.
He had the option. Did he have the option? Yeah, he did have a swamp. He could have
done to seed this turn, but boy that would have set off some pretty inefficient following
turns. So he's going to get that reef into play and move on with his life. Tony looking to get
Untapped or a basic land here. Wow. Oh wait, what is so his draw all bore harmonizer and he has fabled so his two draw steps where a harmonizer consult the star charts. Wow. Okay. Okay, Tony. It's not bad.
So I mean Tony technically does have the combo here right? I mean turn four you first play
the steam vents then turn four you can warp out the harmonizer, play the fable passage
and have the full bore ready to go with the triggers on the stack. Now so Chris Larson
I think here's the thing too I mean if you're Chris Larson I suppose you can combo off
the next turn so Chris Larson probably just going to no going for the hand disruption
Yeah, he's scared.
No, he knows.
I mean, he knows about the full bore too.
So yeah, and there's a harm.
I can't kill me this time.
Right.
Yeah, maybe.
Larsen says you can't kill me this turn right into any shrug.
He's like, you know, he was a black lotus or something.
Maybe, but.
Yeah, and and Christopher Larson can just do the same thing.
Oh, land.
Now he can just copy the seat here and look at this.
I mean, this is that interaction.
This is what put this Demir Excruciator deck over the top, right?
This is that new inclusion.
This is such a powerful combination.
You can disrupt your opponent and also just,
I mean, doubly disrupt your opponent.
It kind of has remnants of back when you can play grief
and activate it twice.
And you're kind of doing a similar thing here with the seat.
Yeah, giving that superior Spider-Man another really awesome target
It's not just a combo, but like a true value card here.
You end up with a 4-4 that takes away a card from their hand.
And this is your backup plan, right?
And pretty good.
And now if you're Chris Larson, do you take full bore?
What if Tony Topdex might form Harmonizer?
Oh, don't even say that.
That would be insane if you did.
But that is a nice tool to explore.
That is a good draw, right?
because that does, you know, you go ahead and fetch that for us.
I'm going to make my block.
Get to play out the Explorer, get at least hit some land drops here.
This is kind of Tony's version of what Christopher did.
It's not the full combo, but it's a very nice addition to the deck.
Well, Chris Larson, copy harmonizer.
start playing some lands to start beating down. I mean, that is a path to victory.
That is hilarious.
More likely to fire off winter night stories in the duress.
By taking the full board, there is no chance that Tony can completely combo off next turn.
He'll double duress.
Another duress.
Right, and I mean, the seer also just kills the creatures too, right?
It kills his 4-4, so might be interested in that, but
can certainly lead things up with the stories here.
Triple land there.
Probably just going to be pitching two lands here.
Doesn't necessarily need the second copy of Restless Reef.
I imagine, or rather I suppose you can also pitch the swamp in the Restless Reef if you
wanted to go double the rest and give yourself the ability to have the second blue mana to
be able to activate the reef and attack potentially next turn.
Yeah, so reef, swamp, the rest.
Untapped watery graves if that's what his plan is.
But he made the rest here and he is going to take everything away.
So full bore and seer gone.
So Tony Portolan is just on the card advantage engine from the IceTill Explorer.
last bossing say Chris Larsen deciding whether or not he wants to attack Tony
Portolan can attack back next turn for four damage is this the path that you
want to take to win this matchup all right let's get an attack because Tony
Portolan able to play two lands a turn here but he can't combo off from
this position, right? So.
Thening up the deck utilizing that fable passage. Maybe you can hit another bossing, say.
It's a nice thing about the I still explore. Even if you're just completely out of gas, you can just make sure that you just have tons and tons of man in play. And you know, those bossing say can end up
matter especially because Chris Larson is playing a control deck and
bossing say is one of the best cards for against the control matchups you often
see it as a one of in the badminton will come sideboards
oh there's a sideboard card Sandman shitting scoundrel this creature is
gigantic it's gonna be what an 8-8 this turn right one two three four five
Seven there's there's six lands in play right now, but then you can there's five right? Oh
Is that mountain in hand? I think so okay excuse me that was that was the only a seven seven Paul only a seven seven
Bigger than the excruciator
Way bigger and something that you hold system you get back over and over it
Yeah, I know what's happening.
I'm kind of offended that he has to do it like that.
It's like not my first rodeo.
Yeah. I've been here before.
So two ice-tell explorer triggers on the stack here.
here.
Copy and X to explore also seems pretty nice if you're Chris Larson, right?
Yeah.
Play some lands out of the yard.
Yeah, what blue-black deck wouldn't want the ability to get a bunch more lands?
Play extra lands every turn?
Yeah.
I mean even the mill's relevant in this deck.
It's a soul guy lantern off of the land.
Yeah.
All right, so now does he have,
he doesn't have access to five green mana?
Cause it, oh no, no, nevermind.
This is just enough here.
So you can activate with bossing say
and still play Sandman this turn.
Geez.
And that's kind of the only thing he can do
based on his hand here.
I'll, I'm just looking what's my target.
just figuring out which land he would like to earth bend
okay that's gonna work
now we have a 7-7 Sandman
I mean this Sandman is huge
can't be blocked by small creatures and you can recur it
right so it's annoying
yeah I mean look Tony does have kind of this
game plan here. Okay, but he doesn't have the mana to play it just now. So he's gonna do
winter knight stories. Yeah. Okay, but no, with the winter knight stories, you can discard
the demon, of course. Right. And then superior spider met it into play and try to close out
the game with that restless wreath. Hey, this could be it for Marston. Yeah, and he's got
got the restless grief in play.
Tony doesn't have any of the gear.
Okay, six cards left.
So once again, we see excruciator DM
and hit the battlefield in the form of superior Spider-Man.
So it is a 4-4 and Christopher Larson
at a comfortable 16 life.
So Tony Portolan draws, goes to five
if you attack, that puts you down to one.
So Tony does get two attacks here, I believe.
Oh, and he drew spider sense.
That is big, because you can counter the trigger on a reef.
You can counter a triggered ability here.
So will that give Tony Portolan enough time
to try to pressure Chris Larsen enough
to kind of kill him with the sign man, right?
Because that's just a full extra turn you get.
It is.
Is there a double block for Larson?
Right now, the first, the deceit is tapped.
The issue now is 20, also just can't play any more lands.
Right, because it'll just mill.
It'll just mill because of the ice field explorer,
but so can this 7-7 and bossing say, get it done?
Because you can boss and say, turn that force
into a 4-4 in attack with both.
Chris Larson could block the 4-4.
If you block the 4-4, the 4-4 comes back into play
and then forces a trigger off of the ice field explorer.
Right.
I think he can get away with one trigger though
because of the spider sets, right?
Like one mill.
Right.
It is not gonna, like the game's gonna end for Tony
before one mill matters.
Attack, trigger, mill.
But if you're on Chris Larsen's side,
at that point then you can just keep your creatures back.
Right?
Just don't attack.
I just wanna make sure I have enough
four power creatures in play to block the same man.
Right, you need at least three power
just to be able to block it.
There's two in play.
Not the cards good?
Are your cards good?
They're not a solitude.
Solitude, white card, gotcha.
Yeah, that would be good.
And the answer is no, those cards are not good.
But I think Larsen's thinking more
in terms of do I need these cards?
Right.
I kind of have it on the battlefield, don't I?
What can you have here?
Now, Tony does have spider sense.
A seer or two left in his deck after sideboard.
Once again, we see once the libraries are only six cards
deep.
The turns take a little longer.
Right.
And let's not forget, Larson just
gets to draw two cards a turn.
And he may be able to just find a removal spell here.
Absolutely.
You could also just attack with I Still Explorer
and hope Chris blocks it or just get some extra damage
through if you think attacking is not going to be Chris
Larson's route to victory.
He wants Chris Larson to attack with all his creatures
as he's at 16 life here.
So that's just two free damage coming in.
If you block the 4-4, Chris Larson takes 9, goes to 7.
Oh, Tony's just going to pass the turn back.
two cards here off the excruciator.
I don't want the Riddler.
So he hit watery grave quantum Riddler.
So quantum Riddler, I mean, probably don't want the Riddler.
Unless it's lethal somehow.
I mean, I think if you're Chris, you just go, hey, activate my reef.
What do you have?
And it's just spider sense. It's not seer, right?
But you can block the restless reef reef, right? Because you attack it triggers you spiders
I mean what a top deck by the way that was such a big draw seriously
That's spider senses. We're going to win this game. Yeah, absolutely is so now you can eat
The restless reef that's why we saw that Sandman stay home it does have that touch
Okay, but whatever. Right, of course. It's just you don't get to activate that again.
I mean, Portal on wants to not see Larson go reef go and instead of watery grave go. Okay.
So now are we down to insatiable avarice avarice is kind of the out. He could also draw a reef for
the turn. He still has three cards left. So if he draws a reef, he can still play the
reef and then attack on...no, he'll deck himself. He only has three cards left.
It has to be insatiable. It has to be insatiable, Averus.
Awkward. But how many cards does Tony have right
now? Four? Yeah.
So if you cast an insatiable Averus, Tony still has another turn, right? So is that
Is that even enough?
You cast the Tony, he has no cards left and then Chris Larson dies to the Excruciator.
Can he force him to block?
Oh that's a reef!
Is that enough?
Oh he's got two cards left and he did draw Bitter Triumph.
Oh really?
He has two cards left.
Okay, well then he's good.
Yeah, yeah, it looked like one but he has two cards left.
Oh my god.
And what are those as a reef?
Are you kidding me, Christopher Larson?
So he's done this before.
And remember, you can use Bitter Triumph to kill the land to mill Tony an extra card
here if you want yeah that's right so it could have been avarice plus triumph right also for the
win but i think that reef and less tony finds like how many spider senses does he have i don't know
any like any any or did he bring in i should say right if he has any he would have brought all of
of them in right because I'm only aware of the one there right so Christopher
Larson if he's going for the win here we'll have zero cards left in his deck
needs this restless reef to attack.
So Tony plays two in the main,
which was one he left them in.
All right, here we go. Here's the draw.
Is the other one the top card of that library?
Whistfulness does not get it done here.
Although, are we now at a point?
Wait, if he whistfulness, he draws two.
If Spider-Sense is one of them,
He passes Christopher Larson draws two cards tries to hit him with the reef
He spider senses then Tony draws one card, but then he would lose but yeah
It would lose to bitter try and write better try on from the land is still something that exists here
Know about but heritage reclamation can also draw you a card
Just one card just one card
That would which might be relevant here. No, he's going for draw two. Oh, he doesn't know
Okay, he doesn't know about the bitter triumph. This is gonna open that door looking for an answer for the restless reef
Doesn't find it. They've all been exiled or it's the last card in which it doesn't matter matter
Larson is actually gonna win this
My gosh, this is the second time he's done this is unbelievable that he found that reef. Oh my gosh
And if he hadn't found one previously too, that was the third really if he hadn't have found that reef
Portland wouldn't have to do any of it. No, Portland was just going. Hey, I just hope you don't have another reef
Oh, you drew it. Okay. Well, I guess now it's on me. How does Larson always?
I think he's going to go for the better triumph here.
Sure.
Yes, he is.
That'll put Tony on zero cards left.
And Larson will also be a serve.
Right.
There will be no libraries when this game is decided.
And now it comes back.
Is he casting reclamation in response because he's going to mill anyways?
Okay, last card.
It doesn't matter.
Christopher Larson wins game number three.
And he does it in his typical dramatic fashion.
With both players on zero cards effectively.
So if that last card was Seer.
Yes, but he could have killed the 4-4, but then he still would have died on the draw.
I was thinking about that if Larson was thinking about Steward there.
I guess we need to print a new card where you can shuffle all the Exiled cards back into your deck.
We need an answer for this excruciator deck.
Especially if you think it's Larson, he's just always going to have the Reef either in play or on top.
Any exiled cards become your library
They're talking about the turn before
Larson did the double dress
I'm part of that.
Right, just Larson's deck just has so much hand disruption.
And you know, when you're playing a deck and you're packing what, 10 hand disruption spells
against a deck that relies on a kind of a three card combination, it is tough.
I really like that Larson is willing to take some risk here, right?
There's some players that would play around the possibility of losing to that combo to their detriment, right, where they're just unwilling to lose to it, but they give their opponent so much extra time that, you know, they lose to Sandman or something like that.
I think he's just done a really great job of picking his spots, right, in that previous game one, right, he went for it, he smelled blood in the water, went for it here.
This turn this time he went for that turn one the rest
He saw Tony not having a whole lot of action going on turn three
He could have played winter night stories, but he was like you know what you draw a couple cards
You could still maybe go back to back and combo me out
I'm gonna use that I'm gonna play that to see and that did break up break apart the combo
Christopher Larson is now one game away
from being a pro tour champion.
This is one of the most well-liked guys
on the entire pro tour.
I mean, and he's also just been around.
I mean, he's been playing the game for so long
at an extremely high level.
Should probably check on my side, what side would I say?
He doesn't listen to his teammates anyways,
but I guess you might as well look.
So do you expect Spanish?
I think that's a good, smaller.
That's close, too.
Funny part is Larson said that he.
You know when I asked the Spanish about translating my text,
I'm a cybercard?
OK, I'm 15.
Have you ever like, why haven't you asked before?
OK.
Just wing it, you know.
Well, he did say he went against his team's instructions
on play.
Right.
For round 16, it was important to knew the Spanish words.
You just needed it for the one round.
Yeah. Thank you.
Cedric asked, uh,
asked Chris for how he was feeling after his win and it's funny because I don't
think a lot of us think, well, obviously you're happy, right?
You work and it feels really good, but I don't know.
You can also sense the urgency that these players feel.
They know that this is an extraordinarily difficult place to get to,
but you just can't wipe that smile off his face.
Yeah, I mean you heard he he is somebody who just truly loves him of course everybody loves the game
But he just does such a great job of kind of expressing that joy and it's infectious you can feel it
He needs stability.
Game number four incoming here. Tony's got to win this one to keep the dream alive. He's had so much success
Of late and I mean the last couple of years. Yeah, I'm not surprised to see him here at all
He crushes limited every single time and Sanctum of all always seems to find some
interest to take on the format that's good enough. You combine that with a
impressive limited win rate. Yeah I mean if you if you're just guaranteed to start
every day five and one and limited it's pretty good buffer. Which by the way
has been his average. Yes. Okay this is Forest Island bossing sea and Sir
So that is a turn 3 Sorok, which is pretty nice, and there is an ice till explorer and
a soul guide lantern.
So I imagine this is going to be a keep here, just enough interaction, land, sideboard cards.
There's fullness in there too.
The question is, I think both are keeping and we're just marking down what's in hand.
The rest.
Oh, that's going to get the Sorok most likely here.
the first relevant play here. It's a nice target. Intimidation tactics from Larson.
Croclaw heist here as well. Like you said Larson just has access to so much hand disruption and
of course the information that comes from it. You get you get that as well.
Yeah so just being able to I mean Larson is just I feel it almost looks like he's kind of playing
and anti-combo combo deck, just by having access to all of this interaction.
Tony taking a more proactive approach here with some threats like Sarak, but Chris Larson
just happy, just easy.
My combo is just my demon.
I just need to cast my, I don't have to search it up or do anything, just at some point
I'm going to find a demon, I'm going to find the rest of this reef, and then that's
all I need.
And we see a cruel claws heist here, and I think he said no gift.
No gift, just get that Sorok, most likely out of the hand.
I still explore of course also a reasonable option here.
Just exile a non-land card, a little more mana than you'd like to pay, but having access
to even more of these, especially against these combo-based decks has been great for
Larson.
Yeah, that's a path that Tony can take to victory here just by playing it and getting
a slightly more aggressive draw.
It's not that card.
Both sides out.
So maybe we'll do a little bit of digging here with wistfulness.
Stock up off the top would be nice.
Turn three, so probably want to get that starting town in play.
And it's just a landed seams.
No.
a seer.
So Tony just deciding whether or not he wants to evoke the
wistfulness, dig a little bit deeper, decides against it.
I think it's time to stock up though.
And this is rough.
There's a duress, stock up, continue taking cards away.
When you will be able to cast an ice till explorer,
if you can find a fabled passage off the top,
that would be really nice because right now,
if you just play the force and slam the ice till explorer,
I mean, you're not gonna be able to get any value,
at least this turn.
more car draw spells here if you need and you know Tony's that's not really
putting a whole lot of pressure so we've seen Chris Larson just fire off
insatiable ever since you know cards like seer yes sure they have their spot
their moments but right now it is just not the car that you want here I mean
there's just nothing else what you can do is it just run out explore and hope
You don't have a mobile and and fortunately I mean Chris Larson doesn't have a removal spell here
But no value from dice folks for just yet
There is a doomsday excruciator here for Chris Larson no way to discard it just yet
Superior Spider-Man could copy Sir Rock I guess
Yes.
It feels like there's better things to do though.
I think it's exiled too.
Oh excuse me, it looks like it's in the graveyard but it is exiled.
He's just going to play a fourth person.
A fourth player to get in the way.
Okay. And Tony Portolan does have the seer so he's probably happy that he has a target for the seer.
He has two of them so he's like absolutely thrilled.
Those are mainly for the reef but I mean.
Okay.
I don't know.
or go all right well Tony needs a land here there's a seat where was that last
turn right so he's gonna stock up first it seems that way
because you could have you could go to seat first to see what they have and
and then go land stock up or decide to duress if you need to take two things out of their hand.
Stock up first here for Larson.
And I believe that was a sole guide lantern.
Yeah, but he doesn't want it unless he had two of them in that pile.
Oh shoot the sheriff. He went land shoot the sheriff and that's going to keep this board state
Much more manageable here, Larsen.
Okay, Tony, can you get a land going?
Can you find a fetch land?
Okay, well, that's a land.
Does he hit a land? No.
No, he does not.
So no extra lands.
Now you can run out wistfulness with the blue-blue
from the starting town and draw two
and maybe discard a land and put that into your graveyard,
get the chain going that way.
The four-four superior Spider-Man
isn't really much of a threat right now.
So that is something to consider.
5 cards in hand. Chris Larson's hand is completely loaded here. If he gets to untap, I mean he
can just kind of rip apart Tony's hand here with more card draw spells to back things
up here. Okay, keeping it patient here. He just wants to cast wistfulness next turn,
I guess. Land off the top, so Chris did already have one. And this could be a good time to
just run out duress. Okay, see what Tony is working with Tony. I mean, this came in
is looming is it it is and Chris Larson just playing it as safe as he possibly can in case
it's a full bore. Now you don't now you can play out the deceit to get the wistfulness
if you'd like. Yeah, I mean that is Tony's plan for next right just hard casting that
for a little bit of value. Yeah. Yep. He's like please take my seer. It's like nope
No, sorry, not going to be doing that.
Right. And then land go is Larson all set up.
He is set up for an excruciator.
Averus here. Does he have a reef?
A reef as well.
I don't believe he has one in play right now.
No, he doesn't. That's the.
But but he does have insatiable Averus, which is a.
Yeah, that's the other way to do it. Absolutely.
It is. Oh, this is something.
OK, that's big.
I mean, that does draw you some cards now.
Chris Larson does have, I believe, the rest still in hand here.
And you can cast that and the demon next turn.
5.
Alright.
2, 3, 4, 5.
He gets 2 of them.
That's a spell pierce, not great here.
A backup ice tail explorer.
I mean, is Larson, like, does he just go duress demon, avarice you?
I hope you had fun
Like he's a 20. I mean he is nothing. He is at a high life total here
So and I mean Tony didn't even this was not a great
Consult the star charts here, right? No, it was a passage plus earth bender ascension far away from combo in here
So yeah, perhaps Chris especially with that I still explore and play
The if I still explore and is in plane is giving Tony all these advantages if you just slam the excruciator
you just can't play any more lands. Exactly. We saw that in the prior game, where Christopher Larson
was able to kill an earth bent land with ice tail explorer on the battlefield. That earth bent
land comes back into play through no choice of Tony and with ice tail explorer out, it mills you
for one and that was the difference. So two mills, that's another harmonizer in the graveyard.
Is that a fabled passage?
Yes.
All right.
Still has access to the seer.
He can, or spend your ascension here?
He can.
Just get all the lands in play before Christopher can run out an excruciator.
But Larson would have.
So how can they need a sequence of draws to figure this out, right?
Because what happens?
I mean, you play a land, you get an ascension in play,
then you have a 2-2 and a 2-4. That's just not nearly enough pressure.
I mean he's facing down a 4-4 and a 6-6.
Right.
And he's going to get avarice the next time.
Yeah, and Christopher Larson will go, yeah, this is completely fine.
No, no, I need to resolve it.
Okay.
Yeah, I need to resolve the...
You're first.
Yeah.
No, no, I cannot take it, right?
No.
No, because you need to find a land.
Yeah.
And then you'll know one.
Really fast.
Yeah.
Really fast.
really close here. Look at that helped him out too. But going back to what you were saying Paul,
this is all just very fair. And if you're in large you see the only thing you're really worried
about at this point is the boots I win on. Yeah there's just I just don't see just enough
pressure here might form harmonizer is a card that I can think of here right right that you can cast but just
Once the demon hits play
With the avarice what can Tony do? I mean he'll have a
Turn he'll have a turn perhaps he can find a counterspell right spider sense the countered insatiable avarice
that could perhaps
Make it so that the doomsday excruciator ends up killing Tony and there it is doomsday excruciator is
is going to hit the battlefield here for Larson.
That means that our libraries are only going to be six cards now.
It's cards left and Chris Larson found a deceit.
He did as well here.
So he can actually make sure the coast is clear
before firing off that insatiable Averis.
He has deceit and Averis still in hand.
Spellpierce is just not going to be nearly enough here.
I just don't think Tony has too many outs here
win this game. Christopher Larson on the verge of pro-tour victory if he can just close this one out.
Counting the library. You got the seat. You have the address.
Okay, bossing say. Tony just trying to get something going here. This is the best he can do.
Okay, and he passes back so two cards go in a hand here for Larson
That's a reef by the way horse
Just get in a duress duress
This is about as safe as you guys possibly get so can he average him and then duress slash deceit him
Like yeah, he finds anything right? I presumably you want to lead with oh, I see what you're saying
You know what I mean? I think well you're just gonna go for the deceit kill
So I think next turn okay, it's just the rest you make sure the coast is clear attack you with my reef win the protor
Christopher Larson is so close there was might form harmonizer for portal on too little too late here
He just can't get through for 20 at this right there is there is no full bore right and Christopher Larson has two blockers in play right now
And he doesn't need either of them to win the game at this point.
Exactly.
You can sear the 4-4, but are there enough landfall triggers here
where you can somehow get the harmonizer in play
and pump everything in a mount where somehow one unblocked.
You happen.
There's just too many doubling triggers that need to happen,
Particularly on the ice till explore exactly it starts at two so it needs an extra double and you have to get in for all of it
Explorer needs to double four times by itself
How many times have we seen him draw two cards off of this demon and then go reef
It's never in play it's always on top
Larson knows he has this he has to know there just can't be combinations of cards
here that actually get him dead no I mean it would be it would be if somehow I
think you might know his hand but if it was my formal harmonizer into full
more then you get the trample now earthbender ascension does give trample
again though are there enough you need land you are there enough land
triggers that can make this work. All right here we go. Are you kidding me? Okay. Is there
even a land first of all? Is there a basic land even in Tony's deck left? We don't even know.
That's a good point. And Mill. That last one was the Mill. I still explore will probably
trigger last. This is all still on the stack I believe. Tony that was he's like I thought
I had this. He's like please. I think he still does. There's a military right here.
I didn't resolve it then, you know.
Uh, or?
Careful.
Okay.
Biter sense goes to you already.
So he mails Biter sense off the fabled passage trigger.
And this is another fabled passage.
That's three.
Okay, but Tony just can't get more cards in the hand, right?
Are the last two cards basic lands?
Would that work?
But he needs to get both creatures out of the way, right?
Well, no, with the Earthbender Ascension, when it gets to the top of the fountain,
it gives...
Oh, it's not that I played too fast on myself.
It gives creatures trample.
Shhh.
Okay.
Holy shit, that was bad.
Played by me.
And Chris Larson might think there might be a way he could lose this game here.
Yep.
Larson looks very...
I'll say.
Right? Oh my gosh, that's 60.
That's 32 trample damage.
No way.
there is a land there needs to be a land there has to be a land though there's no
basic can you get a land oh the the fable passage comes back of course he
sacrificed the fable passage did he seriously put together 32 trample here
no way
And then it's a 34.
Oh, my goodness.
Wow.
Wow.
Unbelievable.
This is insane.
Tony just stole that game.
That is unreal.
Christopher Larson was hoisting the trophy in his head.
Whoa.
That is unbelievable.
Double turn.
He had the deceit in his hand, right? Yes, he could have just cast it. Yeah
We could have played the deceit and bounced he could have played it for blue and bounced okay, that was an
Unbelievable
theft of a victory there by Tony portal on
Chris Larson did not see that coming. He absolutely did not that might form harmonious
By the way, Tony drawing that might form harmonizer first of all and then finding all those triggers to make it or make it work
And Chris, I mean he shall shock right now. There's still one more game
You need to rebound and be ready for that final game, but I mean he just kind of saw it unfold
He was like I cannot believe this. Yes, I'm actually going to die. There's an earthbender sentient
There's no way you can get up to four right right because it still gives trample
We were talking about full bore, but of course ascension also gives trample when it gets to four exactly so
So, if Christopher Larsen there hard-casted the seat, bounces and makes some discard the
Earthbender Ascension, all of a sudden, even if you top that Mindform Harmonizer, you still
don't have the ability to give any of your creatures trample, you still have the rest
plus the ability to activate the land and attack for the win.
So while he was seeing it unfold, he kind of realized in horror, like, I gave himself
an out.
The out was Mindform Harmonizer, he found it, and now we have a fifth game out
of seemingly nowhere.
I cannot believe that we've got a fifth game incoming
and it is going to be up to Christopher Larson
to gather himself and dial in for this last one.
We're going to take a short break when we come back.
Game five.
Don't go anywhere.
Welcome back to coverage of Pro Tour.
Lauren Eclips, the agony of defeat game that you thought you had in the bag and indeed a
trophy you thought you had in the bag as well.
Look there at the car players in the last game.
This is why we love Magic Baby.
your reactions, Monnie. Look, five minutes ago, five minutes ago we had Chris Larson sure
that he was about to win the pro tour. We had his teammates essentially tripping over themselves,
getting ready to rush in from the rails. I am looking at them as they were ready to
rush in. Five minutes ago, he passed the turn holding a deceit that he was so sure
he was going to win. He was saving it for a double discard to ensure the win the next third.
About four minutes ago, Tony Portilon turned it around, won the game essentially out of nowhere
with the most limited of tools after having been doomsdayed. And now we're here. We're going to
a game five. And look, throughout the weekend, we've talked about mental game and preparation.
And we've talked about the fact that, you know, Marco Balacca in a great position loses a few rounds and a row has to reset.
I don't think that even comes close to the mental reset you need to be able to do after a situation like that, where you have all been submitted yourself to being done.
Now you have to reset from the loss of that and go back into the mindset of, I have to play more magic.
It's one game for all of it.
It's one game for the Pro Tourist, one game for the trophy, for the title.
And you have to do it after having just gone through that.
So talk to me, Moni, about how a player like Christopher Larson,
he's no stranger to the game.
He loves magic.
He just loves being here and playing despite the top eight, despite the money and
the trophy and all that.
How do you get back from that kind of thing happening?
Yeah, I mean, this is the beauty of the game and also this is the beauty of
people who care so much is that passion is a double-edged sword where the more you care,
the more you love the game, the more passionate you are, the harder a situation like that
hits. The good news is for Chris, he is a storied competitor. He has been here before.
He has been in top eights before. He has definitely made mistakes before. He has
taken losses before. And he's very capable of shaking them off. This is the biggest
test in front of them but he can do it.
Yeah, we talked to him about his performance in the Swiss portion of the event and he said,
you know, I think I should have had a better limited, excuse me, a standard record.
I think I threw two matches essentially.
I mean the turnaround times for some of these people playing these decks is not too long
getting to know it and all the ins and outs of it before the pro tour too.
Yeah, and this is, you know, again, this is not the type of matchup that you
have played that many times.
just how do you really get all the minutiae of a tough matchup like this
down in so few matches. Right well we've got a game five as our decider everyone
I'm gonna pass it on over to Marshall and Paul if you don't want to miss this.
Yeah thanks Maria this is one of those you know reality comes at you fast
situations for Chris Larson and the question is can he take a deep breath
and put that behind him.
Whatever happened in that game,
whether it was on him, whether he got unlucky,
whether it was a combo of those things,
that needs to be in the rearview mirror
and he needs to fight it out to see
if he can get this trophy on the other side.
Tony's got to feel, I mean,
he got very lucky there.
He's got to feel like he's got a new lease
on life to become a PT champion.
He's going to frame that life form harmonizer
that he drew. It was an incredible pity.
And you can tell here,
A little bit more serious here for Chris Larsen.
He knows he let one get away.
But from what I've seen,
this does look like a matchup that favors Chris Larsen
with all the hand disruption.
Still has a great hand here.
Two lands, cruel claws heist, and a seat, and a stock up.
Larsen is starting with six cards this time.
Porta Lon on the draw with seven.
And we're going to see Deceit straight away here.
That's the second copy.
And Chris Larson only has two lands here.
So Sorok likely the pick here is there's nothing else great you want to take here.
That's what he takes.
And Chris is going to be begging for an untapped land here.
He needs it so badly.
Then we have a real game.
Then we have a real game.
I mean, he's still not out of it, of course.
He can still play a handiships and spell in the heist order
to see, but of course, he really wants to just play stock up here.
This is one of those times where you have to say,
you know, I might lose this, but I am going to scrap this out.
Absolutely.
I am going to make it as hard on Tony as possible.
Let's see if he can find the land here.
Land?
There it is.
All right.
Oh, he can breathe deep.
He's actually still just going to go for the heist
this turn because heist exile so you can actually get the sandman here and
there won't be that annoying recursive threat here and it's very important
that it gets exiled here of course.
That Larson reaches over into the graveyard and says actually let me just grab this for you.
That was the window to do it for Larson so hitting that land very nice though he did have a play regardless that turn.
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean not missing a land drop there. So it's still okay to just get the three drop out of the hand here
And Tony doesn't have a play here probably wants to wait on the consult the star charts, right?
Oh, but did find might form harmonizer off the top and another disease here for Larson
Well, he wanted to get the consult the star charts here and is Tony letting it resolve
Yeah, so the question is do you want to get the star charts for the harmonizer, I guess
right
He was going to go for the star charts, but right but the thing is if you if you also take the harmonizer
I mean you're getting very very close to just being able to analyze Apollo and go fetch another one
Oh, sure, so I wonder if at that point do you just go get the
Consult the star charts here instead, but right now. I mean Chris Larson doesn't have an actual answer if Tony just
Plays might form harmonizer
Okay. He's going to stick to the plan though.
Tony Portland doesn't have a fable passage here.
So no X's combo. Just going for the beatdown plan here and so far it would be effective here.
He's going to have to go for a stock up though because the land is not flowing here for Larson
and he needs an answer for the harmonizer at some point.
So once land plus shoot the sheriff or bitter triumph that's what he's looking for here.
He did find a land, but it looks like duress and superior Spider-Man.
Superior Spider-Man?
Yeah.
That would be very, very good actually, right?
Yeah.
If you have the second blue source, if you go superior Spider-Man, copying that they
see, you can pick up the Mindform Harmonizer and force Tony Portolan to discard the
creature.
And he did actually find that here, the dual land.
Does he have a blue source?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I believe.
Now we'll find out in a second here.
It's very little difficult to see from this angle, but.
Yeah, well it was a land either way.
Let's see which one it is.
Yeah, it's a watery grave.
And he's gonna pass the turn back.
So he's gonna take a bit of a beating here.
How much damage?
I mean, if you have a fetch land here,
that's 16 damage, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, so just the starting town.
Good to.
Attack for eight.
There's an active bossy save, but do you want to just keep up seer here instead?
And there's also spell pier, so you might just pass.
All right, Chris Lawson.
So Chris has the answer?
There's the answer though.
And this cannot get spell pier.
Right, superior Spider-Man creature.
Blue, blue, black, black, target the harmonizer.
All right, and certainly going to take it out of the hand here.
Make him discard that.
Yeah, now Tony Portolan can collect evidence with analyze the pollen and go fetch another midnight harmonizer
Or I still explore if it feels like he just wants to kind of develop his board and just get more mana in play
Larson did find another land it looks like
So this is definitely a productive turn for him, yeah
The only land that doesn't naturally tap for black mana
Wait, did he? Oh, excuse me, he played the Watery Grave last turn, of course.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so he takes the Harmonizer as a turn.
All right, so now we're going to be analyzing the pollen and Tony does have a tricky choice here.
He can get any creature he wants out of his deck. Do you want to go for Iced Hell Explorer?
Get a bunch of lands and play or are we going for the Harmonizer kill here?
Because you do have the Seer to kill the Superior Spider-Man.
And Chris Larson's already at 12 life.
Now keep in mind though Chris Larson has another deceit in hand so if he draws
another untap land if Tony Portolan plays a my form harmonizer you can just
play this deceit and kill that harmonizer as well.
Now the spell pierce a little awkward here for Portolan is a lot of Christopher
Larson's hand disruption comes in the form of creatures. Oh he went for a mountain.
So he can go seer your 4-4 mountain warp in the quantum riddler and draw
two cards. That's pretty nice. That's a great great target here for Tony Portolan. Yeah, when
your opponent has been tearing apart your hand, Quantum Ruler is a great way to get right back in it.
Looks like he's gonna take a point of damage. Although you can just play the mountain, right?
Looks like he played Highland. Is that right? Maybe he had a land there and a...
Oh, sure. Yeah, so maybe he'll only get the one card off the Ruler, if that's the case.
Yeah, he's at 19.
Oh yeah, sorry.
There's someone feeding over us.
And Larson's at 12, still has a few jokes left in him too.
Yeah.
Did Tony play his land for the turn?
I think he played the island, but I may be wrong, so we'll find out shortly.
Chris Larson was on the play.
Yeah, Chris Larson was on the play, but he did miss a land drop, right?
Yes he did. So Tony does play that mountain, can use the seer. Yeah, I liked, yeah, okay, so this is what I thought he was going to do.
I was just curious if he was going to just try to hard cast the Quantum Riddler or something instead, but he's going to warp it and get two cards, okay.
And he still has that spell piercing hand too. Now Chris Larson can continue digging, no pressure just yet.
He found two lands did portal on okay. Yeah, there is
And two lands is kind of rough because you can't play both of the spells
So when you play the Riddler, you won't be able to draw two cards
That's the only things that he can't get out of his hand quite quickly enough alright stock up again for Larsen
Okay, he's gonna try to advance his own game plan so far this whole game has been about stopping Tony right
But can he get his own thing going? Oh, is he just gonna?
be careful here he does have shoot the sheriff might want to just fire that off
does he know about the spell pierce I'm not entirely okay so certainly doesn't
want to you shoot the sheriff then end of turn on the quantum riddler with that
spell pierce here of course also you just can't play out the winter night
stories either yeah I mean I he's going to assume that the quantum
Riddler is going to come back down from Tony.
Oh. But he decides just to play
a round spell pierce entirely, it looks like.
Right. But Tony draws Stock up here.
All right. He has fueled up here.
Looks like he's going to set up for the Stock up here instead.
Perhaps look for pieces of the combo.
My form harmonizer, full bore.
There's a soul by Lantern.
So it's full bore.
And a full bore.
Probably getting ice till plus stock up.
It just has plenty of lands, so don't need that.
Unless you want to find a little more disruption for the graveyard,
then you can choose to get that soul guy Lantern as well.
Although we're kind of at the point where Chris Larson can just start hard casting all
of these threats, right, for the full amount, so perhaps this old guy Lantern isn't quite
as effective here.
So maybe you want to play Lantern, your opponent just goes cast to seat.
Right, just play the seat.
Right, that's tough.
But big decision point here.
Yeah, I wonder if you're, because of the second winter knight stories, I wonder if there's
just a consideration to just play one into the spell pierce just so that you can resolve
the next one and just not have to worry about playing around it either.
But of course after the stock, you can also just play out the deceit, you can just evoke
it out if you have to.
Yeah, took eight from that harmonizer early.
Yeah, one big crunch and no excretion or demon in sight here.
Yeah, so far it's just been all hand disruption and card draw.
Yeah, kind of felt more like a control mirror here from this final game.
Yeah, I guess if you're Tony you also go, hmm, is it time to take this full board?
Do I go for that?
Or if it happens, it happens and I just try to value you out.
Tony did finally make a decision here.
I think it was stock up and sole guide Lantern.
So neither player particularly putting their own game plan forward in a meaningful way.
Right.
Tony's like, you know, I'm going to pick up the spell pierce now.
Yeah.
Christopher wrote down, wrote it down just so he doesn't forget spell pierce kind of
wreaking havoc this last turn cycle for this.
He did not play winter night stories and he cannot play shoot the sheriff if a target were to appear. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, he does get to just play around it.
And if you just get to ignore it for the whole game, then that's a win for Chris, but he would have loved to get winter night stories there. Yeah. Now Tony deciding, do I just fire off another stock up here? No taking some damage.
You can play stock up with spelled Pierce backup. That's what he's doing here.
Any time you get to resolve two stockups in a turn and you're not facing any pressure as good as it gets.
Another spell pierced, there's an ice tilt. Oh, consult, oh, double consult.
And is that an assassin scatter? Yeah, no cavern of souls in Christopher Larson's deck.
So if you want a 100% way to deal with the seat or any of the other creatures, it would be a hard counter.
He split the difference, I still explore and consult.
So lots of card advantage coming, Tony Portolan's way, remember he also has the Riddler.
And goes for the lantern here knowing, hey, Chris Larson knows about the spell pierce.
Since he's going to play around it anyways, I'm just going to play the lantern here
as a way to disrupt you, but hey, that was a pretty good draw.
tactics here with the winter night stories there's also deceit so lots of
good options here for Chris Larson. You can make the case that you just cast out
deceit, bounce the soul guide lantern and see what you're working with or you
can just try to draw more cards this turn still cast some interaction
possibly even keep up shoot the sheriff of course shoot the sheriff
wouldn't really work because of the spell peers.
I think we're going to draw some cards.
Okay, here are these winner night stories.
Porta Lawn's tapped out.
That's a superior Spider-Man, which is not as effective here.
Might actually just discard it.
No, this card's deceit.
Okay, no land actually.
Yeah, that's a little weird.
That's certainly going to nab the ice to explore in Tony's hand,
so he's got to rebuild a little bit,
course have that consult the star charts in hand with a warped quantum
Riddler still to mana to see it again get that consult the star charts all right
so fine in the fight starting all over right basically is forcing Tony to
rebuild every time and the soul guy lantern also interacts very very well
with quantum Riddler if you want to draw multiple cards if Tony can find the
play next turn play the land play the Riddler and then at some point you
I can crack the soul guy lantern to draw two cards as well.
Another kind of funny thing with Christopher declining
to allow Spellpierce to be relevant
is that he's kind of just stuck in his hand.
Yeah, I wonder if Tony now with really no other option here
might just choose to play.
And no, it's a little bit sad
because we're used to getting maximum value.
We might see a one card quantum rather be cast this turn.
Sad.
only a two for one
And by the way, I already drew a card this time, right?
Shows you how powerful quantum Riddler is and Tony has to be mindful of all the different cards he can draw here off of the Riddler
Yeah, it looks like Christopher might be trying to set up a turn where he gets to bitter triumph away the Riddler and then
Superior Spider-Man it and get his own
Yeah, that is difficult with the Soul Guide Lantern for sure play, but at some point you
can't force the sacrifice of the Soul Guide Lantern, right? You're just like, hey look,
I don't really care, like I'm just going to play a 4-4, and it's basically kind of a
Reclamation Sage effect if you think about it, because it's like you kind of have to
pop it.
Right, but you get a nice big 4-4 out of the deal and force your opponent to
react.
What does he find?
Is that a land?
No, I don't know.
Yeah, it was a land here.
All right, so this is a big turn here.
Heather Spears.
Chris Larson, he really wants to kill that quantum riddler
here.
And he does.
Shoot the sheriff.
All right, so that results.
So now you know about spell pierce.
I think you just go for the Spider-Man
and kind of force the activation of the Soul Guide
lantern.
And that's funny.
a portal on maybe wishing he would have used
spell pierce to prevent this play.
Exactly, because he has no other way to disrupt this.
Right.
If you make him pay the two, which he would have to do,
you get two benefits if you're Tony.
This can't happen.
And also, you can get that spell pierce out of your hand.
If you were the one who had the quantum riddler,
if you've got another one coming,
spell pierce is a card that's pretty awkward
to have stuck in your hand.
This is huge.
Chris Larson has been able to sneak in the superior
actually just drawing a card here he did okay and he shook his head he doesn't
like the way he played that right and that's it all the star charts and this
is still I presume presumably it's on the stack oh and now he's gonna actually
go for the deceit instead I go for this and it's gonna take the consult the
star charts so now Tony needs to top deck something here he's got nothing he
He just is on nothing.
Stock up, consult the star chart, something here.
He found my form harmonizer.
He found my form harmonizer, but has no way to give it haste.
And Chris Larson has a bitter triumph.
So Chris Larson currently looking very good here.
Tony Portolan has a lot of mana in play,
but all of this hand disruption.
This is like the fifth or sixth hand disruption spell
that Chris Larson has cast this turn.
He's now providing a clock and has
the answer to this harmonizer.
Let's just say Chris isn't going to feel comfortable
about his position until somebody says, hey, you won.
Yeah, that spell pierced was so, so big.
Tony Portolan shaking his head.
Tony's still kicking himself for not casting it there.
Yeah, I mean, keep in mind, this has been a marathon
of a match.
We're talking about game five here, so much on the line.
And a huge day slash weekend for these guys, too.
Of course.
I mean, these tournaments can be exhausting.
I mean, imagine the mental energy that they're
expending every single round after round.
Absolutely.
Now, if you're Chris Larsen, I mean,
he's played this game very well.
It looks like he's so far done an excellent job kind
of coming back from the blunder in game number four.
And if you can just answer everything that Tony can do,
He can still take this one down.
Seven mana.
What is he doing?
Oh, he's turning the fable passage.
Actually, maybe bossing, say?
Yeah.
I have no idea what's going on.
He tapped a lot of extra mana, that's why.
Right.
Let's see.
Yeah, he's debating whether or not he wants to play out the Mightform Harmonizer.
He doesn't.
Just a 2-2.
He wants to try to steal it.
Yeah.
And Chris Larson needs to just be absolutely super careful here.
Don't attack if you don't have to.
How can you lose this game from this point?
Exactly.
Mightform Harmonizer certainly is one of those cards.
play this like four. You should talk for us. Two of these days in play, right?
Thank you, see Christopher's asking some questions here. Apologies for the
language there. He's using it. There is no water pressure right now. Yes. All right.
So Superior Spider-Man and he knows that bitter triumph won't resolve given the
spell Pierce in Tony Portolan's hand. What is he gonna copy? There's a quantum
rhythm in the graveyard I believe. Yeah there is. Is there something else that he
wants instead? He's gonna get another deceit and that is huge. Oh man. Perhaps
main way of victory for Tony. Yes. That shows not to play it last turn and
And now it's in the graveyard.
OK, drawing some cards here.
Finally, Spell Pierce.
Yeah, and Christopher says that's fine,
and then plays a land so we can keep his removal spell.
Absolutely.
All right, Christopher Larson is locked in here.
Chris is now attacking.
He's got the bitter triumph here,
and he knows Tony's hand.
Tony not happy with this draw here.
What he's handed steam vents plus a card off the top plus the card he drew off the top my form harmonizer would not get it done
That's the second bossing say here. So this is two activations. I mean Chris horse a lot of days at 12
Yet he has mana for does he a man for two activations leave so
Yeah, he does
So that's half of Chris's life total here
Yeah. Okay. Nobody's gonna pass. He's playing defense here. Alright, Chris Larson, though,
he's the one who has action still. He's got the winter night stories in hand. He's even
got the reef in play. If he feels like he's ready to kind of close things out for damage.
I think he's considering killing the 4-4 fable passage here to try to clear the way.
And then from the block on the 2-2. Right, it's 4-4. Right, because if you kill the 4-4,
and then you attack with all three of your creatures, including the reef.
You have to block the tutu, which then means Tony Portolan needs to make a
tutu and then somehow get that big enough to actually kill Chris Larson in one attack.
That's right. And right now, Chris is thinking about if that's possible.
And Tony Portolan, he knows about... Tony Portolan only has steam vents in hand.
There are no fetchlands. There is no air bender, there's no
Ascension Red Earthbender Ascension there isn't a nice tol explore on the battlefield
Okay, Christopher Larson is gonna go for
I mean he's honestly the last game has left him in this state of like
How did this go wrong?
Yeah, you know, I mean Tony could top deck, you know star charts or something like that
And all of a sudden he gets to see a
Absolute stock up any that we need one of those cards and somehow piece together the combo here
Can Chris play it a little bit slower here instead?
But keep in mind, I mean, with two bossing same play,
this attacking strategy isn't going
to be very good for much longer.
Right.
So what he's doing now is he's saying, OK,
if you draw stock up or star charts,
you get the two perfect cards that I can think of.
How much mana will you have left over
and can you kill me?
Yeah, I mean, might form harmonizer with full bore
into the steam vents.
That's 14 damage, right?
You don't even need the fetch land.
So if he can piece that together, certainly that would work.
And he is going for it though.
He killed the 4-4 land and discarded the winter night stories here.
Larson has to it's interesting because he has to play this safe
and not make the same mistake.
But also you don't want to overdo it and that's a land too.
So this gets really, really interesting is Larson just going to force it here.
He's like, I have nothing left.
I'm going to activate this reef attack, four shoot a block.
Can you deal 12 damage to me with just the steam vents in your hand. Yeah
You know there is part of you that just says, you know if you can do that
You're supposed to win the approach for not me. Yeah
Say congratulations, I mean and Tony's cast a bunch of his car drop spells already, right?
Consult with there was the double stock upturned. Yes
this.
The precision to activate the reef is what he's thinking about.
Yeah, and this isn't a spot where Chris is necessarily in the driver's seat like the
way he was in that previous game.
If he doesn't attack and plays it defensively and plays it slow, Tony can come back by
just animating a bunch of lands and being far too many blockers in play.
Christopher Larson is tortured, but he's going for it.
He fires up the reef, attacks with all three.
going to mill himself this time. Yeah, there's winter night stories in the back,
so you probably just want to target yourself. Whoa.
It's hard.
Holy smokes.
This is the attack here of the tournament.
Yeah, I think the real thought process is just A, he has to draw a draw to into the
perfect card.
He's going for it. Okay. Here we go. 12 damage coming across
That means Tony must block has to block Tony has one draw step here
And if a masses combo and he needs to find two carts, right?
He needs consult the star charts or stock up here like he can't just do it off of one single top deck
Does he find a card draw spell?
It's sold by lanterns. So we don't know yet. Yeah, so if that finds a stock up
I suppose you can still do it
With the steam vents a man is just getting a little tight, right?
You have to pay one to get the card off of that you cycle the soul guy lantern into stock up or consult the star charge
Can he find something right now?
He put it down on the table. We don't know
He's counting man. Is this consult?
No, it's not and Christopher Larson
The biggest sigh of relief in magic history comes from Christopher Larson as his team
mobs him.
I mean, to lose this finals would have been absolutely brutal, but Chris Larson played
that game incredibly despite what happened in game four and now he is your pro-tour
champion.
Oscar Christensen gives him a big hug and a big lift!
Unbelievable. What a finals from both of our players.
And another amazing finish for Tony Portolan as well.
I mean, what an incredible fight, right?
Took him all the way to five.
We thought it was over 20 minutes ago.
So did he.
That was the problem is that he also thought it was over 20 minutes ago and I honestly,
I cannot imagine the amount of fortitude you need to have to bring yourself back into the
moment and try to think it through.
I mean, you could see what he was going through on that last turn.
You don't want to overdo it, right?
You don't want to now play scared and say, well, I messed up before and I don't want
to give him that opening.
And all of a sudden he's like, activate bossing,
say twice go and you're like, well, now I don't have any attacks.
Absolutely.
And the game starts to fall away from you.
And ultimately he did find the line.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the years of experience, right?
Because when you look at that spot, you're just thinking,
oh, game four, I thought I was so far ahead.
I didn't think there was a world where I could lose from this spot.
So he didn't take that extra little bit of time
to figure out exactly what the perfect play was in that turn.
And of course, he absolutely regretted that play.
So for that final turn, going through all the motions here,
going through all the cycles,
recognizing that there's still a chance
he can lose that game, right?
With the right group of cards,
but Tony would have to draw the perfect group of cards.
And sadly, and unfortunately,
he wasn't able to get there,
but Chris, I love the way that he went for it.
He wasn't scared, right?
It's so easy to be scared there
after that devastating loss in game four.
Absolutely went for it there, beautifully played,
and it looked like he wasn't really rattled at all
after what happened in the previous game.
Yeah, really great.
He found the line and got across the finish line.
Christopher Larson is your champion.
That's it for us in the booth.
Let's head over to the news desk with Maria.
Hey, thank you so much.
What an incredible finals here.
And that might actually even be understating it, Monny.
That was fantastic.
Just a full two hour nearly.
Yeah.
Best of five back and forth
and just, it really was the perfect capstone
to what was already just an incredible weekend.
Yeah, zooming a little bit out from this finals here
at the weekend, for you, what is the story?
What is the main takeaway?
I think it's the health of standard.
I think it's the storylines coming into the weekend
of Cub or Anti-Cub, and then as the Cub decks fell,
which Anti-Cub reigns supreme?
If you ask a million magic players,
I don't think a single person would predict
going in a week ago.
Right. An excruciator versus harmonizer finals, but also at the same time, it's the success
years of hard careers and long careers being paid off. Team Cosmos Heavy Play formed right
after Javier Dominguez won the World Championship. They haven't had a title yet, so this is
their first championship as a team. It's all just incredible stuff.
All right, it's time to hand out a trophy.
I'm going to pass it on over to Cedric Phillips
with our trophy presentation.
Thank you so much, Maria.
The champ is here.
Pro Tour, Lauren Eclipse champion,
the big day, Christopher Larson.
Yeah.
All right, big guy.
You just told me you're sitting here and you're like,
oh gosh, I can only think about the game that I think I threw away.
You can't even be happy.
What are you thinking about over there?
The game I threw away game for.
I'm not thinking about anything else.
I'll give you one thing.
But what I really think is that the fact that I'm standing here
means that the Spanish demon trap worked.
If you ever experienced the thing that you come to Monday,
you're late for a tournament and you go into a room
and you're like, hey guys, what are we playing?
And they all go like cheers.
DEMONS!
And you think you're getting trolled? Apparently that's a real thing.
Uh, extremely real thing. Your deck was fantastic.
You played beautifully. I know you're frustrated about that fourth game.
I know you'll review it a bunch, but...
Shout out to the teammates for you and tell us more about this deck.
I mean, how did you guys get here?
We got here by having a world champion who once upon a time played a six-man demon,
and suddenly none of the Spanish people will let it go.
They're all trying to recur it in.
and working with a team of Cosmos who are well-dedicated,
well-prepared, and have some of the best people
on the world sitting by your side.
You don't have to do much to know
crack a pack in once in a while and give your opinion.
I promise you, this is more perfect to be in his mind
for a team-fucking effort.
Well, I'll say this, you're constructed like fantastic,
but we can't overlook the limited record.
Six and oh, six and oh, maybe you're under estimate
limited game a little bit. It's a very dominating display. No, no, that's it. All I need to do is
prank packs. All I do is prank packs and want to draft. And I just have the best of seem to tell
me the constructed thing. And that is the beauty of the game. It's not all about a magic. It's
also about the gathering. And that is what we're here for. Well, I know your team is off to
the side here. So that gathering that you mentioned, you get to do it with this trophy
that you learned my friend. Pro Tour! Lorwin Eclipse Champion, Christopher Larson. Soak it in, buddy. Boom!
You heard him say it there, it's all about the gathering.
After a full five game final, congratulations once again to Christopher Larson as he hoists
It's a trophy. Very carefully. Here at Pro Tour, Lorwen Clips.
What a fantastic finals and what a way to end the weekend.
finals will certainly go down as one of the best in history. Congratulations once again to
Christopher Larson. And what a way too to kick off a new season of competitive magic from Frosty
Richmond, Virginia for one of the coldest weekends of the year featured some of the hottest magics
from a draft format that felt like visiting old friends to a gigantic standard that boasted a
bevy of beautiful decks. It seemed you could play just about anything. But if you wanted to win,
I guess you should have been playing the deck. No one really saw coming to mere excruciator.
After the dust settled and the number of players dwindled from 305 to just one,
only Christopher Larson remained standing, the champion of Pro Tour Lorwin Eclipsed,
crowning a fantastic magic career that already featured an utterly fantastic resume.
And he put on quite a show for us to get there today too.
Next up is Magic on Vegas. I hope to see you there.
Thanks so much for watching everyone. Have a great night.