I have to say, even though I'm so slow on this and the thread is essentially a ghost town; this is really the best coverage I've seen to date. There is double the magic than normal. The commentators are pretty knowledgeable of the format and LSV has had some good points about it for people starting out with his "LSV's Keys" section. The content is fresh. The transitions are great. The deck overlays are the best yet (the only thing making it better would be a hand-reporter in the feature match area like on the PT). I hope this level of coverage continues in the future.
Also best moment is when they didn't have a Black 2/2 Flying Vampire token for Sorins -2 so they did this:
Going through the VODS of day 1 now. Coverage off of the bat looks good, the transitions with animated cards seem better than normal, and I lol'd at the Abzan Company deck they displayed twice with a Jund maindeck and Company sideboard.
LSV starting in round 1 is great though!
I especially appreciated Andy Cooperfauss trying to type labels for the Cavern of Souls on screen and moving them around by hand. that was a nice touch (and amusing at the same time)
I haven't got there yet. One cool thing I've seen is people using tokens to mark a Cavern by slipping it in the sleeve. Since the name is at the top of the token like "Angel", "Zombie", or "Wolf" it works really well.
Also were Marshal and Huey doing coverage from inside a bathroom?? These are some diverse matchups though. GW Hatebears vs Zoo. BubbleHulk vs Doran???? This is like FNM level of diversity!
Going through the VODS of day 1 now. Coverage off of the bat looks good, the transitions with animated cards seem better than normal, and I lol'd at the Abzan Company deck they displayed twice with a Jund maindeck and Company sideboard.
*Two decklists are missing: Andrew Jeffries (14th) and Andrew Lillig (18th). TomCourtenay said Jeffries is on AN, I'll take his word for it.
Combined
Jund/Abzan/Rock 1111111
Affinity 111111
Merfolk 11111
Naya Burn 11111
UG Infect 11111
Scapeshift 11111
Jeskai 11111
Abzan Company 1111
Bant Eldrazi 111
Ad Nauseam 11
Goryo's Vengeance 11
RG Tron 11
Blue Moon 11
Suicide Zoo 1
Bushwhacker Zoo 1
BG Elves 1
GW Tokens 1
GW Hatebears 1
Company Zoo 1
Bant Knightfall 1
Kiki Chord 1
Grixis Delver 1
Grixis Control 1
Comments:
- The top tier is the same as it's always been. Jund, Affinity, Burn, Infect are all up there. Merfolk goes in and out of tier 1 all the time.
- Blue-based decks are doing much better thanks to AV and Nahiri. Blue Moon and Grixis (Delver/Control) both make great use of it, especially when you draw Goblin Dark-Dwellers after unsuspending it . Nahiri is pretty much the stock wincon of Jeskai now. Sometimes it's paired with AV, sometimes it's not, sometimes AV is SBed. There even was one Jeskai deck that mained AV without Nahiri.
- Sword of the Meek was a bust as far as unbans go. I stand by what I've said in the Indianapolis thread: Nahiri is just a better wincon. The cost for playing Nahiri is minuscule: you just have to put 1 Emrakul in your deck and play red. With Thopter Sword, you have to replace a bunch of 7/10 cards with cards that can vary from 3/10 to 10/10 - cards like Muddle the Mixture, Academy Ruins, Thirst for Knowledge. It's just higher variance. Nevertheless, no harm was done by unbanning Sword, so no objections there.
- Eldrazi is still a deck. You can convert a pre-ban Eldrazi deck into one that's legal now: UW becomes Bant with Ancient Stirrings and Noble Hierarch, while RG is the same as it was before, just with more Bolts.
- There are fewer RG Tron/RG Valakut decks than there were at SCG Indianapolis. In particular there were 0 RG Valakut decks in the top 32 of either event. I think the deck was overhyped for Indianapolis, it's a decent tier 2 deck which got a consistency tool in Oath of Nissa, that's all.
- Ad Nauseam winning GP Charlotte was the high point for me. In hindsight it seemed like a good meta choice: it beats blue decks pretty handily due to its instant-speed win and endless Pact backups. Company decks are also good matchups; the main advantage that Company decks have is being able to outgrind removal with the namesake card, but against a spell-based combo like AN, Company loses its shine since AN won't be actively killing creatures, and it isn't fast enough to race AN. The AN player who won the GP lost only 1 game in the top 8, and the cause of the loss was his own deck crapping on him (Spoils of the Vault exiling both wincons).
That's pretty much it. And there was a snaffu with the tournament software at charlotte, made a bunch of people drop and round four was randomly paired. And an awesome 13 year old on affinity lost in the finals.
Thanks also. I am beginning to go trough all of the overage myself now. Should keep me busy for a few days at least.
Also does anyone have the Baby Eldrazi list?? I just finished RG Eldrazi and after playing it a lot in the last week it has been feeling really solid, but Baby is putting up some results so I'm wondering if I made some horrible long term mistake.
Shame the software went down. Were there filler games during the downtime or am I going to have to sift through the coverage vods? I hear the CFB coverage was better than normal?
Just saw that any idea what happened??
As far as I know their software went down causing them to have to repair everyone randomly. This made people upset so one round later they allowed people to drop and play in side events for free all weekend. 6-3 also made day 2 because of it. There is a lot better explanations in this thread and reddit if you look around.
Shame the software went down. Were there filler games during the downtime or am I going to have to sift through the coverage vods?
No shifting necessary because GP Charlotte had no video coverage to begin with. Which was actually probably lucky for them considering the circumstances.
Shame the software went down. Were there filler games during the downtime or am I going to have to sift through the coverage vods? I hear the CFB coverage was better than normal?
I'm going to be away most of the day and will have to read through here and coverage on my phone. Can someone just post what's on camera for each round? I'm probably going to skim through the vods myself but it'll just help a lot. Other people might appreciate it too.
Grand Prix Trial Winning Decklists Charlotte
By the numbers:
Affinity 2
Grixis Delver 2 - second list with deathshadow main
Infect 1
nacatl burn 1
naya zoo company 1
gr tron 2
Kiki chord 2
eldrazi rg 1
grixis midrange/goodstuff 1
elves company 1
jeskai ascendancy storm 1
one drop zoo/burn with nacatl and kird apes 1
eldrazi and taxes 1
living end 1
Blue moon splash goyfs 1
taking turns 1
ur storm 1
They release what won the last chance qualifiers on Friday night right, not tomorrow sometime?
I thought it was Saturday and have had the stream open for an hour now waiting for it to start......
not sure if I've ever seen them release what won last trials at all
I know I've seen it before. Maybe I'm getting my events mixed up. Weren't the GP's near the end of last year reported? I remember Zac Elsik winning one with Bubble Hulk and everyone going crazy for that deck.
I hope RG Tron does poorly, but I don't think it will
Nothing more fun than having a deck prey on interactive, fun decks that has a bunch of lopsided matchups itself
I like Tron's metagame presence. It's good to have a big-mana deck to regulate fair, grindy, controlling/midrange strategies. It's much harder to find a flat 55-45 "best deck" in Modern when you have decks like Tron to consider.
Hopefully RG Eldrazi also finds a nice home in Modern and those two can battle it out for the best big-mana deck. That would make me really happy.
I don't see thopter sword doing particularly well - but it could show up in limited numbers. My experience against it has been that it is just too slow and the parts of the combo are not good enough on their own to offer a consistently fast strategy.
I wonder if we don't see a bit more blood moon given valakut and tron decks performed well recently.
Blue moon time to shine?
I have seen quite a bit of Thing in the Ice blue moon decks cropping up locally. It has promise, but is still very untuned. Perhaps someone can break it this time.
Lets hope Abzan Company can make a resurgence from it's poor showing last week! On the contrary, I'm all for Tron smashing face and taking a GP down for once. It is promising with the results it's been having lately but the amount of people ready for it are most likely going to hate it out big-time.
Also bold predictions: Thoptor-sword will continue to do nothing or will this be its breakout? Any thoughts on this?
I would have been at Charlotte but I lost in the GPT finals and didn't get the byes. Hope everyone else there does well though!
Also best moment is when they didn't have a Black 2/2 Flying Vampire token for Sorins -2 so they did this:
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Also were Marshal and Huey doing coverage from inside a bathroom?? These are some diverse matchups though. GW Hatebears vs Zoo. BubbleHulk vs Doran???? This is like FNM level of diversity!
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
LSV starting in round 1 is great though!
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Also does anyone have the Baby Eldrazi list?? I just finished RG Eldrazi and after playing it a lot in the last week it has been feeling really solid, but Baby is putting up some results so I'm wondering if I made some horrible long term mistake.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Ah got them mixed up. That's lucky then.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
I thought it was Saturday and have had the stream open for an hour now waiting for it to start......
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
I have seen quite a bit of Thing in the Ice blue moon decks cropping up locally. It has promise, but is still very untuned. Perhaps someone can break it this time.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Also bold predictions: Thoptor-sword will continue to do nothing or will this be its breakout? Any thoughts on this?
I would have been at Charlotte but I lost in the GPT finals and didn't get the byes. Hope everyone else there does well though!
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge