The hall is empty as the StarCityGames.com Los Angeles has come to a close. Many new champions were crowned today as Daniel Choi won the Standard Open with Mono Red, John Kassari—who also made the Standard Open Top 8—won the Legacy Open with Punishing Maverick, and California natives Chris Atashian and Eugene Koo each took home a Draft Challenge winner’s plaque.
We hope you had a great time following the @SCGLive team’s coverage of #SCGLA and we look forward to seeing you next weekend at #SCGDC!
John Kassari is on his second Top 8 of the weekend, but he fell short of the title in standard. He’s hoping to there in the finals of the Legacy Open against William Miller’s U/W Stoneblade, a deck that has been crushing the last few Legacy Opens.
After an absolutely grueling—around 90 minutes—Maverick mirror match, Jacob Kory is feeling pretty good about his chances against William Miller’s U/W Stoneblade deck. According to him, it’s very favorable.
Though they’ve had a successful tournament, neither of these players is very experienced in this particular matchup, so it would be interesting to see how they adjusted to the new challenge. Ryan, playing Reanimator won the roll and both players kept.
There’s a lot on the line in the final round of the swiss. The winner of this match will have enough points to make it into the Top 8, tiebreakers willing.
Ethan and Ryan squared off in the penultimate round with Top 8 hopes alive and well. A win for either player would likely put them in position to possibly draw into the playoffs.
Brad Strickman is an old school player who believes in one thing: have fun. He wants to win, but he wants to do it on his own terms, and he developed the deck he played today over many months.
Konan was out of the gates early with Champion of the Parish. Grim Lavamancer matched it, but Konan’s second champion made the first bigger and he attacked for two. Konan didn’t play a second land.
It may be very early in the morning, but Noah and Konan are ready to go to war in a U/W mirror match. Konan won the roll and led with Seachrome Coast. Noah matched the land and played Delver of Secrets.
Andrej Selivra (henceforth referred to as Lamppost) and Noah Walters squared off for the right to move advance in the quest to become the StarCityGames.com Los Angeles Standard Open Champion.
The top of the standings are a mess, littered with players sitting on the bubble at 21 points. That means most of them have to play if they don’t want to risk drawing their way out of the Top 8, and that we get to bring you some sweet win-and-in games.
The Magic Show has an exclusive preview to show you and will broadcast tonight on SCGLive after the last round of Swiss. The card itself can be seen here. Just click the link!
Daniel Choi is undefeated coming into this round, making him a virtual lock with just one more Swiss round to go. His opponent, Andrej Selivra, is 6-0-1 and would like to be known as Lamppost.
Northern California native David Doberne won the roll against Southern Californian Yurien Seyssel. David kept his opener, but Yurien had to double mulligan.
Cleveland native Mark Morrison found himself on the right (west) side of the country this winter weekend. Mark’s concoction came out as a combination of the Puresteel aggro shell topped off with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas to create an aggressive army with enough late-game resilience to seal the win against any opponent.
Las Vegas native and StarCityGames.com Open Series regular Chris Higashi has an undying love for control decks. Even in a format ruled by aggro-control, Chris is rocking a polychromatic control deck reminiscent of one Gerry Thompson played in the recent Charlotte Invitational.
Hexproof is playing a major role in Constructed these days. Since you're likely to run into multiple untargetable creatures throughout the tournament, how should you prepare to beat them?
Las Vegas Standard Open Champion Jonathan Kornacki continues to dance with who brought him, staunchly sticking with his U/B Control deck. He’s made lots of changes as the metagame has evolved over the last few months and shared his expertise with us today.