It’s all over! Brandon Chreptyk took home the Standard Open title, driving his U/W Delver deck through a star-studded Top 8 featuring David Sharfman, Thomas Ma and his finals opponent Craig Wescoe.
Chreptyk was joined by a host of winners who scored big in the Gold Rush, including Kyle Falbo, Julian Ontiveros, Joe Black, Josh Napper, and Drew Amburgey among others who opened big-ticket cards. We hope you had a wonderful time following the #GPSLC action with with our @SCGLive coverage team of Matthias Hunt and Patrick Sullivan, because we had a great time here in Salt Lake City! Congratulations to all the winners and we hope to see you all in Des Moines next weekend!
The early game was a flurry of trades between Craig’s W/B Tokens deck and Bryan’s Naya Pod deck as Go for the Throat tore Birds of Paradise from the sky and Mortarpod picked off Champion of the Parish.
Joe Loster entered this final round needing a win to sneak into the Top 8 with his Naya Pod deck, while a win for Robbie would give him a shot at the Top 16 and more money to bling out his U/W Delver deck.
StarCityGames.com’s Jared Sylva and Kali Anderson set up a special surprise for all the judges at Grand Prix Salt Lake City. One of every judge foil promo from the last seven years was inserted into special Judge Gold Rush packets and handed out at the end-of-night meeting, giving the deserving judges a chance at their own beautiful, shiny prizes!
Round seven found us a pair of west coast players fighting for a run at the Top 8 with California’s Joe Black facing down Logan, Utah’s Matt Young. Joe had to take a mulligan with his Esper Delver deck while Matt and his Naya Pod deck were ready to go.
Zombies have taken up residence as one of the most popular aggressive decks in Standard, but we hadn’t seen much in the way of other undead tribes. That changed this weekend when Adena Chernosky’s Vampires jumped out to a 4-0 start on the first day of her very first Grand Prix yesterday without the help of any byes.
It’s a known fact that high-level archmage Craig Wescoe loves attacking with white creatures. Wescoe’s expertise with the archetype has given him the insight to change the traditional U/W Humans aggro deck into a token-heavy build for today’s event.
Grand Prix Salt Lake City’s Gold Rush promotion gave players got a shot at opening the Power Nine, and all kinds of cool cards from Magic’s past fledgling years. We were able to catch a lot of opens on camera for everyone to enjoy in the nostalgia. Check it out below!
Cedric Phillips’ deck plays the full complement of Lingering Souls, but is surprisingly not Esper. Instead, his deck—built by master deck designer Conley Woods—jams the powerful spirit-maker into a G/ W/B Ramp shell.
Great formats like the current Standard format are such a blessing for Magic with a plethora of great decks across every color and archetype. Join Las Vegas archmage Chris Higashi as he takes a new deck for a spin in this weekend's main event.
The main attraction of this weekend’s Grand Prix—aside from the Grand Prix itself, I suppose—is the Gold Rush promotion StarCityGames.com put on to give back to the Magic players and the community that make the game as awesome as it is.
New customer? Start here!
