Day 1 saw Richard "Aaron" Wayne take the Standard title at the first StarCityGames.com Open event held in St. Louis. Joining him at the victory dais after Legacy? Minnesota's Pat McGregor! He bested 127 other competitors over seven rounds and three single elimination matches to steal the title with his Aggro Loam deck.
Based around Life from the Loam Pat's deck choice was a popular one. No less than four decks in the Top 8 were playing the Ravnica sorcery including his Quarterfinals and Finals opponents. The weekend was a resounding success! Congratulations to Pat and Aaron and we'll see you all in Los Angeles on January 2-3!
Owen Turtenwald had managed to escape a 43 Land mirror match in the Quarterfinals. He squared off against Mark Larson playing Zoo in the Semifinals and was a definite favorite to win.
The match threatened to be a grueling drawn out affair as the opponents were geared to beat creature-based strategies while playing few attackers themselves.
Because the tournament had had the maximum allowable number of players to be seven rounds 128 none of the 5-1 players could afford to intentionally draw into the Top 8. That meant both Chase and Sam needed a win to have a shot at playing the single elimination rounds.
With Legacy's wide open card pool including some wacky deck designs we checked back in today to see which cards were hard to keep in stock for Legacy competition.
The question many wondered leading in to the inaugural 2010 event in St. Louis was "Would players travel to compete for the big prizes?" The resounding answer midway through day two was "YES!"
On Saturday Mike Nyberg became one of just eight individuals to make the final table of the first StarCityGames.com Open of the 2010 season. On Sunday he found himself in contention to wind up back at that table at 2-0-1 headed into the fourth round of play.
The opening turns of a red mirror are a cavalcade of creatures and burn spells with the players trying to figure out which one of them is the beatdown and which one of them is supposed to play control.
Richard Wayne had burned a path to the Top 8 with a red deck mostly of his own design. Many an opponent had been left aflame in his wake and he was hoping to put Mike Nyberg in that exact same spot. Nyberg however was packing the power of Jund.
It was a battle of the Dans and an audience member proved just how comical that could be when he walked up and said "Good luck Dan!" Both players stared at him unsure of who he was referring to specifically.
It was a battle of the Dans and an audience member proved just how comical that could be when he walked up and said "Good luck Dan!" Both players stared at him unsure of who he was referring to specifically.
Garner Perigo roared into this round with his Boros deck versus Luke Hilmes' G/W Tokens deck. More than just a Top 8 berth was on the line - Garner needed tattoo money.
Richard unfurled a 2009s Top 8 competitor playmat across the table; the rubber mat was less than a week old but it did Mr. Wayne no good in winning the die roll.
It was a Feature Match amongst friends with Brandon Scheel and Scott Bielick not only regularly testing together in Ames Iowa but having ridden in the very same car to St. Louis.
Adam Cai playing Monogreen Eldrazi drove 9 hours with his friends to play in the Open events this weekend and this round he's facing off against Tom Ross piloting a Naya deck.
Richard Feldman was piloting a Grixis control deck but made room in his Sideboard for other matchups by taking out some graveyard hate. Guess which deck Chase Lamm is playing...
Your StarCityGames.com coverage crew took a quick gander around the room this morning and found a host of sights and faces familiar to the StarCityGames.com community.
During the Lorwyn Block Constructed season Kenny Castor managed to make the Top 8 of Grand Prix-Denver his first premier level Top 8. Michael Pozsgay was somewhat new to Magic though he had already developed a fierce reputation as a gamer.
Live from the StarCityGames.com 10k Weekend in St. Louis we ask Brandon Scheel Tom Ross Brad Nelson Tommy Kolowith Brian Boss and Kenny Castor what the best deck in Standard is.