Well what a weekend... I managed to take my menagerie of non magical zoo creatures to a 3 - 0 finish in Pauper and won the event. This is only the second time I have won FNM Relax and it feels good to have done so with a bunch of vanilla animals and a few squadron Hawks.
We have a new Pro Tour champion who played a deck called Eggs or now Second Breakfast. Didn't mention that during my recent blogs on Modern. I would like to say that I had never heard of the deck before but that would be untrue, I just didn't take it seriously - I think everyone will take it seriously now! Keeping a no land hand and suspending 2 Lotus Blooms was pretty awesome I have to say...
I can wait three turns for a Black Lotus, sure.
The Pro Tour is over until Gatecrash and we have events at home which are far more pressing. Saturday and Sunday see the first Patriot Sheffield Invitational. I wanted to just spend a minute talking about the invitational, what inspired it, and who has been invited.
I watched SCGLive one weekend and saw some truly bad players playing some bad decks. My first thought was "Wow we can do so much better than this" and then I thought "Why don't we?" Patriot Sheffield is not Star City Games, but everything has to start somewhere and why should we not have invitational tournaments because we live in the UK?
I took the idea to Jim and Paul at Patriot and gave them a basic rundown of what I was thinking. They liked the idea and had some really good questions with regards to formats etc. We discussed it for a while and Paul said he could come up with an attractive sponsorship package for the "winners" and the scene was set.
The invitational is a serious challenge designed to test players ability to play Magic over 4 different formats with the knowledge that if they don't "Bring It" on day one it is all over, they are going home, no day 2 for you.
As to who has been invited this was based on 2 factors - the players general results (originally I was going to base it on FNM results, so Glad I got talked out of that) and for people who have contributed to the Magic community in Sheffield by turning up and having a go. Here for the first time is the list of players who have been invited:
Steve McAleer
Andy Mather
Mike Boon
Grzegorz Flis
Ben Pearson
Owen Debenham
John Roberts
Pengyi Liang
Patrick Bateman
Adam Pollard
Keith Miller
Ian Richardson
Stephen Kay
John Kay
Richard Tinsley
Robert Tinsley
Alastair Kennedy
Zead Said
Sarah Sidaway
Michael Radford
Joe Alexander
Jimmy Wild
Daniel Cocking
Richard Fuller
Christopher Parks
Ollie Firth
Lee Parker
Russell Clarke
Diarmuid Verrier
Fabian Quinn
Piran Oliver
James Brook
Matt Cooper
Andy Sims
Dave Hancock
Neil Lockwood
Bryan Connolly
Thomas Ellis
Michael Readhead
Callum Bilbe
I watched SCGLive one weekend and saw some truly bad players playing some bad decks. My first thought was "Wow we can do so much better than this" and then I thought "Why don't we?" Patriot Sheffield is not Star City Games, but everything has to start somewhere and why should we not have invitational tournaments because we live in the UK?
I took the idea to Jim and Paul at Patriot and gave them a basic rundown of what I was thinking. They liked the idea and had some really good questions with regards to formats etc. We discussed it for a while and Paul said he could come up with an attractive sponsorship package for the "winners" and the scene was set.
The invitational is a serious challenge designed to test players ability to play Magic over 4 different formats with the knowledge that if they don't "Bring It" on day one it is all over, they are going home, no day 2 for you.
As to who has been invited this was based on 2 factors - the players general results (originally I was going to base it on FNM results, so Glad I got talked out of that) and for people who have contributed to the Magic community in Sheffield by turning up and having a go. Here for the first time is the list of players who have been invited:
Steve McAleer
Andy Mather
Mike Boon
Grzegorz Flis
Ben Pearson
Owen Debenham
John Roberts
Pengyi Liang
Patrick Bateman
Adam Pollard
Keith Miller
Ian Richardson
Stephen Kay
John Kay
Richard Tinsley
Robert Tinsley
Alastair Kennedy
Zead Said
Sarah Sidaway
Michael Radford
Joe Alexander
Jimmy Wild
Daniel Cocking
Richard Fuller
Christopher Parks
Ollie Firth
Lee Parker
Russell Clarke
Diarmuid Verrier
Fabian Quinn
Piran Oliver
James Brook
Matt Cooper
Andy Sims
Dave Hancock
Neil Lockwood
Bryan Connolly
Thomas Ellis
Michael Readhead
Callum Bilbe
Should this prove to be a success we will look to getting other stores interested in the concept and then we can look at team competitions like they are now doing at GP. We will also have a feature match table which will be videoed and put up on You Tube after the event. the purpose of this event is to promote high level play in Sheffield and give other places something to talk about.
In other news, this Friday at FNM Relax it is 2 Headed Giant and I have a little bit of Jund Midrange to play which looks like this:
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Rootbound Crag
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Swamp
23 Lands
2 Blood Artist
3 Dreg Mangler
2 Olivia Voldaren
2 Desecration Demon
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Rakdos Lord of Riots
1 Reaper form the Abyss
1 Griselbrand
16 Creatures
4 Tragic Slip
1 Devils Play
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Rakdos's Return
3 Dreadbore
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Rakdos Charm
3 Farseek
17 Instants/Sorcery
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Garruk Relentless
4 Planeswalkers
If you are not in the invitational still come down and cheer on your favourites, there is a lot of Magic talent on display. It may not be Pro Tour but it is in our own back yard. Support Sheffield and its players. Hope to see you there...
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