Gp Oakland results

[Gary Lynch]

What are peoples thoughts on the gp top 8?

I didn't expect so much cascade. Another interesting deck by conley woods. Obv bunch of zoo decks, if enough people play it some of then will do well.

Stance lack of control decks ( faires/teachings). Anyone have any idea why?? Too many different things for them to beat perhaps??

[Gary Lynch]

Appologies for the spelling. Not east typing on the iPhone while at work.

[Thomas David Baker]

Having actually been at the GP and watched a lot of the matches I feel like I should have some great insight here but I only noticed one really obvious thing ... Play the combo deck that no one is packing hate for!

Travis Woo (Living End, losing semi-finalist) was rinsing it up attacking into no blockers with Jungle Weaver and Valley Rannet and laughing in the face of things like Engineered Explosives. That was when his opponents had no hate for him. But when Adam Yurchick (losing finalist, Thopter Depths) started game 2 of the semi-final with a Leyline of the Void in play you felt like he had basically no chance.

Cedric Phillips (Dredge, 9th) seemed like he had more hope against the hate, but it might just be that he talks a good game. I heard him chatting about how Bojuka Bog and Leyline of the Void were the hardest things for him to play around. His best contribution was the good-humored explosion of grief and rage when he found out Saito beat him into Top 8 by 0.08% (not 8% but actually 0.08) on the first tiebreaker!

I'm not really sure how Tomaharu Saito (Hypergenesis, Losing Quarter-Finalist) managed to do so well. Every time I came over to watch one of his games he seemed to be mulliganing to four. I did see him swing with Progenitus and Sakashima copying Progenitus at one point which was fairly sweet.

I liked what little I saw of Conley Woods' deck. If only because it maindecks Samurai of the Pale Curtain and I have been playing that in Extended online in my cheapo White Weenie deck.

I was most impressed with Matt Nass (Elves Combo, Winner). I watched quite a lot of his matches because he was constantly on Table 1 (his first loss came in round 12 or something crazy). He knew the deck inside out and back to front and could do even the complex interactions very fast. He was noticeably more hesitant once he had real crowds watching him in the Top 8 but basically he just Primal Command-ed everybody's lands on top of their deck all day. I did see a guy get Chalice of the Void for 1 down against him but the guy himself blew it up opening the door for Elves to go off so I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't done that. I didn't watch the 2 rounds (?) he lost. They came after he was locked for Top 8 anyway I think.

I have one tip if you are playing Scapeshift and you are about to lose to Zoo. Play a land. Then go into the tank for about 10 minutes (literally). Then Scapeshift knocking your opponent to 2. Then play a mountain from your hand triggering Valakut for the win and get involved in a judge call until everyone is really confused . I don't know for sure if that it what the guy did because I couldn't remember if he'd played a land or not either. But he definitely got a win after all the arguing back and forth was over. The Zoo player took game 3, though.

Seeing as this has turned into my GP Oakland report I'll just add that Geoff Fletcher was there with 3 New Zealand guys going to Oakland and San Diego which he is qualified for. Which was cool. Geoff and one of the guys have some secret Standard tech for San Diego they are testing out and as I left them on Sunday they were trying to win their third box of Worldwake in the side events. My best achievement was I managed to lose the final of a draft where Jonathan Loucks was passing to me.

How many more Extended PTQs before it's all-Standard all-the-time? PT San Diego is Standard, Nats qualifiers are Standard, and so are the PTQs Jason just posted. Which is a shame because Extended seems way more fun (if even more expensive).

[Thomas David Baker]

Chapin says: "the format is more and more being stretched between hyper-aggressive Zoo decks and exceptionally dangerous Thopter-Depths decks. This is relevant because the cards that are good against one are generally the exact opposite of the ones that are good against the other. This can put a strain on a Control player. As long as this continues to hinder Control players, I think we are going to keep seeing various combo decks each taking a turn, though Elves is probably the best combo deck (outside of Thopter-Depths), as it is not so easily hated out as Scapeshift."