Gifts Ungiven

I actually found out about this one from a Google ad on my own site:

Superstars Game Center is having a $5K Standard tournament. Click here for their information page.

The $5K is structured as a two-stage event, with three different feeder tournaments qualifying you for the top 32 single-elimination tournament where the prizes happen. The whole thing looks like this:

Up to 6 people will qualify from a 64-person flight on Friday, March 13th.
Up to 20 people will qualify from the 200-person main flight on Saturday, March 14th.
Up to 6 people will qualify from the 64-person flight on Saturday afternoon.

Prizes minimally go down to 16th place; if the tournament sells out, Superstars will give prizes to everyone in the top 32.

The entry fee is $30.

There will be the usual extensive side events that you're used to from PTQs and other big events at Superstars, with normal and high-roller drafts.

Once again, click here to learn more, including helpful travel information if you're coming from outside the area (including flying in!).

Superstars Game Center in San Jose is holding a From the Vault: Exiled marathon this weekend. Don't want to pay those big secondary market prices for your fifteen shiny Exiled cards? Come lay down five bucks and fight for them instead. Here are the details:

Each tournament will have an entry fee of $5. The format is Standard Constructed. Tournaments will probably follow a Swiss structure with a cut to top four or top eight, depending on attendance. There will be additional prizes based on attendance as well.

Tournaments are scheduled for...

Friday, August 28th at 7pm
Saturday, August 29th at 1pm and 5pm
Sunday, August 30th at 1pm and 5pm

I hope to see you all there. I'll be attending at least some of these, both to take my crack at winning the set and because, hey, Standard Constructed.

This is a great interview with Tomoharu Saitou, discussing his Hypergenesis deck with the assistance of everyone's favorite bilingual Judge (and GP Trial winner) Riki Hayashi.

I need to buck up my own language skills; then maybe someday I can help interview a Korean player for CFB. While you all wait for that to happen, I recommend checking out the rest of the excellent GP Oakland coverage at ChannelFireball.

I'll be heading off in a little less than an hour to the first flight of the day for the February ChannelFireball 5K down at Superstars in San Jose. If you can make it today, I encourage you to come on down and enjoy some Standard action with the great Superstars crowd while battling for, well, $5K in prizes.

Click here for more information. The main flight today starts at 10am, with a second flight at 4pm, to be followed by the top 32.

Click here to read ongoing coverage of the event. Last night's archetype breakdown is currently posted, with a strong showing for Jund, Naya, and U/W Control.

I'm slowly regaining my coherence this morning after a long day yesterday at the ChannelFireball.com February 5K event. I made top sixteen using a Junk (that is, B/G/W) deck that I'll be writing about in my column this week.

You can see me and the deck in action in the coverage of the Swiss rounds, here. And I do mean, "see," as in addition to being the round two feature match, there's a picture of me playing at the bottom of the page.

If you look at the archetype breakdown for the main flight, I'm the sole "Junk" representative there.

I exited in the round of sixteen (which you can also read about here) after a somewhat harrowing, one-and-a-half hour match against an Unearth deck. I must admit I was not particularly thinking about Unearth when I put my deck together for the tournament. I lost in the round of sixteen to Magic TV host Tristan Shaun Gregson, who was playing Boss Naya.

I'll have more on all of this in my column this week. I had a great time all day Saturday, sparring with the kind of fun crowd I've come to expect at ChannelFireball and Superstars events.

Also, for those who are in the greater Bay Area and also into Legacy, you may be happy to hear that Superstars will now be hosting regular Legacy tournaments. You can read more about that here.

This week's In Development is Stoneforge Mystic Junk at the 5K, which is a pretty straightforward title. I top 16ed our most recent 5K using a W/B/G deck featuring that new lovely Standard power card, the Stoneforge Mystic.

I had a great deal of fun with this deck -- and hey, won some cash, too. Head on over and check it out.

Grant was my opponent in the round of 32, playing the genuinely frightening Unearth deck.

As he describes, his deck just doesn't interact with most of the field. When I realized what he was playing, I had a brief flash of panic before I devised my game plan against him. Our match took an hour and a half, and was by far the longest in that round.

Grant's a nice guy, and I really enjoyed our match - it was among the best I'd had all day.

Video coverage of the ChannelFireball February 5K is up. Here's my match in the top 16 against Tristan Shaun Gregson (of Magic TV fame) playing Boss Naya:

For the record, I didn't have to die that turn in game two. As I mentioned in my column earlier this week, I literally miscounted my mana and, having done so, made the "aggressive" play that made no sense. Ah, well. It was midnight.

I think these videos turned out quite well. Head over to the ChannelFireball YouTube channel to see videos of several matches from the top 32, including the finals, all with quality narration by Eric Levine.