Locations
I am home from Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings which took place in Barcelona, Spain.
I'll take "sentences that would have made 19-year-old Jim nerd-explode for $1,000 Alex!"
The last year or so has been quite the ride for me with regards to Pro Magic. I essentially "retired" from playing tournament/Pro Magic about five years ago to focus entirely on doing content full-time, which has gone wonderfully and something I am very fortunate for. However, as someone who has been playing serious tournament Magic for almost fifteen years, from Pro Tours to the SCG Tour and back again, there was a tinge of sadness knowing I'd probably never play a Pro Tour again.
Then I won a somewhat random MTG Arena Alchemy Qualifier on stream.
Then I went 12-0 in the swiss and made top 8 of the Neon Dynasty Set Championship (Pro Tour).
Then I qualified for and came in 5th place at Worlds.
And then and then and then!
This year I've played in every Pro Tour, while also having the distinct honor of working with Team CFB & Friends, a team comprised of some of the literal best players to ever play the game.
At Pro Tour Phyrexia, I came in 46th place and my teammate Reid Duke won the whole event.
At Pro Tour March of the Machine, I came in 58th place.
And now, I won't bury the lede, at Pro Tour Lord of the Rings I came in 49th place.
These three consistent (if unexciting) finishes have accrued me enough Adjusted Match Points to qualify for not only the World Championship happening in Vegas in September at MagicCon, but also the first two Pro Tours of 2024 in Chicago and a location to be named later.
Not bad for a semi-retired, washed-up old pro turned content creator!
So how did I get there?
Pro Tour Lord of the Rings
Testing for a Modern Pro Tour can be very challenging. There are a ton of viable decks, as well as an enormous card pool to battle with. We also had essentially Modern Horizons 3 on our hands, with some new cards that would be major players in the new format.
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The One Ring was the elephant in the room and ended up being the most played card in the entire tournament, but Orcish Bowmasters was also a huge factor and arguably even more impactful to the format as a whole. Orcish Bowmasters is another nail in the coffin of 1 toughness creatures in the format, while also being excellent against The One Ring. There were also some other newcomers making an impact like Sauron's Ransom and Lorien Revealed.
These new cards formulated the largest change to the format since Modern Horizons 2, but Modern in many ways is still just Modern. That being said, I don't think we did a great job as a team with our deck selection for this Pro Tour.
We had five players on Golgari Yawgmoth, including myself, and I was the only one with a good record. We had some players on Temur Rhinos, probably our best choice, putting Kai Budde into top eight. We had three players on Samwise Combo who all did mediocre, as well as a few Rakdos Scam players that also had unexciting finishes. And then Gab Nassif just played Living End because he was crushing with it in testing and he had a nice run.
Our Yawgmoth deck was Reid's version of the deck, and it was as midrange as they come:
Yawgmoth | Modern | Jim Davis, 49th Place Pro Tour Lord of the Rings
- Creatures (27)
- 1 Haywire Mite
- 1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- 1 Zulaport Cutthroat
- 4 Delighted Halfling
- 4 Ignoble Hierarch
- 4 Orcish Bowmasters
- 4 Wall of Roots
- 4 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
- 4 Young Wolf
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 Grist, the Hunger Tide
- Instants (4)
- 4 Chord of Calling
- Artifacts (3)
- 3 The One Ring
Of the five players who played the deck, Reid Duke, Will Pulliam, and Jakob Toth all didn't make day two, while Evart Moughan (aspiringspike) would make day two with an average record and I would go 8-2 for the only good record with the deck.
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In a lot of ways, the deck is fine.
The big draw initially to use was that it plays the highest concentration of new The Lord of the Rings cards of almost any deck in the format, grafted onto an already proven shell that can play a grindy midrange game but also combo when needed. In a vacuum the deck is very reasonable, and frankly, it's a deck that I enjoyed playing a lot. However, once you look at the field you see nothing but 45% matchups.
This is usually our strongest area as a team - the ability to accurately predict the metagame and then choose and tune the deck that has the strongest matchup spread against our expected decks while also being powerful in and of itself.
We did not do that here.
While our more midrange version of the deck with The One Ring and less mediocre linear cards made the Rakdos Scam matchup better, it's still going to be tough consistently beating the Fury, removal, Orcish Bowmasters deck by playing 28 creatures. The matchup against Four-Color Omnath is similar, while the linear power of Rhinos and Tron also don't line up super well for us.
Obviously, I ran well when needed and still produced an 8-2 record with the deck, which is nice, but our team record with the deck was not very good and I definitely feel like I got lucky in spots. Going over the event round by round is beyond the scope of this article, but I did a video on it if you'd like to follow along:
The Limited rounds, however, didn't really go my way.
[Claim the Precious] [Dunland Crebain] [Nazgul]
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I think we as a team did a good job of breaking down the foundations of the draft format, understanding that Black was by far the best color, what each color combination wanted to be doing, etc, but I don't think I personally did a great job putting this into practice.
I wasn't comfortable trying to force Black in our PT house drafts, as I was almost always cut, and yet I still first picked a Black card in both drafts and ended up getting cut hard both times. Again, I don't have the space here to go over everything in full detail, but I did a deep dive into my two drafts, the decks, and my results with them on my Bronze to Mythic channel:
With another shot at the World Championship on the horizon I'm going to try and put a bit of extra time and preparation in, as missing Top 4 on breakers last year was incredible but heartbreaking and I'd love to improve on it. Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings, as well as all the Pro Tours this year have been awesome, and I'm extremely excited to be qualified for the next few.
For now, perhaps unfortunately, all that's left is to go over my Pro Tour Predictions from last week.
Pro Tour Prediction Results
As understandable for a Pro Tour the team didn't do great at, we had some misses for my predictions from last week.
Prediction One: Rakdos Scam Will Be The Most Played Deck, But Not More Than 15% Of The Metagame
Verdict: Incorrect
This one still surprises me.
As we saw on the metagame breakdown above, Rakdos Scam was a hair over 20% of the field at this Pro Tour, which is pretty astounding for a Modern event which usually features such a varied field. Furthermore, despite being a known quantity going into the event that everyone was prepared for, it still managed to put up a 54% win rate which is very impressive for a deck with so many players.
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Rakdos Scam is a difficult deck to hate out. In a lot of ways, it plays out like a linear aggro deck that is trying to do something broken on the first few turns, but it's also just jam packed with powerful interaction and midrange cards. This one-two punch is hard to deal with in a focused way; you can't just add some Chalice of the Void or Rest In Peace and swing the matchup into your favor like other linear decks.
Prediction Two: Lorien Revealed Will Be The Surprise Breakout Card From Tales Of Middle-earth
Verdict: Correct
Nailed it!
While all the hype was rightfully around The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters coming into this event, the third most played The Lord of the Rings card was actually Lorien Revealed, not Delighted Halfling or any other seemingly more popular option.
Lorien Revealed is a simple card, but does a lot of things that many decks want - it finds Triomes and dual lands and pitches to Force of Negation and Subtlety, and the fact that you can cast it in a pinch if the game gets scrappy is gravy. It was featured heavily in the cascade decks at the event, as well as in other blue decks focusing on pitch spells.
Prediction Three: Tron Will Do Poorly At The Event, Failing To Put A Player In Top 8
Verdict: Incorrect (With Partial Credit)
Not going to live this one down for a while.
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The sad part is that we tried it!
After seeing the deck doing well as the bad guy in a lot of our testing, both Arne Huschenbeth and I built up two copies of the deck and probably spent about 2-3 hours losing to Gab Nassif and Evart Moughan over and over again, concluding that despite being well positioned in the metagame the deck just wasn't powerful enough in a world of Force of Negation and Boseuj, Who Endures.
Clearly, we were extremely wrong, with Tron putting three copies into top 8 and being one of the most successful decks in the tournament, albeit mostly in the hands of Team Handshake and some of the best players in the world.
The one saving grace here for partial credit was that we did feel Dismember was the key card that helped the deck a ton in the Rakdos Scam matchup as well as elsewhere, and Team Handshake had three copies of the card in their maindeck to at least give me a little bit of validation.
As someone who loves playing Tron, this one hurt a lot.
Prediction Four: Half Or More Of The 6-0 Drafters Will Make Top 8
Verdict: Incorrect
Color me surprised!
An astounding seven players went 6-0 in draft at Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings:
- Simon Nielsen - 3rd
- Marei Okamura - 62nd
- Gabriel Nassif - 13th
- Toru Inoue - 11th
- Stephano Vinci - 6th
- Tin Mihael Capar - 17th
- Sean Goddard - 18th
However, as you can see, only two of them, Simon Nielsen and Stephano Vinci, made Top 8 of the event.
This is actually a pretty wild number of players going 6-0, as usually there are maybe three or four players who achieve such a record, meaning normally two of those players in Top 8 would be good enough for this prediction, but we had a ton of near misses here, with most of these players at or close to top 16.
Prediction Five: One Member Of My Testing Team Will Make Top 8
Verdict: Correct
As a team, our results for Pro Tour Lord of the Rings were somewhat unimpressive.
While we did have a number of players put up decent runs on day two and qualify for Worlds and the next Pro Tour, we also had some big names fail to make day two. We lacked consensus on deck choice and overall, I'd say we were unimpressed with our results as a team.
However, the German Juggernaut came through!
For all the zoomers out there who may not be aware, Kai Budde was once the most dominating force in Magic: The Gathering. He has an astounding seven Pro Tour championships, as well as thirteen Pro Tour Top 8s, and while he hasn't been nearly involved in Magic in the last decade or so, he still comes out once and a while with his Pro Tour invite to prove he's still got it.
We also had Gab Nassif in striking distance coming in 13th place, so the highs were at least pretty good.
Worlds In Vegas!
Well... my predictions didn't go super well and the team certainly could have done better at the event, but when it comes to the scoreboard I'm still going to Vegas for Worlds!
The team has 11 players qualified and we'll be putting in a ton of work to try and claim the World Championship trophy from Team Handshake and the rest of the field this year. The formats are Wilds of Eldraine Draft and Wilds of Eldraine Standard and it will be played in paper at MagicCon Vegas on September 22nd-24th, so be sure to tune in to the coverage, or even better catch the event live if you're there.
Looking forward to this one!
