Some quick thoughts about Pro Tour Dark Ascension…

The coverage was miles ahead of what we’ve previously been offered, with the main benefit being live games from start to end. Maintaining a steady stream of about six thousand viewers throughout is great news and I was impressed how there wasn’t a huge amount of downtime, filling things in with deck techs and interviews so that people weren’t switching off and coming back all the time- the best of this being when they got Aaron Forsythe and Zac Hill into the booth. The extended coverage means you get to build up the event as a big deal and can begin to get people used to players- one way this worked out well is how the team successfully made Jon Finkel look like a huge deal. Now obviously to a lot of us, Finkel already is a big deal and one of the worlds best- but for those who are new to MTG, they really sold him as a legend of the game. If you can build up players that people want to watch, it can only improve the game and viewing figures.

The constant coverage also helped catch some great moments and more magic. Without the new improvements, we’d never have seen Estratti’s ice-cold levelling of Tom Martell and the ability to swap between games was pretty nice, meaning instead of having to watch a judge sort out the Kibler/Finkel ‘extra wolf’ situation, we could just flip over to the Nagai/Da Rosa match. I also can’t help but approve of the addition of two extra commentators. I love Rich and BDM, but Sheldon Menery and Rashad Miller both add a different dimension- Sheldon in particular is fantastic on commentary and having a judge emeritus who is well respected by all in the game is a huge boost. It felt professional and had some neat little touches- using Cover it Live to update people on their particular favourites, down to the little intro video going to the booth to the games (which really helped get me in the mood.) All together it was a vast improvement and a great step into the next iteration of Magic coverage and although there are still kinks to work out, it was the stand out winner of the Pro Tour. If there was one thing they should really work on for PT Avacyn Restored, I would say maybe having a live results ticker in the webcast layout and giving those in the booth a better image of the board- it seems the commentators were having trouble deciphering what was being played and in player’s hands sometimes. I have to agree with Matteo Orsini-Jones’ article on Blackborder in that they could really do with a pro doing commentary too.

The top 8 of the tournament was fantastic. Three members of the Hall of Fame, one of which being arguably the best to ever play in Jon Finkel. Another dead cert hall of famer and one of the best in Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and three unknown, but possible future stars in Costa, Nagai and Rachid. The match ups were fairly varied too, which only added to the spectacle. It was a good showcase for standard with the final being contested between team-mates and two of the best against each other in an almost 75-card mirror in an enjoyable final, with a fan favourite in Brian Kibler taking the crown, even though the tournament had already ‘peaked’ so to speak with the frankly absurd Kibler/Finkel match that is going to be talked about for years to come. It was also good to see quite a diverse field in terms of nationality, with five countries present. Also, it’s worth noting that a good outside bet for the Magic World Cup in advance might be the Czech Republic. They can put a team together from Blohon, Juza, Jurkovic, Cifka, and Jaklovsky which could be quite formidable.

Metagame wise, I think it’s tough to say that any one archetype really dominated things- we did see a lot of Delver builds but that seemingly might be down to sheer numbers than the quality of the deck- the decks that put up good results are quite varied- R/G Ramp and Delver are your front runners now, but a lot of people were saying how Todd Anderson’s Mono-Green deck was very powerful and may have been a perfect call for the meta. Amazingly, Shouta Yasooka once again manages to put up a great beformance with a Tezzeret deck when seemingly nobody else can. For me, other things of note were Channel Fireball being regarded as having a bad weekend, yet three of their players made it to the Top 8, with PV and Kibler contesting the final- although LSV going 1-4 is always a shock. There was a lot more talk of people testing and playing with teams which is interesting, especially as (if you missed it), Aaron Forsythe said that WotC are looking to get team events going. That’s big news. All-in-all, a fun PT- roll on Avacyn Restored.