GP Yokohama
Oh, those crazy Japanese! Shattering all previous attendance records, GP Yokohama kicked off with over one thousand five hundred players! (1,523 to be precise!) This is the land of Godzilla, robots, fugu sushimi, and tube hotels, so who knows what kind of fiendish deviltry we'll see emerging from the caverns under the Pacifico... Some of it is already starting to bubble to the surface...
I was looking at the decklists from the last chance qualifiers with the aid of Google Translate, and I must say, it makes for some amusing names! Some of my favorites are Small Lake to the Boil, Ritual of the Monument was the Second Warning, or Inferno of Burn Out. I love how translate algorithms work. Pestermite comes across in various places as Troublesome Child and Child Annoying.
Anyway, besides the usual suspects, there's some fun stuff in those last chance qualifier decklists. Notably 4c Gifts Twin and UBR Griselbrand Squee Reanimator. AVR coninues to make its presence know with numerous Restoration flavors, and a Vex Bomb Bump. And you know what? Not a single Tron! Woo hoo! But enough of the Last Chance qualifiers.
This grand melee was also Restoration Angel's "Debutante Ball" for Modern, and even the official event coverage made note of this. I discussed last week how the deck has made its presence known in recent weeks, and lo and behold... Whoomp! There it is!
Let's take a look at the T8:
1st - WB Tokens - Jun'ichi Miyajima
2nd - Fae
T4 - Jund
T4 - Naya Restoration Pod
T8 - Blue Naya Restoration Pod
T8 - Affinity
T8 - Black Naya Restoration Pod
T8 - Naya Resoration Pod
This has got to be one of the weirdest T8's I've seen in a while. Tokens vs Fae for the money? Four Naya Pods? Wha-wha-WHAT?!?!?
Uhhh... Ok. It's hard to argue with results, though. Deft piloting took it all the way to the top. And his final opponent?
Another deck that hasn't shown up in the online meta in a few days.
But the thing that still tickles me most is... four Naya(/x) Restoration Pods? I guess Kiki/Angel is the new Splinter Twin, and catching a whole GP off guard is quite cool in and of itself. It's a darn good thing the quarter is ending; it will give me chance to get a better handle on these drastic changes to our beloved format's meta! Woo hoo!
One Year of Overdrive!
A Brief History of Overdrive!
Overdrive! began as an Overextended event with little fanfare at 830PM Eastern time on July 4th, 2011. I had fallen in love with the Tuesday evening Overextended events, hosted by Gavin Verhey, now an R&D intern at WotC. As one can see, they were huge melees; wild games with a wilder meta. We see some of the first incarnations of decks we still have to beat, or have been killed by the banhammer, in Modern today. I think the most notable being "Project Melira", first popping up in the lists in early July.
I am also a sci-fi buff, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is classic despite its cheese. Tina Turner in chain mail? Cave Kids in some forsaken oasis? And most of all... Thunderdome! Chant it with me now: "Two men enter, one man leaves! Two men enter, one man leaves!"
Let's not forget Highlander. Or Emelio Estevez's memorable performance in Maximum Overdrive, with its killer AC/DC soundtrack. More classic, glorious cheese.
It just so happened I did a Mad Max Marathon one Sunday, watched Highlander the following Monday, and then played in the Tuesday OXT event. Someone mentioned they wanted more OXT events to me during a break between rounds, I was listening to AC/DC's Highway to Hell, and *click*! It really just all came together in its entirety in that split second. I lined up a sponsorship, hammered out the details, and a few days later we were ready to rock. And the 4th of July was just too serendipitous. I "put up the ads" and the rest... is history.
A fight to the death. Last man standing. There can be only one. It's not for the faint of heart.
In those times there was heated discussion on the joys of one format over the other. I was on the OXT side of the fence: I loved the wide and wild meta, the weird decks, the general atmosphere of "we are the world". (Mainly because nothing had happened in the Modern world since the Community Cup Challenge in June of 2011) I did notice early on, however, that a good many of the Overextended decks were almost Modern legal. So while I was then very biased against Modern, I was at least willing to see how it went.
When WotC officially announced the Modern format, Overdrive! attendance took a steep nosedive, but we slogged onwards, and the last Overextended game on MTGO was played on August 22nd, 2011. Modern became an officially sanctioned format online with the downtime on August 24th, 2011, and Overdrive! jumped right into that arena, keeping the same Thunderdome principle: two men enter, one man leaves.
People were hesitant at first about the Modern format. That which they'd only spoken of until now was real, and it was a scary pool to jump into, with its Twelve Posts and Splinters and Zoo, oh my! And new bannings were coming soon, so the uncertainty meant still more weren't really brewing.
But time progressed; more and more people played the format casually. Now it's not uncommon to see multiple Modern games going on at once. I have seen a great variety of decks running through the Overdrive! doors, and the meta is constantly in flux. This event has become so popular, there is now also a "Euro-friendly" version that takes place on Saturdays at 1200 GMT. Eurodrive! has the same format, rules, prizes, everything as Overdrive!, just placed at an easier time zone for other parts of the world.
One Year Later...
The Overdrive! "franchise" - Overdrive! and Eurodrive! - continues to be the premiere Thunderdome-type event, and many faces that played in Overdrive! #1 continue to be regular players to this day. This event has spawned a gaggle of others. I firmly believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and am tickled pink that events like FNMM, Dragonfight, Sunday Night Brawl, et al, continue to pop up and flourish.
Where Angels Fear To Tread is also well on its way to becoming the "in place" PRE for Modern on a Sunday afternoon/evening. It's a wonderful feeling as a TO to sit in the Anything Goes room and see so many events going on, in so many formats, with so many players.
I still have plans in the back of my head to launch a couple more events in Modern format - a Double Elimination event, working title Death Race 2012...
And re-kindling a monthly FFA (to run at midnight GMT on the astronomical full moon?)...
Both of these are still in the pipe-dream stages. Meaning I have the basics worked out "on paper" for event structure, but haven't even begun to nail down anything specific concerning sponsorship, times (other than a vague idea for a "cool time" for Dark Wars), etc. These are "back burner" ideas, and I don't know if I want to run more than the four events a week I currently run.
Maybe I'll get them set up and "shop them out" to one of the "hosting posse".
Also, in celebration of one year running this clown show, I've adopted a logo for the Overdrive! franchise of events, and you'll be seeing this logo, instead of the Devil's Play card that was previously used, to introduce the Overdrive! results:
Overdrive! #52 Round-up
Won against Boros, BUG Dredge, RDW Sligh, GBW Pod.
Won against BYE, Jund, Ritual Gifts, lost to Geist of St. Bant.
Semifinalists
Won against Doran Rock, RUG Artifact Destruction, lost to GBW Pod.
Won against GBW Pod, Boros, lost to Geist of St. Bant.
Eurodrive! #35 Round-up
Won against BYE, Living End, UB Zombieland Blood Artistry, Solar Superfriends.
Won against BYE, Gifts Rock, Jund, lost to Browbeat RDW.
Semifinalists
Won against BYE, Kuldotha Goblins, lost to Browbeat RDW.
This deck is almost Standard. It's only concessions to Modern are a single sword, fetch, and dual. I keep counting 61 cards! Am I senile? Is my math fundamentally flawed?
Won against BR Vampires, G Stompy, lost to Solar Superfriends.
Where Angels Fear To Tread #13
Players: 15
4-0: Malum
3-1: sakerhet, NetworkGuru, AphesisBliss
Players, pairings, results, and standings can be found here.
All decks for WAFTT #13 can be found here.
Interesting Tidbits
Attendance at Modern events continues to track well. The attendance dip with GP Yokohama would seem to indicate there was a lot of testing going on online. I expect we'll see another upswing as we head into GP Columbus next month.