Mono Black vs Temur Energy | Semifinals 2 - Quest for the Best Deck Ever

[@CardmarketMagic]

♞⚡ Decklists: bit.ly/3NgRfiz

[@TheRealPlato]

Andy Magoo?

[@DylanHunter64]

Mad respect for the black deck. Did far better than I ever would have predicted.

[@Hurricane1990]

That deck is crazy for real

[@rileyfosti843]

I would not have thought it would beat psychatog but proved me wrong. Then goes Into game 3 with the energy deck like mind blowing

[@Marionettetc]

I used to play Knight of Stromgald in my suicide black 1.5 deck back in the day, it was an amazing mana sink that blanks (and most black removal of the time) swords and tiny creatures easily. First strike and pump is really strong

[@ohlookaflower.5961]

That was remarkably close. 20 years of power creep and it could still take a game from Temur Energy. Well fought Mengu.

[@feritperliare2890]

To be fair a bunch of bad decisions there definitely made it look more fair than it is

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

@@feritperliare2890 In game one, Mengu could have used the Shadow Guildmage to put the Nekrataal on top & draw it again. That would have helped against the Glorybringers.

[@jadegrace1312]

Temur drew really bad game 2 lol

[@markchaney4469]

I played magic during the ice age format . The black deck brings some memories back

[@LunarMTG]

thanks for the spoiler

[@brokensprites]

We all knew the outcome, but I think deep down we wanted Prismatic Black to win.

[@rileyfosti843]

Not even deep down for me I was loudly rooting for black haha. It was very impressive

[@fabioandrade8476]

Prismatic Black really proving that there is no wrong threats, only wrong answers.

[@roguebanshee]

And wrong mana-bases.

[@su0tin731]

I voted for Temur, but I gotta say, Prismatic Black put an intense fight, it was really close.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

It's honestly incredible Prismatic Black did so well, given that it's mostly creatures against creatures. & creatures are generally way better now.

[@felity1773]

i mean it's a strong deck, but with freakin andrea mengucci at the helm, any deck that has ever won a pro tour is pretty damn strong

[@BIGPILGRIM420]

top comment spoiling Poggers

[@magerehenk7579]

@@BIGPILGRIM420 imagine reading the comment section of a video you don't want to have spoiled.

[@BIGPILGRIM420]

​@magerehenk7579 top comment auto shows bozo. sorry I read faster than you.

[@stormycat0905]

I played the mono black deck back in the day. I'm not surprised it took one of the most broken mechanics ever made to take it down.

[@Igor369]

You do not need broken mechanics, you could just outmuscle it with modern broken 69 for 1 cards like Fable, Invoke despair, meathook etc.

[@joseph1150]

@@Igor369 there was plenty of broken crap back then. Necropotence for example. All the combo decks that emerged (Prosperity Bloom for instance), Strip mine is another great powerful card. Throwing down cheap weenies then blowing up all the lands with Armageddon would make current era players cry. Creatures in current magic are so over tuned that Fable, Invoke, and Meathook aren't even all that offensive IMHO.

[@LazarusIsBackBaby]

Why is it called monoblack if it's clearly not? Just a fun joke?

[@mopanda81]

it’s called prismatic black because it uses filter lands to play a few non black cards but everything in the deck also taps for black

[@Dexsting]

Such an amazing piloting of the Prismatic Black deck.

[@oafkad]

I'm always on team Andrea. But never more than today. I can't stand energy. Fight the good fight!

[@Claxeius]

It’s crazy how those two decks are 20 years apart and both put up a good fight.

[@CardmarketMagic]

We could not believe it either. Old design still stands strong :)

[@qazzaqstan]

@@CardmarketMagic In some ways. Creature wise the 1997 cards were just not comparable on the other hand you just aren't going to get color hosers like Dystopia anymore.

[@spliffi869]

Kudos to the editor and an amazing guest you got there. Andrea is a legend, yet so humble. Gotta love this guy! Also nice sleeves btw. :)

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you! :)

[@betabrett0223]

I was rooting for prismatic black and it got closer than I thought it would

[@rhysgab4990]

i faced that MonoBlack Prismatic deck in 1997 was a nightmare in my country's Nationals back then..no way around it except your MonoBlue draws a good hand in all matches..you just literally pray to the top deck gods lol..

[@ComposerMathieu]

This was a lot of fun. I think it also goes to show how even a "worse" deck can be piloted better and take you so far!

[@ReederMG]

When the Finals are over, I hope y'all do this all over again but with different Swiss pools to see how differently this could go. And then PLEASE upload the Swiss games!

[@bl4klotus]

I would add, next time don't just play "World Championship" decks since they are often in the fall - maybe select a strong springtime deck from each year

[@CardmarketMagic]

We will likely be doing this again but have people vote for the deck played each year :) we still won't be shooting the Swiss rounds though because that's 50+ rounds of games and we don't have enough overhead camera rigs to film them 😅

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

@@bl4klotus Worlds also has never been a Standard-only event as far as I know. The Limited record affects who gets to top 8. & it's a pretty small & specialized tournament. For these reasons, the deck that wins Worlds isn't necessarily the best deck.

[@Lordmuhkuh23]

@@CardmarketMagic Would this maybe be the moment for some more raw, uncut content? Like the Swiss Rounds as longer, uncut videos (maybe even on a second channel) and the finals as your usual, hight quality videos? :)

[@Помста]

​@@CardmarketMagic there are some decks like 1996 Black Summer Neceopotence, Urzas Destiny era Academy, Rec-Sur, Energy with Aethrtworks Marvel, Cascade Jund, Simic Oko Food, GrimJar, Ravager Affinity, and such that were not world championship decks (due either to being eventually banned or simply not making the championship) but were the most powerful and defining standard decks of their era. These decks would be very interesting. I think that 1996 Black Summer Neceopotence or anything from Combo Winter in Urzas block would be more than a match for modern standard decks. In fact it will show the sheer power and brokenness of some of the legendary decks of old and see if they still stack up.

[@XTimTheEnchanterX]

Came back to say I'm def impressed with the black deck. I'd be curious to see how it looks if it went against another deck from 97

[@poiri]

Considering it won the world championship at the time, I’d think it would go pretty well

[@MagnusXen]

If there is footage - even with minimal editing it would be great to see the swiss matches

[@Buckship]

yeah it would be great

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

I want to know what happened to Kai Budde's Wildfire deck.

[@viniparente]

god please

[@CardmarketMagic]

We played over 50 matches, so they are not filmed and, turns out, rather poorly documented. But we will definitely do this again with a twist, and then we'll take better notes :)

[@spencerstanley4759]

@@CardmarketMagic Even just filming overhead and doing some after-the-fact comentary, I'd adore an hour long video with just 5-10 minutes per match, highlighting key moments!

[@blacklotus561]

Mengu could have actually put a nekrataal on top of his library with the shadowmage's ability and redraw nekrataal for the rest of the game.

[@xephirost]

Not really. The gemstone mines crippled him, and he wasn't in a good position for casting nekrataal every turn. Sadly the deck has awful mana.

[@MrCosmo1236]

That Mono-Black Deck slowly crept it‘s way up my heart - was really rooting for it ❤

[@JazzKaioshin]

LOL the surprise Orangutan from the mono black deck was hilarious. Well played both but Temur Energy is just too powerful. The finals should be pretty close!

[@logancalapp2426]

I cant wait to see how this plays out!

[@aaronw1026]

Card Market makes the most entertaining competitive mtg content on the internet. Great stuff!

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you! That's so kind of you to say :)

[@joshcastro8526]

Let's goooo--im living off this series! I know everyone thinks commander is over done on YT, but I'd love to see something like this in commander--like pitting the most played commanders against each other or something

[@CardmarketMagic]

We do play commander sometimes, but no one on this channel considers themselves talented enough at commander to reliably feel like we could do a good enough representation of this 😅 but it's a great idea :)

[@Ninjames]

Mono black getting this far is the Magic gods telling us Black is the best color

[@8Smoker8]

Except it's splashed with 3 colors 🤣🤣🤣

[@PKFat]

@@8Smoker8 it's 5 color black. Mainboard splashes blue, green & red. But there's a lot of white in the sideboard too. Most cards are mono color with the exception of the 2 guild mages. That being said, every land taps for at least black & 40% of the the lands tap for all colors. Which is why there was never a "I have lands but can't do anything" moments. I don't remember mana fixing being that good back in the day, but I've slept since then.

[@davidhansen5067]

I would like to Stifle this opinion. 😉 💧

[@josephspeak6366]

"they cower in fear like a goat when there's a truck nearby" I'd love the origins of this phrase 😂

[@CardmarketMagic]

Goats have the "survival reflex" of fainting anytime something loud happens for some reason 😅 I don't know how it has helped them, but I had seen a video about it that morning. It stuck with me

[@josephspeak6366]

@@CardmarketMagic good magic content and educational, ticking all the boxes! 😂

[@bealenathan]

Loving this series and the content you've been putting out. Subbed

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you :)

[@Alpha_November]

Around '99 I was playing with a deck dubbed "5 color white weenie". It's kinda like prismatic white aggro. Creatures were 2 white mana 2 power creatures and deck has so many different spells from other colors like shock, mana leak, might of oaks for some "omph", mox diamond for mana, etc. It was a lovely deck and very fun to play. Prismatic black aggro reminded me my old deck and i was rooting for it although I knew it was older and weaker with 20 years of power creep. Still mad respect for the granpa deck. On a side note I love the series. I wish you also casted play-offs. Just the best 8 doesn't cut it. Thanks for the top tier entertainment. I luv yu guys.

[@bryankopkin6869]

Closer than I thought! GGs!

[@moor532]

Will there be a game for third place? I really dig this format and would love to see some more games.

[@CardmarketMagic]

We could only fly Andrea to Berlin for a few days and we did not expect the series to do well (I am grateful and surprised that my pet project has so much popularity), so we did not film more. But we are planning on doing another one with a twist and then we will go more in depth about the Swiss and with the matches

[@moor532]

@@CardmarketMagic It's lovely to hear that you've plans for more videos like this, really great stuff!

[@cryptorcd9352]

@@CardmarketMagic This was my favorite series I seen from you so far! Would love more top 8 or mini series that I can look forward each week, even if not standard :)

[@AzuriteCoast]

@@CardmarketMagic Whose pet project was this? It was a good idea!

[@CardmarketMagic]

@AzuriteCoast me, Carl :) I'm the one who's job it is to manage the KZbin channel and edit the videos. Jamin is our social media manager and Thoralf co-owns the oldest Cardmarket power-seller account

[@Razomka]

Good work from mono black. It's only good cause Andrea was piloting it! Looking forward to the next one!

[@bblivid]

I look forward to this every week. Love these videos

[@CardmarketMagic]

Happy you do :) thank you for watching

[@dks6515]

What an amazing video, i really enjoyed watching all these matches with Prismatic Black, what a cool deck!

[@jester105629]

Man, I was waiting to see the super sweet grinding of shadow guildmage putting nekrataal on top over and over! That’s Magic the way Richard Garfield intended haha

[@dreamlight7634]

Love the content of the older decks. Would love to see more of it also for example with modern decks.

[@CardmarketMagic]

We plan to run this series back again in a few months :)

[@gabegerszewski3755]

I started playing right around when Mirage came out, and always thought the 5 color black lists I saw in the pages of Scrye and Inquest were so cool.

[@DNA-DNB]

having the 1994 deck vs the winner played at the end of the series would make a nice ending, kinda a bonus episode:) I mean it did win at the championship 1994 and it was build from cards only from two years of magic history I would call that standard

[@QuickdrawMcQuaw]

At 24:25 Carl missed two additional Energy from Servant of the Conduit. Not even the editor noticed it seems. It didn't make a difference in the game, but interesting to see. Especially when everyone is so careful to not misplay on camera.

[@CardmarketMagic]

I missed it when playing the game, but I decided not to add it when editing because I didn't want the overlay not to match the game :)

[@QuickdrawMcQuaw]

@@CardmarketMagic Totally fair! Just found it interesting. You guys have great content. It's pulled me back into the game, so definitely keep it up!

[@pureflame125]

I snap thought caw-blade, but forgot Stoneforged Mystic and Jace got banned the summer before the 2011 championship. This was an awesome nostalgia trip

[@mgsBicycleO9]

9:03 Andrea's facial expression when he draws the Orangutan is priceless lmao.

[@Aceuuuuh]

I have loved every single one of these videos. Hooked since day one and counting the days until the next video. ❤

[@CardmarketMagic]

That's such high praise :D and so kind! Thank you :)

[@davidelrod7865]

@AndreaMengucci curious if game 1, the turn you played Necratog, you saw the line of bounce Nekrataal to top of deck with the blue ability on Shadow Guildmage? I seem to recall part of the reason Guildmage was in the deck was to be able to repeatedly answer permanents with the ETB creatures (even if it doesn't provide card advantage by doing so).

[@RoRoRoRonan]

I click on these as soon as I see them! Thanks for the great content, guys ^^

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you! It was such a risk to assign 7 videos to one single concept, I am absolutely thrilled that you like them :D

[@donjohnson1335]

Hey, FIRE design wasn't a thing when Energy was printed (it was first implemented in War of the Spark). It was also not necessarily the reason for power creep, as FIRE was more about making draft commons more powerful.

[@CardmarketMagic]

Fire design started with Battle for Zendikar (although that set wasn't quite so strong yet 😅) and culminated with both Kaladesh and Eldraine. From what I understand, it was phased out after Theros Beyond Death

[@SquareGrills]

it's gonna be a worthy final, very excited

[@KKDT]

Great game and great series! Thanks guys!

[@Melvinvanharn]

I think Prismatic black has an okay chance if they go first, and are able to curve out. They have decent pressure, and the pump knights are surprisingly good. And as many have pointed out, you can recur Neckartal with Shadow Guildmage. I think it could steal a match somewhere between 10 and 20% of the time.

[@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles]

That Dystopia/Hydra Conundrum is really interesting to me, I keep thinking about it. I would love to be able to see all the different ways it might have gone in other timelines, by either playing more aggressively, or if Carl hadn't flooded out

[@alwaysplaythegame]

As on the Halo, the flood was too much to handle.

[@CardmarketMagic]

Woah great reference!

[@samuelswinamer4939]

The sideboard for prismatic black has been very powerful in this series.

[@alizah8042]

Was really rooting for my birth year deck, but it (and I!!) am just too old lol!!! Great job Andrea!!!!

[@CardmarketMagic]

If you know a 6-year-old, you can root for their birth year deck in the finals 😅 we were all rooting for Prismatic Balck but we also all knew there was no way it could make it past 20 years of power creep :)

[@kisamatttcg9397]

Mengu putting those knights on his back, almost got them across the finish line

[@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles]

The humor was on POINT today

[@Marionettetc]

Dystopia was my 2002 white prison enchantment tech lol for type 1.5 suicide black deck (equivalent to legacy for any younger players) , love to see it again.

[@Narakiomal]

Just the pick me up I was needing

[@Mefusio]

And again Thx to you two guys u made my Day with this Video !

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you for watching it :) I put a lot of love into making these, I'm happy you enjoy

[@NeoSlimey]

This was a really cool game. I feel black had a lot of realistic outs, it just had a hard time building up advantage to find them

[@Lolabbad]

All prismatic black games were so fun to watch 😊

[@fabulous_finn7810]

I cannot believe prismatic black has made it this far. I'd expect some broken combo deck from the 90s-early 2000s to be good, but not prismatic black.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

They played the Tinker deck rather poorly. I believe it could have done much better here. I'm also surprised Kai Budde's Wildfire deck didn't get further. But the most broken old Standard decks didn't win a World Championship, whether because of bannings or the metagame or details of the format. As I recall, Jon Finkel's Tinker deck wasn't one of the Type 2 decks that went 6-0 at Worlds 2000. Unfortunately, data from that period has mostly vanished from the internet. I suspect this Temur Energy deck would have a hard time against a Replenish deck from Worlds 2000, which went 6-0 in the Type 2 portion. With contemporary rules, Opalescence plus Parallax Wave gives unlimited creature removal. & the Energy deck has literally one out in the main. It would have better odds for game two & on. A lot of the results of this tournament, like any other but more so given that the decks aren't designed to play against each other, depend on randomness like pairings. A better way to do it would be to let players choose any of these decks & see what happens after a few tournaments. That'd be more trouble, though.

[@egoalter1276]

I too was surprised at the lack of Affinity and Necropotens decks. I guess they must have not been at Worlds.

[@chasingsunset9801]

Prismatic black is our black sligh back in the day...happy this deck is featured

[@heitortremor]

This is perfect viewing during my lunch break!

[@tajicbladeofthelegion5474]

Right around Kaladesh is when we started seeing the massive uptick in standard bannings due to how far they've been pushing cards, so it's fitting that the "Best standard deck of all time" finals is just two Kaladesh decks.

[@therealkami]

G/W Astral Slide from the early 2000s is my favorite deck of all time. I wish I knew what happened to it in this tournament. On top of power creep I assume that it washed out because of rule changes.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

Randomness is a huge factor in a tournament like this as well. Maybe it just ran into a bad matchup, drew poorly, or was played poorly.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

@aar7149 It really isn't. These decks weren't designed to play against each other, so some match ups will be much easier than others. & 5 rounds of Swiss allows for tons of randomness to be important in any case.

[@CardmarketMagic]

B.H. Abbot is right here, only two bad matchups could easily knock you out if top 8. 5 rounds of Swiss allow a lot of randomness. To do this perfectly, we should have done round Robin, but this was already 50+ matches and we did not have that kind of time 😅 mono black did benefit from going against white decks in the Swiss, which is not bad when you have protection from white on many of your creatures

[@Crovax]

prismatic black won in my heart. such a fun deck, but i'm sure that with that pilot it got a little advantage

[@LazarusIsBackBaby]

"They cower in fear like a goat when there's a truck nearby" Never change, Carl.

[@illordwin]

Great video as always, just wondering Dystopia doesn't say non-land permanent meaning forests could have been sacrificed in place of the Hydras, right ? (and should have been sacrificed on creatureless board)

[@diegocali9832]

Forests like all lands are colorless cards so not legal targets for distopia

[@marekjurcik]

Forests are not green. They are colourless and produce green mana.

[@lainpereyra1833]

🤣 From the creators of The Eks-Men comes The Gucci-Men!!! Nice play Carl! got all my faith on that energy deck

[@TimmytheSorcerer]

Cool fact about the art of the Knight of Stromgald, the Knight is standing on a chess board with a tower, a bishop and two pawns in the background.

[@CardmarketMagic]

That is very cool :) thank you! I never noticed!

[@MarkAvo]

Wild that it’s come down to those two decks.

[@Drestlin]

I was on the edge of my seat. Was hoping to see a 97 deck in the final 😂

[@CardmarketMagic]

Andrea put up a good fight :) but unfortunately, 20 years of power creep took its toll

[@pineapplesandthegovernment6522]

Great to see the black deck get something with Dystopia. As it was so crucial, was it almost worth taking a gamble and mulliganing aggressively in game 3, hoping to find one again?

[@Steeks]

I think a line that could have been considered was continously bouncing the nekrataal to act as removal, although it required quite a bit of mana.

[@sinnaro13]

Can't wait for the finals! I kinda want to put this together for my magic crew to do.

[@CardmarketMagic]

You should :) it was tons of fun!

[@pneu_8365]

new favorite karl moment 11:10

[@JonaxII]

4:36 nice one, especially considering how "Dre" is just short for another version of the name Andrea.

[@arivald6677]

The fact that black aggro menaged to went this far is mostly thanks to the excellent driver.

[@bricelory9534]

That game 3 though! Well fought! I don't know how they playtested Energy and thought that was a good idea for their game.

[@zaitheotter8543]

Rewatching this a year later and after galvanic discharge has been printed which is a pure power creep of harnessed lightning is definitely a feeling

[@Zosh_]

Now that I think about it, there's no Omnath, Sultai Oko or Field of the Dead deck in the tournament?

[@CardmarketMagic]

There was no Oko deck, but Omnath did not make it past the Swiss

[@Zosh_]

@@CardmarketMagic For real? That's surprising :O

[@jensschmieder6126]

Short question i thought Lands are also Permanents so shouldn't he be able to just sacrifice those instead of the creatures i mean he had already enough mana most situations and he had 3 dual lands in hand and/or on field

[@cpugwash7085]

I was wondering that as well. (Specifically, I wondered if perhaps the rules were different at the time of Dystopia and thus nonland was simply assumed in the text and they were playing in line with that, *or* if they're just so used to more modern cards that always list nonland that no-one thought of it.)

[@hxcnoel]

Lands are colorless, so you wouldn't be able to sacrifice them as green or white permanents

[@cpugwash7085]

@@hxcnoel Oh, I totally forgot *that* little detail. ;)

[@hxcnoel]

@cpugwash7085 it was one of the first things I learned rules-wise, because one of my first decks was a mono black deck with Vampire Nocturnus, which gets buffed if a black card is on top of your deck. I was crushed when I realized swamps wouldn't buff it ha

[@underakillingmoon]

I love this series

[@vince1345]

I was more expected mono B devotion than this one to go this far. Well done to Mengu to have one game from this 20 year old deck again temur energy.

[@timw9745]

Again; great content guys!

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you :)

[@chrisheadley5829]

This series rules. I'd really like to see 2013 modern vs present-day Pioneer

[@CardmarketMagic]

That's such a good idea! 🤯

[@drummondpaine]

The music in the middle of the video goes crazy

[@imyselfish]

Andrea, you had to ping the untapped flyer g1 to have the option to attack for 4 the turn after. Would have been a different story...

[@ultimateo621]

I can’t believe how devastated I am that mono black and faeries lost in top 4

[@CardmarketMagic]

We'll be likely doing this again with different parameters :) so they might still have another chance

[@ultimateo621]

@@CardmarketMagic that would be so cool. It would also be interesting to see how some broken standard decks that got banned before they could win worlds do. It doesn’t fully make sense to have decks compete as the best standard deck when they were only the best deck in their format because a better deck got banned

[@therobbyfitz]

As somebody that refused to use the energy deck when it was standard, I’m not surprised it’s cleaning up in these brackets.

[@Ezullof]

Makes me wonder how overpowered that monoblack deck was compared to other decks of the time.

[@MrZer093]

OOF. Why are the best decks (the finals) not only back to back but recent? Great series! But was def rooting for any deck before 2010 to make it to the finals lol

[@chrisjett6232]

I'd be very interested in seeing how the swiss standings shook out as well.

[@CardmarketMagic]

It was only 5 rounds of Swiss, so it was not very representative. Only 2 bad matches and a deck was knocked out of top 8. We'll probably be running this series back again so the decks that did not make it will have another chance :)

[@SpySappingMyKeyboard]

I want to see that black deck in it's context - what was the 2nd place deck of that standard? Can we see prismatic black vs that deck?

[@CardmarketMagic]

We actually filmed that with Frank Karsten! But we lost the footage :/ but if you want to see the other two semifinalists, I recommend watching this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oYK2fGp9n910r5I

[@Michael.032]

I was watching the Staple or Stinker from 3 months ago with Josh, the YuGiOh player, and I saw a comment that seems like a really cool video idea, so I'll restate it here: A match or maybe even a tournament with professional players of other card games where they have to build their own decks with a given card pool, say all of Standard (or even like an old block constructed set) on their very lacking knowledge of the game. I think it would be really cool to see their thought processes and what ideas they come up with, as well as if classic decks like MonoRed Aggro or UW/UB Control pop up.

[@CardmarketMagic]

It's a really fun idea but we simply don't have the budget to fly in that many Yu-Gi-Oh players for just one series. It would be fascinating, though!

[@shenirl]

I love this show

[@CardmarketMagic]

Thank you :D that is so kind of you to say!

[@At0m1cpickle]

Great video! Super trivial nitpick but Temur Energy being from the FIRE design era is actually incorrect. That philosophy was introduced proper around War of the Spark a few years later. The time around Kaladesh block did prompt a bunch of standard bannings for entirely unrelated reasons to a design philosophy shift though, there was just randomly some disproportionately strong stuff in those sets.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

Constructing the Prismatic Black deck with modern-frame lands rather than period-appropriate ones is unforgivable. The same goes for that Nekrataal.

[@CardmarketMagic]

We are not a store, so we don't own any cards. We tried as best we can 😅 it was unbelievably expensive, please understand

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

@@CardmarketMagic A VIS Nekrataal is 34 cents USD. & I don't think MIR Swamps are very expensive. But I understand that everything adds up when building so many decks. I just love the look of old decks & the frame consistency.

[@Octania544]

having watched quite a few of these matches i kinda see a pattern of "the deck that goes first twice wins" (that being the deck that goes first in game one). Even here the last game was kinda tight but the tempo gained from getting to play/attack first kinda swung it. Would've loved if for the quarter- semi- etc. finals if two sets of 3 got played with each deck getting to play first twice in a set each. And then thereafter (assuming a 1-1 on sets of 3) maybe something with a tiebreaker, similar to how penalties are handled in football after 5 players for each team have had their attempts. So playing first would be like an attempt to score, with the deck going second being the "goalkeeper".

[@CardmarketMagic]

I absolutely agree that more games would give better representation, but since these videos already take me days to edit, I cannot afford to make more than best-of-3s 😅 sorry - Carl

[@ZackeroniAndCheese]

The new creatures are so powercrept. I always root for the older deck

[@Trivedi_Tuesdays]

Mengu piloting a much weaker deck to a long game 3 is a testament to his skill. Dude’s a chad

[@corey2232]

Did Cawblade not make it in? I figured it'd be among the decks, but I guess something else won the year Standard was flooded with Stoneforge/JTMS shenanigans?

[@CardmarketMagic]

Dimir control won worlds that year, but Caw Blade would have probably done better in this 😅

[@Lightning_Lance]

Come on Mono Black, you can do it!

[@Lightning_Lance]

aww no :( well I'm not surprised, but still I had hope

[@jongibson4766]

What a wild game. I wish I could say it was unpredictable that two decks from the KLD/AMK era would be the two to make it to the top together, but man that was just a busted era of Magic. I guess we're just lucky there wasn't a Worlds in 2020 to wreck this event with Adventures, Food, or whatever disgusting WAR/Eldraine deck would've smashed that year.