The Luckiest Moment in Magic History

In 2007, two incredible Magic players played a mirror match at the Magic: The Gathering World Championship. But what happens throughout the course of the series is so incredible and so unlikely that it has to be seen to be believed.
Patrick Chapin and Gabriel Nassif are vying for a shot at becoming World Champion and both of them have had a hand in reviving an archetype that everyone thought was lost to rotation, the fire-breathing, combo menace Dragonstorm.
Having successfully burnt out most of their opponents they now face each other in the semifinals where only one can move on to represent the deck that they broke the format with.
Between the old mulligan rules punishing Nassif even more than usual, a former Standard card that's now on the Magic the Gathering banned list and a whole lot of rolling dice to Ignite Memories this game sees both players wading through the Storm and trying to make it out the otherside.
And it's nothing if not endlessly entertaining and more than a little lucky in places.
Enjoy a trip down Magic memory lane as we explore one of the greatest series to ever grace the Pro Tour.
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Credits:
This video features the songs 'Title' and 'The Void' from the game 'Orb of Creation', used with permission. Thanks Marple for being awesome.
You can check out Orb here: store.steampow...
Footage used is presumably owned by the WOTC and the PlayMTG channels. Everything was used with the intention of sharing the great stories of competitive Magic and credit was attributed as best I could.

[@jarvis]

i love these videos

[@jesseA6588]

It’s channels like this that keep me so invested in this game

[@LucianDevine]

And this isn't even the only crazy lucky sequence Nassif has had in a top 8! Nassif's called shot is equally insane!

[@HungryOnPlane]

Turns out when you're probably the third best player of all time you've likely done some wild stuff at the Pro Tour.

[@BrootalMetalBanjo]

My Ultimatum Mana

[@LucianDevine]

@@BrootalMetalBanjo Oh, and we can't forget that he was playing a 61 card deck with that one! That alone is pretty insane!

[@HungryOnPlane]

BONUS LORE: Didn't have time to put this in anywhere but this match and deck were so influential that P Chapin and his musical collaborator Spruke wrote a song about it for their Magic-themed hip hop duo 'The Gatherin' You can see the music video here, ngl it still goes pretty hard: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWHccnyDZrSEqrc

[@josephrossow8901]

I first saw your video on the sliver kids - which was really great. And then this one is really good too. I'm not into competitive MTG (I know OF the game but don't play), and these videos did a good job of setting the stage, explaining the foundation of the strategies, and telling an interesting story. I hope to see more of these, they're really cool!

[@strawhataddison]

That Ignite Memories x5 🤯🤯🤯 Talk about suspense!

[@ZRoFun]

Love this. The narration and story telling is wonderful!

[@RetroPokemonTCG]

Love these retro MtG videos! I specialize in the history of competitive Pokemon, so it's really cool to learn about this game's competitive history as well!

[@Nr4747]

What I love most about this entire sequence is how much fun Nassif and Chapin clearly had during that match-up and especially that situation. They were teammates, both playing the same deck - and the way they handled the situation was just perfect. I miss those more goofy interactions in tournaments nowadays.

[@Meddling_Mage]

18 minute video about my faves? yes, please!

[@Dreadocto6039]

Great content. Thank you for making these videos. ❤

[@PHemidall]

By calculations, the chance of this happening is 31 in 243, something close to 12%. All combinations of 5 Ignites with 3 different mana values:243 (1+1+1+2+2 and 2+2+1+1+1 are two different events for example). Doing combinations and adding up any combination with result life points 1 , 2,3,4 and excluding any scenario with a Memories reveal (insta loss) we have 31 possible surviving scenarios of 243 possible scenarios. Nonetheless, still an insane turn of events. I consider these slam flips more insane than the legendary Helix flip on Honolulu. Edit: corrected my calculations as pointed by darkshadow1416

[@HungryOnPlane]

Thank you for doing the math, I was absolutely never going to LOL

[@darkshadow1416]

Not just a little bit higher, it's actually closer to 1/10 (easy way to get order of magnitude: Ignite Memories can never be chosen so that's (2/3)^5, then you can afford up to 3 shots on grapeshot which is all but 6/32 of the remaining cases). So while it was incredible theatrics, it wasn't as unlikely as one might think.

[@PHemidall]

@@darkshadow1416 yep you are correct, little mistake using all 243 (3 to the power of 5) combinations but counting the scenarios where Nasif escapes as single events. Any order of the correct sum counts, making it 31/243 or =~12%.

[@zafiroshin]

Probability of survival is actually pretty high, around 63%

[@Kakerate2]

@@zafiroshin not even close to 63% lol

[@jason_heh]

Thought for sure you were going to say "destined to play from the beginning of time" 0:35

[@Firevine]

What a great era. The Ravnica/Time Spiral/Lorwyn years were top tier. Even up through New Phyrexia was great. It's been going downhill since though, and keeps getting worse.

[@Aaron-l3l6g]

Funny that's around the time when Commander took off. Coincidence?

[@TheMCGamer2012]

Hmm, some of the math I'm seeing here needs a bit of work... 9 life, 5 total Grapeshot or RoF with at least 2 being RoF only for 8 damage or less to survive. For 2 RoF, that's (1/3)^3 from 3 Grapeshot and (1/3)^2 for 2 RoF, with [5 choose 2] = 10 possible combinations. (1/3)^3 * (1/3)^2 * 10 = 4.12%. For 3 RoF: [5 choose 3] = 10, (1/3)^2 * (1/3)^3 * 10 = 4.12%. For 4 Rof: [5 choose 4] = 5, (1/3)^1 * (1/3)^4 * 5 = 2.06%. Finally, for all 5 RoF = (1/3)^5 = 0.41%. Total probability of survival = 4.12% + 4.12% + 2.06% + 0.41% = 10.7%, not exactly the "Luckiest Moment", but still pretty cool to capture live.

[@IamActuallyLvL1]

New pastrytime video. Pogo

[@Justnothankyou132]

Oh wow ANOTHER channel covering this same match. My count is at 7 now.

[@HungryOnPlane]

Hey it's a great match, probably the best known of most on the Tour apart from a few others I could think of although it kind of depends how long you've been watching. Also given how long it takes me to make videos currently, once I've started an edit it doesn't really make sense to stop even if other people have also covered it.

[@hors4107]

I think he did a lovely job adding on a better take then others. I haven’t watched all other 6 just a few here and there but I liked his pacing a lot more then others. This kid plays fucking sen triplets and asks his mom for snacks still don’t listen to him man cover whatever the fuck you want.

[@Justnothankyou132]

@@hors4107 Nice ad hominem 🤣

[@smartkaboose3806]

Such a cool moment :)

[@aidan8473]

Is this the origin of Better Lucky Than Good? Crazy

[@HungryOnPlane]

It's not, I think that phrase might be older than Magic itself but it's certainly the series that arguably propelled it into 'mainstream' Magic culture at least.

[@voshadxgathic]

This is like if Joey Wheeler dueled himself. Just a good time all around.

[@schaedli177]

at first i thought that the card in the thumbmail is kinda mid, but than i saw that it had storm after that i felt that kitchen has been visited

[@larshabemund6033]

Another nice video! Thanks!

[@phuffzone9485]

As always another great video!

[@bearsaremonkeys]

patrick got screwed over by arena's rng algorithm so hard here

[@monogreen]

I really miss Randy on coverage

[@oscarguzman3017]

Complimentary engagement

[@crabington6036]

I have a question, why are they playing dual lands here if they’re running mono red decks? I was 4 years old when this series happened so I was not exactly in tune with the metagame and I’m not sure what lands were in rotation at the time and what benefits they would have given, I’m trying think of what older dual lands they could be running but I’m drawing blanks. Any explanation would be greatly appreciated!

[@Ozymandias42]

The duals they're using are the Time Spiral "Storage Lands" (Specifically Molten Slagheap and Fungal Reaches) that let you tap them and an additional mana to put counters on them which can be cashed in for that many mana of their color on a later turn when you're comboing off.

[@HungryOnPlane]

^this Defs didn't have time to cover ALL of the nuance in the video but these lands were an integral part of how the deck was able to function. Time Spiral storage lands are SO powerful in this era and I'm sad more people didn't get to appreciate them. Also didn't get to mention that the reason they're playing Snow-Covered lands was to try and juke opponents in the Swiss rounds into thinking they were playing Skred Red a red based control-ish deck. It likely didn't come up often but it was basically free to do so they just jammed the Coldsnap basics in there.

[@zafiroshin]

I simulated the probabilities. As paradoxical as it might seem, there are more chances of surviving the ignite the memories than to die. The probability of surviving is 63%. It actually doesn't require all that luck. Check first comment below for the link to the code.

[@lasselindkvist2051]

Can you explain the match or share a google sheet with it?

[@zafiroshin]

Source code (R): N

[@lasselindkvist2051]

I just did the math for getting anything but the 5 drop 5 times in a row. It's 2/3 the first time (66%), then it's 66% of that sub value (44%) and so on. By draw 5 you have a total chance of 13,17% of not having hit the 5 drop once. I you hit the five drop once, you are done. Here we already see that the 63% of surviving is wrong (how did you even get to that number?). On top of that you have to dodge the 2 drop at least 2 times, which is pretty straightforward since it's 50% chance each draw (since the last option i 5 damage which ends it). So you have 5 events with a 50% winrate and you just have to win twice. Even though that isn't too hard it still adds a couple percentage points risk of losing on top of the 86,23% chance of losing to the 5 drop. So while it might not be as crazy as portrayed here, it's still very unlikely. But hey, if my math is off, I would like to be corrected

[@TheMCGamer2012]

10.7% btw, the math here needs some work

[@Eggyism]

lol the flood of tears

[@HungryOnPlane]

Glad someone caught it!

[@Kakerate2]

2:42 what webpage is this?

[@bradcallahan3546]

Lmao. Only a mtg player would say a luck game takes skill

[@KQDUDE]

make your luck, luck makes you