GP Charlotte Coverage: Day 2

After an exciting and diverse Day 1 at our latest Modern format Grand Prix, plenty of big names are in the running.

Here’s our coverage from Day 1.

According to the official stats, Grixis Twin, Affinity and Jund are all topping the metagame with around 10% of the field, but a full 15+ archetypes make up the rest of the field, including Merfolk, Naya Burn, R/G Tron, U/B Faeries, Goryo’s Vengeance and Amulet Bloom.

One of the more interesting decks arrived in the hands of Shaheen Soorani. Blink Riders looks to work a mana denial angle to go after the big mana decks with a vengeance.

See more details on the metagame here.

Here’s what’s developing at the top tables in our final day:

Round 11

In this round Korean national Nam Sung Wook brought the heat by tabling Thunderbreak Regent in Modern and taking down long time pro Willy Edel on Abzan.

regent

Round 13

Ken Van Sciver (Infect) vs Darien Elderfield (Ad Nauseum)

Here we have a battle of two fairly non-interactive style decks and a rare appearance by the Ad Nauseum deck. Darien takes game 1 by going off smoothly and killing Ken with Lightning Storm. In Game 2 Darien casts a spicy Darkness to buy some time to set up his win and take the match, moving to 12-1 and putting himself in position to qualify for the Pro Tour.

Round 14

Paul Reitzel (Naya Collected Company) vs. Ben Wincorp (Bant)

Rietzl on a mid-range zoo build that leverages Collected Company without any combo elements to just overwhelm opponents. Both players at 10-2 and in Top 8 contention if they keeping winning.

During his Dech Tech Reitzel explains that Wild Nacatl is the 2nd best creature (by rate) in Modern, and bolsters Collected Company as a great backup plan against grindy decks. Scavenging Ooze looked great in various matches as well.

Patrick Chapin (Grixis Control) vs. Alexander Hayne (Amulet Bloom)

Chapin takes down Hayne on the back of Shadow of Doubt and a small run on the card just went down.

Top 8

So after two long days where GR Tron and Amulet Bloom were the decks to beat, neither deck has showed up in the Top 8. Instead we’re facing the following decks as potential champions for the GP:

top8A top8B

The expected Top 8 buyouts have already started with Nourishing Shoal, a new piece of tech in the Goryo’s Vengeance deck, disappearing across the online vendors.

Wesley See takes down Sam Pardee in the mirror match with the help of Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir into the Splinter Twin combo. Ad Nauseum takes down the Vengance deck, throwing the Nourishing Shoal spec into shadow, and Affinity takes down Abzan Company.

Here’s our Top 4:

top4

Elves vs. Twin in the finals! Elves wins it all! Look for Foil Collected Company to make another potential move.

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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8 thoughts on “GP Charlotte Coverage: Day 2”

  1. For what it’s worth after Chapin used Shadow of Doubt to beat Amulet Bloom the last Near Mint copy on Star City was purchased. I was trolling the card just to see what might happen, there was only 1 NM copy that SCG had available

    1. Spencer: Shadow of Doubt foils are hard as crap to find, I was looking for them a while ago to get a playset because I think it’s a great card, and it took some digging even then.

  2. So Wesley See “cheated” and had a Cavern of Souls instead of Tech Edge in his side board. I’d be pissed if I lost to him in those last few rounds. More pub for Cavern though lol

  3. Hello,

    Any thoughts about the recent spike of Olivia and Huntmaster?
    I have the perception that they are a bit overestimated, comparing their modern playability,as a 1 or 2-of in Jund and no other deck….

    On the contrary, Thragtusk with one single print, and playing in much more decks, also as SB material, is standing at $4… I see huge potential here in this wave of speculation…

    Regards,

    Artur

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