I’m on my way to GenCon as I write this. I’ve been to GenCon every year except one since I first attended the convention in 1994, when I was 12. In the last few years, GenCon has become profitable for me, as I’ve won over $1000 each year for the past 4-5 years. This year my expectations are lower, because a substantial portion of those winnings were from non-Magic games, and I’m not really playing any this year.
It’s not all hopeless, though. GenCon will be hosting the Midwest Masters Series Championship, a tournament for which I’m not qualified, having failed to Top 8 the 1-2 Midwest Masters Series tournaments I played in, but I’ll be trying to LCQ at GenCon, which will give me a chance to play a Standard tournament before Nationals at the very least.
I’m currently planning to either play Wafo-Tapa’s U/W deck or a deck that tries to beat it with Fauna Shaman and Vengevine, as they seem like the best creatures for beating counterspells.
Next Level Bant seemed poorly positioned to me when the format was all ramp decks, as it’s largely an attrition deck that’s reasonably easy for ramp decks to go over the top of, but now that U/W appears to be the deck to beat, resilient threats could be the order of the day, particularly if the deck can be re-imagined into a more aggressive role against ramp decks.
GenCon also hosts the Block, Vintage, and Legacy Championships (three different tournaments). I don’t feel particularly up to date on Block or Vintage, but I’m looking forward to the Legacy tournament despite my terrible performance at Grand Prix: Columbus.
At the GP, I was planning to play either Lands or Patrick Chapin Survival deck. I got Patrick’s Survival deck from Brian Kowal, but I didn’t have his sideboard, and I wanted a chance to talk to Patrick about the deck, but I couldn’t find him before the tournament started. Instead, I ran into Billy Moreno, who had a different Survival deck that looked interesting. I had him write the list for me two minutes before the players meeting and jumped in.
Newsflash: this is a terrible idea.
New rule: Never switch to a deck I haven’t really looked at on the morning of a tournament. The night before might be acceptable, but the morning is not at all. I need time to make sure the deck has the tools to do what I want the deck to do.
For reference, I played:
Creatures (23)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Anger
- 1 Loyal Retainers
- 4 Elvish Spirit Guide
- 2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Progenitus
- 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
- 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Lands (20)
Spells (17)
My problem with this deck is that it feels a bit like a toolbox filled with hammers in game 1. It has all these tutors, but it can only find a fairly narrow range of threats and no real answers, and its threats just aren’t powerful enough to trump whatever might be thrown at it.
The sideboard can address this somewhat, but at that point you’re often down a game.
The deck just didn’t feel like it was really maximizing its own cards.
Awkwardly, what I want to do now is play Lands, but modify it to have more or less the same problems as this deck.
Lands has been being rebuilt for more and more flexibility and versatility in its answers, but at what looks to me to be a substantial cost in speed. It’s very hard for me to imagine wanting to take the time to transmute a Tolaria West. Even Intuition feels pretty slow to me. I want the deck to get its mana denial online with Life from the Loam as soon as possible, and I think I’m willing to give up a little in terms of being able to deal with my opponent’s trump cards if they can cast them to get it. I’m just not willing to give people enough credit for maindeck hate to slow deck my deck as much as I think is required to make it happen. I’m not even sure I want access to Academy Ruins because skipping Tropical Island entirely sounds pretty nice against Merfolk, but there are some slots I’m uncertain about.
There are a lot of other Legacy decks that look pretty fun to work on. I love Adrian’s Baron deck, and I can imagine deciding to play that at the last second just to use Gaea’s Blessing again (also because I’ve been very impressed by Pernicious Deed in this format).
Saito’s deck, incidentally, seemed very well built, except that I really don’t like where it’s positioned in the mirror, as the maindeck seems weak there and the sideboard offers little help.
Anyway, GenCon should be fun, but I don’t really feel prepared enough yet to have high hopes. I’m mostly looking forward to it as a cool testing opportunity.
In other news, this is the first year I’m eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame, and I’m honored to be able to do so. I wish to take the voting very seriously. As such, I really want to discuss my thoughts on this year’s ballot, and get feedback before submitting a final vote.
I believe that it is my responsibility to vote for the five people I think most deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. This means I don’t think it’s acceptable to leave Nassif off the ballot because I know he’ll be voted in regardless.
Looking at the Hall of Fame so far, I see the Randy Buehler is the only player in with less than 3 Pro Tour Top 8s, which for me says that there need to be a lot of extenuating circumstances to vote for someone with less than 3 Pro Tour Top 8s. Obviously there’s a lot of criteria involved, and finishes aren’t everything, but I think that’s a reasonable baseline, and it helps to keep the list manageable.
When I first saw the list, I went through and made a list of names that stood out to me, without looking at any stats. I understood that this list would be weighted slightly against players who stopped playing before I started playing on the PT, since I didn’t follow it much then, but it gave me a starting point. My initial list was:
Akira Asahara
Patrick Chapin
Brian Kibler
Gabriel Nassif
Tomoharu Saito
Guillaume Wafo-Tapa
Shouta Yasooka
Eugene Harvey
Gabriel Nassif is ludicrously far above everyone else. He has almost twice as many PT Top 8s as anyone on the list, and the best median finish of anyone whose career wasn’t almost entirely before anyone knew how to play Magic. I’ve never heard anyone attack his character, which is somewhat rare, and he’s a renowned deck builder as well as player. I can’t imagine any justifiable reason not to vote for him that isn’t just gaming the ballot.
Tomoharu Saito is the next obvious include. He’s tied for second in PT Top 8s on this ballot at 5, and tied for second GP Top 8s at 16. He’s also an excellent deck builder, amazing player, and he might love the game more than anyone. He almost never missed a pro level event anywhere in the world, and he actively builds the community around him in Tokyo where he chose to live because it was the best Magic community he could find. In at least one player profile, when asked about non-Magic accomplishments, he said, “I love only Magic.” No one else is even close to as serious about the game as Saito. Unlike Nassif, I have heard people challenge his integrity as a player, and that’s something to take seriously. The story I heard at GP: Columbus about him allegedly stalling for a draw sounded pretty egregious as it was presented to me, but it did happen with a judge watching, so I think I have to hope it wasn’t as bad as I heard. Either way, I can’t hold anything I’m not entirely sure about against him strongly enough to trump his amazing career and dedication to the game. Failing to honor Saito’s accomplishments is something I personally would feel terrible about, having stayed in his apartment in Tokyo and seen first-hand his love for the game. The man really does just live for Magic, and I can’t imagine what a crushing insult it would be not to induct him.
Beyond those two, I think the questions get more interesting.
Going down the list of Lifetime Pro Points, a reasonable place to start, the next name to come up is Bram Snepvangers. Bram’s been eligible for a long time without being inducted, but since the last vote he picked up at least a Top 8 in Worlds and GP: Lyon. His primary accomplishment is just that he’s played in almost every Pro Tour. His performance has never particularly stood out, and his average finish is pretty, well, average. No one argues that he’s among the best to ever play the game, but he’s always there, and that counts for something, like the fact that he has over 300 points lifetime. I don’t feel like this is making a great case for him, and maybe I just don’t know enough about him personally to make the right case, but the more I think about it, the more I think there’s just not enough that really sets him apart. I think it takes more than just playing forever.
Looking at PT top 8s brings up Scott Johns and Anton Jonsson, both of whom were really playing before my time.
Scott Johns was eligible last year, and I find the ballot pretty surprising. Despite a respectable resume and extensive contributions to Magic’s online presence as an editor, he managed to pick up only 2 votes from players, 2.47%, as contrasted against the 28.32% of the selection committee that voted for him. I wouldn’t hate to see him in the Hall of Fame, but I don’t know enough about him to feel like I can say for sure that all the people who didn’t vote for him before were wrong. I feel like someone probably has to do something impressive to justify voting for them if they’ve already failed to get in before, especially if it wasn’t particularly close. Voting for Scott Johns feels very much like a wasted vote at this point, which discourages my investigating further to figure out why I should or shouldn’t vote for him, or why he was shown so little support by players as compared to selection committee members.
Anton Jonsson just became eligible, so he doesn’t have previous failure weighing against him, and he has as many PT Top 8s as Scott Johns, plus eight GP Top 8’s to Scott John’s zero. On the other hand, as far as I know, his contributions to the game outside of tournaments don’t compare, and while he did have two very impressive years, with two PT Top 8s each, again, I don’t know what really sets him apart. His problem might just be that I don’t know him well, but I think he’ll have that problem a lot. He’s another person I just don’t see making it.
Eugene Harvey, Tsuyoshi Ikeda, Bram Snepvangers, and William Jensen have 4 PT Top 8s each, and 5, 6, 7, and 8 GP Top 8s respectively. Eugene Harvey has a Team Worlds in, a Team Worlds second place, and a U.S. Nationals win on top of that. Tsujoshi Ikeda may or may not be best known for his hats. William Jensen probably has the best stats of this group, and still only picked up 14% of the ballots last year, which makes all of their chances look pretty bad.
The remaining candidates with 4 PT Top 8s all seem like worse choices than those four.
That brings us to the people with 3 PT top 8s, each of whom will need to have something else substantial going for them to have a chance. Those who are new to the ballot seem like the ones to consider first. That’s Willy Edel, Katsuhiro Mori, and Jeroen Remi. I’m not voting for Edel or Mori. It’s possible that they might not be cheaters, particularly Edel, but I’m not sure. Mori was suspended for repeated infractions, which is basically to say that he was almost certainly a habitual cheater, and every story I’ve heard supports this. I’ve heard what I consider fairly solid confirmation that he at the very least was a cheater of American and Japanese players alike. He’s an interesting character, and a World Champion, but even if you don’t believe in a hard line that anyone who cheats shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, integrity is listed as something to take into consideration, and there’s no way he’s done enough to counteract that no matter how you weigh things.
Edel I know much less about, but he also doesn’t have as impressive a resume if he is honest, and I’ve heard enough doubt cast on that that I’m not really willing to completely give him the benefit of the doubt.
Jeroen Remi is another great player who just doesn’t quite have anything to set him apart from the other great players who aren’t quite there.
That brings me to the others from my list who had 3 PT Top 8s: Brian Kibler and Patrick Chapin.
Brian Kibler is an excellent candidate. Few Magic players have more literal fame than Kibler. He has a PT win and 10 GP Top 8s. He was out of the game for several years, working on other games, and despite the fact that that made him a direct competitor of Wizards, I actually think any contribution to the industry is something of a contribution to the game. As a lover of games in general, not just Magic, I’m a firm believer that “a rising tide lifts all ships,” particularly in this industry. I know a number of players who have moved into (or back into) Magic after whatever other game they were playing failed (and they almost all fail – most of them are not designed for long term success). Beyond that, whenever he was playing, he’s contributed substantially as a writer. He’s an outgoing personality and excellent spokesman for the game.
Moreover, his comeback has been extremely impressive. He decided to get back into Magic and won a PTQ almost immediately, and then went right back to dominating the PT and GP scene without missing a beat. I think Kibler is the next most obvious candidate to vote for. He may have only picked up 12.48% of last year’s vote, which doesn’t make me too optimistic about his chances, but I’m not sure exactly where the vote fell compared to his performances. Either way, he’s continued to perform well, and I’m happy to help him pick up additional votes.
For several years now, Patrick Chapin has been the face of StarCityGames.com Premium side. He’s a fantastic writer and contributor to Magic theory. He’s held back by a minor lack of results and, I believe, as self admitted lack of technical play skill. He was on the ballot last year and didn’t break 10%. He’s had a major accomplishment since then, which is the publishing of his book, Next Level Magic, but my honest guess is that it’s going to take another PT Top 8 to get him enough momentum to actually get him in the Hall of Fame at this point.
There are a number of people who want to push to get Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz and/or Chris Pikula into the Hall of Fame. Steve OMS was the 4th place finisher last year, when the system for getting in was changed, and he would have been inducted in any other year. He’s another old schooler from before my time, but he did have an impressive career. It’s nice to get people in who aren’t playing otherwise, as it might pull them back to the PT, whereas someone like Kibler is going to be playing next year regardless. (Though I think it would be absolutely absurd to hold “continuing to play Magic” against Kibler or anyone else). I like the idea of contributing to Steve OMS’s second chance, but I just don’t know that he’s done enough lately or outside of the game ever to impress me (if he was a major contributor early that I just missed, please point that out to me).
Chris Pikula just doesn’t have the stats to get it done for me.
That leaves only the people without enough PT results who might have something else exceptional going for them.
The most obvious of those to me is Shouta Yasooka. It’s hard to ignore a Player of the Year. Shouta was also the first Magic Online Player of the Year. Despite that, he didn’t really manage to keep momentum after 2006, and his one great year probably isn’t enough to carry him.
Guillaume Wafo-Tapa is a well loved deck designer whose concessions at French Nationals indicate to me that he may be stepping away from the game after a very rough season last year. It would be excellent to honor him and maybe keep him in the game, but he’s another player who just doesn’t quite have the stats for me.
There are a number of other excellent players, like Kuroda, Asahara, and Justin Gary, who all have reasonable cases to made for them, but none of them really stand out from the others for me.
I think that leaves my ballot at:
1. Gabriel Nassif
2. Tomoharu Saito
3. Brian Kibler
4. Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
And I’m honestly undecided about who the fifth should be. Eugene Harvey, William Jensen, and Patrick Chapin are the people I’d probably feel most comfortable voting for in that slot, but I’d really like to hear cases made for them, since I don’t think I know enough about Magic before I played on the PT to be confident in my own opinion of these players.
Please, discuss your thoughts on the forums and help me complete my ballot.
Thanks for reading…
Sam