2013 World Champions Modern

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Today we wanted to take a brief look back at the recent 2013 Magic: the Gathering World Championship tournament that was held in Amsterdam last weekend.  Specifically, let's have a looky-loo at the two top Modern format decklists which went to the finals.

The winning Modern list was a very slick blue / red / white flash build played by Shahar Shenhar, who not only happened to be the youngest player in the field at 19, but also found a way against the odds at taking opponent's Reid Duke's killer hexproof build.  Shahar also happens to be a member of Team Madness and writes for MTG Madness.  So be sure to drop off congratulatory fan mail over there.  For the full run down on how it went down click on over to the mothersite.

Righto - all the decklists are over here, but let's have a quick look at these two Modern format builds -

Shahar Shenhar b/w/r Flash

Give this a play on the sample hand generator here.  A nice blend of control 'n' burn with so many options to flashback
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Reid Duke Hexproof 

Try a sample hand over here. We really love our standard format bant hexproof but feel it could greatly improve with some card draw - with Reid's build here it's no problemo with cards such as Kor Spiritdancer and Keen Sense.
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Anywhoos, if you have an itching to grab a few MTG singles for your Modern build, drop by MTG Mint Card.  Happy Brewing!
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MTG Worlds Day One

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We are continuing, whenever we can to catch up with all the Magic: the Gathering pro-play goodness taking place at the 2013 Magic World Championship.  Here's a quick summary of what's went down yesterday and expected today -

Day 1 (Wednesday, July 31)
• Modern Masters Booster Draft – 3 Swiss rounds.
• Standard constructed – 3 Swiss rounds.

Day 2 (Thursday, August 1)
• Magic 2014 Booster Draft – 3 Swiss rounds.
• Modern constructed – 3 Swiss rounds.

As we here at MTG Realm play mostly standard in a Friday Night Magic environment, we're certainly interested at what some of the top players took along to play at the World Championship to game with.  Here's builds from players sitting in the top three spots at the end of day one (all images from Wizards of the Coast event coverage) - - -

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Reid Duke (Jund)

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Brian Kibler (Gruul Aggro)

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Sharhar Shenhar (UWR Flash)

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These decks look solid but we would not likely want to build and take along to our local store (OMG! Games in Barrie).  Instead, what caught our attention is Craig Wescoe's Boros Aggro build (we've always liked Craig's deck strategies / style) -

Yep - that's the ticket.  We need just a few singles from MTG Mint Card and we have the rest to complete this or something very close to this.
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Here's the standings at the end of day one - to get the latest action, pop onto the Wizards streaming coverage over here.

Name        /      Total Points
Duke, Reid         15    
Kibler, Brian         12    
Shenhar, Shahar     12    
Stark, Ben         9    
Cifka, Stanislav     9    
Wescoe, Craig         9    
Watanabe, Yuuya     9    
Edel, Willy         6    
Froehlich, Eric     6    
Utter-Leyton, Josh     6    
Ochoa, David         6    
Nakamura, Shuhei     6    
Martell, Tom         6    
Shi Tian, Lee         6    
Butakov, Dmitriy     3    
Juza, Martin         0
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World Championship

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

A lot of Magic: the Gathering players we know are (or had been) tuned into Day One of the 2013 Magic World Championship being held in Amsterdam.  We know MTG Realm caters to the Kitchen Table and FNM crowd but it's very hard not to see what the rock stars of MTG are doing. Anywhoos - here's the blurb about MTG World Cup from the mothersite -

The 2013 Magic World Championship showcases the best players in the world battling against one another for the title of World Champion. Sixteen players will be invited to compete across three formats for the title and $40,000 first prize, with a total cash purse exceeding $100,000. In addition to the prize money, players earn one Pro Point for each match win during the first two days and two points per match win on the final day.

The 2013 Magic World Championship takes place on July 31, August 1, and August 4 in Amsterdam, with the 2013 World Magic Cup being run August 2-4. All five days will be live streamed.

 

The big names battling for the prized world cup are from almost every corner of the globe (that is if the globe were actually a cube) and include - Dmitriy Butakov, Stanislav Cifka, Reid Duke, Willy Edel, Eric Froehlich, Martin Jůza, Brian Kibler, Tom Martell, Shuhei Nakamura, David Ochoa, Shahar Shenhar, Lee Shi Tian, Ben Stark, Josh Utter-Leyton, Yuuya Watanabe, and Craig Wescoe.

Day One included a Modern Masters draft.  It's still not too late for you to pick up Modern Masters singles from MTG Mint Card.

Also - you can check out the re-cap of Day One on this video from Wizards - We're hoping Wizards does a Theros spoiler at some point during the coverage - and as soon as they do, expect us to get it up here lickity-split.

 
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