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A Review of Pro
Tour Tokyo
by John "Nev"
Balla
This weekend held the first major
event featuring the Invasion Block
Constructed format: Pro Tour Tokyo, and with it brought
the deck archtypes
that will be defining most IBC tournaments in the
future. Many different
decks appeared at Pro Tour Tokyo, including B/U control,
B/U/r control, U/W
and 5 color in many variations, but the deck that
undoubtedly had the most
success over the weekend was the G/R aggressive deck
made by Team
AlphaBetaUnlimited.com, placing 4 of the 11 players
playing it within the top
8.
Their decks varied somewhat, but all
of them had common cards like
Thornscape Familiar, Thornscape Battlemage, Ghitu Fire,
Urza's Rage, Skizzik,
Blurred Mongoose, Raging Kavu, Kavu Titan, and Kavu
Runner. The deck can come
out with explosive speed, casting many threats with the
efficient burn spells
Ghitu Fire and Urza's Rage as ways to either deal more
damage to the opponent
or clear the way for your threats. It also
included 2 of the most popular
"187" creautres, Thornscape Battlemage, which,
with kicker, is a 2/2 for 2G
that deals 2 damage to a creature or player when it
comes into play, and
Flametongue Kavu, 3R for a 4/2 that deals 4 damage to a
creature when it
comes into play, both very powerful cards in this
archtype. One of the
possible reasons that the deck did well is that the
format is untested
previously, so it was not known by everyone what to
expect, so an aggressive
deck that produces many threats and can deal with the
opponent's is going to
do well against control decks that try to find answers
to opponent's threats,
and aggressive decks that try to overwhelm the opponent.
Despite the great success of the many
competitors playing the R/G
aggressive deck, U/W still won out with cards
specifically metagamed against
those decks and others, like Galina's Knight, Voice of
All, and Crimson
Acolyte, all three of which have or can get protection
from red, something
that many decks in the field have trouble dealing
with. The rest of it's
creatures are filled out with Meddling Mage and
Stormscape Apprentice. It
also included 8 countermagic, with Absorb and Exclude, 4
Repulse to gain
tempo advantage, and 4 Fact or Fiction to gain an
enormous advantage in the
mid to late game.
Overall, many different archtypes
were played in Tokyo, though a few of
them were the ones that had the most success among the
diverse field. It
will be interesting to see how many new archtypes
surface after the metagame
has been defined, and how well the successful decks from
Tokyo will do in
later tournaments.
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