As mentioned in my earlier post, the original first day of PT Valencia was literally washed out, as flooding forced the evacuation of the venue. Now, reorganized into a fairly nasty ten-round day / three-round day schedule, the PT started in earnest today. More in the extended.
You have a range of coverage options when keeping up with a Pro Tour event -- Wizards has podcasts (accessible directly from their coverage page or on iTunes), YouTube videos, and text coverage on their site. Sampling all three is a good way to get a comprehensive view of the event, although it can be a little time consuming, and I have to admit that I find myself drifting if I try to read all the match coverage.
Leading up to the event, the big question seemed to be whether Dredge builds would end up dominating. At the end of the day, however, Dredge has been doing okay, but two other combo decks have really stood out. One, often called "Cephalid Breakfast" and being fielded by the Finnish contingent, uses the combo of Cephalid Illusionist and Shuko to mill an arbitrarily large number of cards into your graveyard on turn two, and then kill with a hasty Sutured Ghoul. There's also a "backup kill" in that deck, which is described well by Antti Malin in the podcast coverage (who also bemoans that ending of Frank Karsten's column, opining that Mike Flores doesn't know anything about anything). The other combo is Enduring Ideal, which did well in Worlds 2005 (9th + Kamigawa + Ravnica). In Extended, the EI deck uses mana acceleration to power out a turn three or four Enduring Ideal. The first enchantment you grab with Ideal is Dovescape. This is basically a lock, unless the opponent thought to side in creature-based enchantment removal and manages to have it in hand or draw into it before the Ideal player kills them off. Most unpleasantly, the copies of Ideal that replay on each subsequent turn are not "played", and thus aren't countered by Dovescape. Ouch.
You can read about how Dredge and Ideal work here. You can see how a Dredge deck works in more detail in this match between Masahiko Morita and Chris Lachmann, as Morita's Dredge deck takes apart Lachmann's five-color domain zoo build.
As I was listening to the podcast description about how Ideal plays out in Extended, I jokingly thought Chalice of the Void for seven? Right after that, Rich Hagon did the play-by-play on a Tron versus Ideal matchup, and yes, the Tron deck payed fourteen to get a Chalice for seven in play, locking out Ideal.
Starting the day, there was a lot of excitement about the player of the year race, with both Kenji Tsumura and Tomoharu Saito being right up there at the top. However, even when this video was made, they weren't doing all that well:
...and by the end of the day, both failed to make day two, coming in at 15 points each.
The other interesting "story" feature of Valencia is invites for players who might not otherwise be at a PT, based on special-case invitations to the Magic Invitational. Evan Irwin, of The Magic Show fame, is interviewed by Randy and BDM in this YouTube video. He scored 9 points on the day, ending in 318th place, just above coverage reporter Bill Stark (who eschewed coverage in favor of attendance this time around). The other Invitational-based invite went to Steve Menendian, an acknowledged expert in the Vintage format who has never played in a PT. You can read about his loss to Tsuyoshi Fujita here. My favorite part of that article is Tsuyoshi attempting to Cabal Therapy for a card, and being unable to remember the English-language name for it (he asked a judge over, and they were able to figure it out).
Some other good match coverage:
Gabriel Nassif versus Guillaume Wafo-Tapa - Two very good players face off, as Gab takes his BRG aggro build against Wafo-Tapa's take on Heartbeat (a combo deck that attempts to generate a ton of mana and go off on one big turn). Notably, Wafo-Tapa wins a game not through his combo, but by a very clever Cunning Wish play. Worth reading just for that.
Kenji Tsumura versus Tsuyoshi Ikeda - Kenji took a "No stick" (Scepter-Chant) deck to the event, thinking that it would be good in general. Coverage reporter Dave Sutcliffe uses this matchup between Scepter-Chant and Affinity as case study in how Scepter-Chant is amazing in game one, and regularly loses all the sideboarded games. Thus, no Kenji for day two (no Ikeda either, as he ended at 18 points).
Melissa DeTora versus Quentin Martin - Quentin's running Tron (with the Mindslaver lock) against Melissa's Gifts-Rock build. The podcast coverage has an earlier game featuring Melissa taking out an Affinity build. In this match, Martin locks Melissa on game one, and she comes back for a win on game two. In game three, Quentin hits the lock, but will run out of time if he has to keep playing it each turn, looking for a way to win (it's awfully hard to get a Gifts-Rock deck to suicide itself, so he's basically just tapping Melissa out and not letting her have any open resources on his turn). In a very classy move, Melissa lets Quentin shortcut most of the process (which is allowed, although as the article mentions, if you're shortcutting as much of it as Quentin is, you want a judge around). However, in his rush to draw into a win condition, Quentin accidentally lets Melissa have a free turn. From the coverage:
"You get a real turn. Wait. . . I gave you a turn? I meant. . . Wow. You got me. I screwed myself."
Quentin was playing absurdly fast up to this point in an attempt to get Melissa from 12 to 0 within the time constraints. Without moving as fast as he was, it was going to be impossible for him to do what needed to be done in time. He had a plan, had the game in total control, and then crossed some circuits. This is why the time constraints were so crucial in this game. If Quentin had infinite time, it was impossible for him to lose. Instead, he had to play at superhuman speed to get the kill in time, and it's impossible to play a perfect game when you're playing at the speed he was forced to play. Making matters worse was the fact that one of the cards he knew he had hidden on the top of her deck was a Tormod's Crypt, which Melissa used to wipe the Mindslaver out of Q's graveyard.
Quentin:
"Shoot me now."
After a few passing turns, Melissa managed to play a Loxodon Hierarch to put her out of reach. After the almost obligatory requests for concession, the game ended in a draw. It's a shame for Quentin that he didn't have more time.
Notably, both players made it through to day two on 21 points, with Quentin in 63rd place and Melissa in 49th (the difference in place for the same points comes from your tiebreakers, which are based on your opponents' match win percentage -- in other words, if all the people you've played so far in the day are doing well, that's good for you). I'm really rooting for Melissa in this one, as I'd like to see a second woman make the money at a PT-level event (so far, only one other has, along with a win or two at GPs). That, and she's playing Gifts-Rock, which is one of the decks I'd want to play were I playing in Extended. And she's an American, so it's kind of a trifecta of reasons.
Rich Hagon's podcast coverage includes an episode during which he shadows Head Judge Jaap Brouwer to get a feel for the head judge's job. The only big question during the "shadowing" period is a head judge call by Quentin Martin, who's upset with his opponent's sloppy and sometimes slow play in the match, and thinks the opponent deserves a game loss rather than a warning. This really caught my attention because in one of his columns Quentin said, "I think I appeal to the head judge for most of my rulings." At the time of the interview, Jaap was happy not to have had to disqualify anyone on the day. Unfortunately, a double DQ happened later in the day. Klaus Jons and current Rookie of the Year Sebastian Thaler decided on a prize split (which is legal), then discussed the current metagame, decided that one of them had the best chance, and the other conceded based on that discussion. This counts as Bribery, and they were both knocked out. In general, most things that lead to disqualifications feel like bad ideas if you sit back and think about them, this included.
The final big surprise on the day appears at the top of the day one standings. Reigning world champion Makihito Mihara, who basically hasn't been able to play Magic most of this year due to work, played a nearly perfect day and stands at 27 points (9-1). Tied with him for points are Takayuki Koike and Andre Mueller.
To close out this post, here's a video slideshow of the PT so far:
...and a view of the beginning of the PT: