After being on the brink of elimination, Mage Market clawed their way back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat Brothers Who Bash and win Team Modern Super League 2! A spectacular comeback for sure, highlighted by Andreas Petersen’s clutch 3-0 record on the big stage. Mage Market’s success is made even more impressive by the fact that they used 25 different decks over the course of the season and never played a deck more than once.
Thanks all the teams for an amazing 13 weeks of Magic and congratulations to Mage Market for taking the whole thing down.
Match Results
Round 1: Michael Bonde (UrzaBlade) lost to Brad Nelson (Infect) 0-2
Round 2: Thomas Enevoldsen (Tron) lost to Brian Braun-Duin (Humans) 0-2
Round 3: Andreas Petersen (TitanShift) defeated Corey Baumeister (Tron) 2-0
Round 4: Michael Bonde (Abzan) lost to Brian Braun-Duin (UrzaBlade) 0-2
Round 5: Andreas Petersen (Living End) defeated Brad Nelson (Mardu) 2-0
Round 6: Andreas Petersen (TitanShift) defeated Brian Braun-Duin (UrzaBlade) 2-1
Round 7: Thomas Enevoldsen (Tron) defeated Corey Baumeister (Tron) 2-1
Featured Match
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Round 4 pit Brian Braun-Duin on his beloved Urza Sword against Michael Bonde on a sweet new version of Abzan with Stoneforge Mystic. (Check out the decklists here.)
BBD’s opener was pretty weak with five lands, Ichor Wellspring, and Sword of the Meek, so it was a pretty easy mulligan. Bonde’s opener, on the other hand, is something to look at. He had two decent threats in Stoneforge Mystic that can clock an opponent starting Turn 3 and a Scavenging Ooze that can disrupt the Thopter/Sword combo if left unchecked. He also had two pieces of interaction with Path to Exile and Assassin’s Trophy to help deal with problematic artifacts or Urza himself. To top off his hand he had a discard spell with Inquisition of Kozilek. His lands were the awkward part, though, with basic Forest and Plains—but if he is able to find a Black source early the hand is pretty strong.
Bonde kept and on Turn 2 he cast his Stoneforge Mystic to get a Batterskull into his hand but BBD mulliganed into interaction and had a Galvanic Blast to keep the Mystic from cheating in the five mana artifact.
The following turn, Bonde was able to play a fetchland to get a Black source to cast a Thoughtseize had had drawn to take BBD’s Teferi, Time Ravaler. This was a key point of the game—BBD only had two non-basic dual lands on the battlefield, so there was no way he could power out an Urza with a Mox Opal next turn so the best play he can do is a three mana spell. The commentators pointed out that, given the situation, it was better to cast the Inquisition of Kozilek from his opening hand. Would that decision cost Bonde the game?
On Turn 5, BBD untapped with an Urza, Lord High Artificer and a Construct token. He played a Chromatic Star and activated Urza’s ability, leaving Bonde with the decision if he should use Path to Exile on the Urza. He ultimately chose not to and BBD ended up hitting a combo piece: Thopter Foundry. Bonde ended up casting Path at the endstep, letting BBD using Urza’s other ability to tap the Thopter Foundry and sac the Chromatic Star to get a token and draw a card.
On BBD’s next turn he was able to cast Urza number two. Going back to Bonde’s third turn when he cast the Thoughtseize over the Inquisition of Kozilek to take the three-drop Teferi—if Bonde had cast Inquisition instead he would have been able to handle both copies of Urza. But leading with Thoughtseize, taking a three-drop, meant that Inquisition couldn’t deal with the remaining four-drop Urza.
On BBD’s eighth turn he cast a third Urza, making another 6/6 Construct. He then proceeded to show Urza’s beatdown plan, attacking with multiple 6/6s and putting a bunch of pressure on the opponent. On Bonde’s next turn, he ended up misclicking when trying to hardcast a Batterskull and ended up animating the Hissing Quagmire instead. It ultimately wouldn’t matter much as BBD was able to use Urza to find another copy of Thopter Assembly and cast Goblin Engineer to go infinite and take Game 1!
Thanks for joining us for our coverage of Team Modern Super League 2! We can’t wait for the next Super League. Let us know what you thought of our coverage on Twitter!
Michael Rapp also contributed to this post.