Hareruya Sword won the 2018-2019 Team Series Final Sunday afternoon at MagicFest Austin, defeating the reigning champions Ultimate Guard Pro Team.
Hareruya Sword was made up of four 2019 Magic Pro League members—Grzegorz Kowalski, Andrea Mengucci, Hall of Famer Lee Shi Tian, and reigning World Champions Javier Dominguez—as well as Kelvin Chew and Jérémy Dezani, and finished first in the Team Series standings. Ultimate Guard Pro Team, on the other hand, featured four Hall of Famers in Jon Finkel, Paul Rietzl, Reid Duke (MPL), and William Jensen (MPL), plus Andrew Cuneo (MPL) and Matt Sperling.
The format of the Team Series Final was Theros Beyond Death Team Draft—a full week before the set’s prerelease. The teams were split into two three-person sub-teams and played two rounds of 3v3 Team Draft. Ultimate Guard Pro Team won the first draft but Hareruya Sword evened up the match by winning the second draft, forcing a deciding third draft.
The Team Series Final came down to Hareruya Sword’s Mengucci vs Ultimate Guard Pro Team’s Paul Rietzl. Mengucci had drafted a more aggressive BW deck while Rietzl assembled a slower Esper deck. In the final game, Mengucci went wide and flooded the board with too many permanents for Rietzl to handle, winning the game, match, draft, and Team Series Final for Hareruya Sword.
The victory got Hareruya Sword a shared prize of $100,000 and a bit of revenge for their sister team Hareruya Latin, who lost to Ultimate Guard Pro Team in the previous finals in 2018.
The 2018-2019 Team Series Final marks the end of the Pro Tour Team Series for the foreseeable future. Wizards of the Coast announced that they were discontinuing the Team Series when they revealed their new push into esports with the 2019 Mythic Championships.
The cover image was taken by Andrea Mengucci.