Instant Speed Gazette #002

INSTANT SPEED GAZETTE!

Your place to catch evasive updates!

Grand Prix Vancouver was this weekend!  Players descended on the city known for beautiful views and amazing hiking, and proceeded to mash cards in the Limited format all weekend!

Top Honors went to Adam Jansen, who drafted a Blue/Red deck that was slightly Aggro in build, yet took full advantage of the Surge Mechanic. In particular, Jori En, Ruin Diver game Jansen became Santa Claus in the late game for late-game dominance. Adam showed the world how to take a niche rare and build an unbeatable dream curve. The world then watched him execute that Christmasland scenario in Game One of the Finals


His opponent at the final table was Eric Severson, bringing a W/R deck heavy laden with creatures meant to out-step and out-flank the opponent, which was exactly what he did in Game 2 of the finals, using the Oath of the Gatewatch card Allied Reinforcements to great effect.

In the end, it came to a topdecking race, with none other than Valekut Invoker taking over the board, and essentially winning the game, and $10,000, for Jansen!

"[ERIC] BETTA HAVE MAH MONEY!"

Check out the entire tournament on Youtube!

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!

If anyone has ever tried to convince you that Unidentified Infinite Combo's exist, we at INSTANT SPEED MTG! are here to tell you that those whackjobs may be correct.  UIC's do exist, and we fell victim to one in a recent Commander match.

It started out innocently: a humble MTG journalist visiting his childhood store, only to become swept up in a Commander battle with a single thought: "Well, I do have this Goblin Tribal deck I've been developing..."

So there is our humble journalist, pitting his Krenko, Mob Boss and all the goblins he can bring to the board against 3 foreign armies. One opponent in particular,Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, seemed to pose no threat. Who would fear someone playing random cards from the bottom of they're deck?

Later in the game, this opponent had Ashnod's Altar and Reito Lantern, allowing him to put cards from his graveyard onto the bottom, after having been sacked for colorless mana by Ashnod's Altar. Then, Siege-gang Commander went through an ultimate time warp, and suddenly a million goblin tokens flooded the board, while a disinterested voice chortled from somewhere nearby, "I've never really been able to do this," as card after card began to hit the battlefield from the bottom of the opponents deck while the rest of us watched in abject horror. He could have, with unlimited goblin sacrifices giving him ammunition and the cost to launch it, simply declared us all dead. Instead we watched as he cycled through 70 or so cards, choosing targets for each Enter-The-Battlefield ability and picking off our lands and creatures one by one (Krenko standing alone amid the destruction, surrounded by 24 fallen goblin tokens bodies).

And then as soon as it had begun, it was over. The Unidentified Infinite Combo was gone, and the game was either over, or locked in some dimension wherein an ending simply will never arrive...

If anyone is near Time Travelers in Berkley, Michigan, perhaps visiting the green prophet, as I was, be sure to inquire about the event.