2017 World Magic Cup
It’s close to the end of the year and close to the end of the 2017 Magic event calendar.
Lucas Esper Berthoud took down Dublin, Gerry Thompson shambled his way to victory in Nashville, PVDDR reminded us of his prowess in Kyoto, Huey Jensen had the Midas touch at the world championship and Seth Manfield had a swashbuckling good time at Pro Tour Ixalan only months ago.
It’s close to the end of the year and close to the end of the 2017 Magic event calendar.
Lucas Esper Berthoud took down Dublin, Gerry Thompson shambled his way to victory in Nashville, PVDDR reminded us of his prowess in Kyoto, Huey Jensen had the Midas touch at the world championship and Seth Manfield had a swashbuckling good time at Pro Tour Ixalan only months ago.
It’s not over yet though as this weekend Nice hosts one of the biggest
events of the MTG season, the World Magic Cup. Many big name players
will be in attendance; Reid Duke, Carlos Ramão, Gabriel Nassif to name
but a few. It’s not just about the solo pros however, the World Magic
Cup is a chance for the best of a countries best to represent their
country in the biggest team event of the year. 73 countries will descend
upon Nice looking to take down the competition for a chance to take
home the Cup and $45,000 shared equally among their team.
Teams are made up of three players, each player earning their slot on the team in different ways: The first player - also known as the captain - is the top player from each country of the 2016-17 season player of the year race. The other two players from each team got there through their nationals performance, seat two and three going to the winner and beaten finalist of each countries nationals. Players will be assigned a letter on their team ranging from A-C. Each round player A will throw down against the opposing teams players A, the same goes for players B and C.
Each couple of players will play a best of 1 match so over all three pairs a best of 3 score will be represented; if two players from one team manage to win their matches then there will be no need for the third match to reach its conclusion, it’ll just be eating into camera time for another pair of teams. The standard point system is applied for the winning team; 3 points for the winning team, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss.
Day one consists on 7 rounds: 3 rounds of team sealed and 4 rounds of team unified standard.
In the sealed portion teams will crack 12 boosters and are tasked with making three 40 cars decks, one for each player. There are no restrictions just like in regular sealed and players can decide who gets to play what cards. This format can result in some very powerful decks for players depending on what build around me cards are opened or how strong certain themes are, for example; Merfolk is a good deck in limited if you can get the right pieces - Shapers Of Nature, Jade Guardian, Deeproot Waters - a lot of the time that may be more unlikely to happen. In team sealed however the chances of opening these cards are not only higher but you have a good chance of doubling up on them and, as anyone that’s played Ixalan limited will attest to, Shapers Of Nature are stupid good in pairs.
Next up is 4 rounds of Team Unified Standard. Some of you may not be familiar with this format, in normal team standard players can play with at least 60 card decks and have restrictions to the normal 4 copies max of a card, barring basic lands, across all 3 decks. So if one player is playing 2 copies of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance, there can only be another 2 copies among the three 2 decks your team mates are playing. Team Unified still has all three players playing with minimum 60 card decks but instead of being able to spread out the use of a card if one player is playing any copies of a card their team mates cannot have any copies in their decks. So using Chandra as an example again, if one player is playing even just one copy of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance the rest of the team cannot have any copies of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance in their decks. This does mean that no three man team can have multiple copies of the same deck. Temur Energy may be one of the top decks but only one player will have access to any of the cards I that deck.
Out of the 7 rounds of play each team will be aiming for 4 wins to make day 2. What makes this even sweeter is that those teams don’t even need to finish on a 4-3 record, as soon as a team gets 4 wins for the first 7 rounds that team goes straight through to day 2. So if a team can 3-0 the limited portion and get a match win in the first round of Unified Standard, that team gets byes for the rest of the day and is automatically through to day 2. Other teams that haven’t got their 4 wins before round 7 will have to play out the rest of the day to be in with a chance of making day 2.
Saturday, day 2: Team Unified Standard is the format to start off Saturday, with players playing the same decks that they ran on day 1. With 32 teams making day 2 those teams will be split into pool of 8 groups of 4. It’s fairly simple from there on out, win two matches. Teams that win two matches will qualify for the second stage of the groups, but it’s not single elimination in the first group stage. Teams have to win 2 matches to make it to the top 16 but each team has two chances, if they lose a round they can still pull off two wins in a row to make the cut.
The second group stage works in exactly the same way; teams that go 2-0 make the top 8 cut and any teams on 1-1 will battle it out to fill the final spot.
For teams that make it to the top 8, they will battle it out in a single elimination match - first team to win two individual matches - to be in with a chance to represent their country in the final of the World Magic Cup.
Action kicks off on Friday 1st December and runs over the entire the weekend. Make sure to tune into twitch.tv and root for your country or preferred team, and make sure to keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates. Remember to hit up Arcanecards.co.uk for all your Magic singles and awesome articles.
Enjoy!
Teams are made up of three players, each player earning their slot on the team in different ways: The first player - also known as the captain - is the top player from each country of the 2016-17 season player of the year race. The other two players from each team got there through their nationals performance, seat two and three going to the winner and beaten finalist of each countries nationals. Players will be assigned a letter on their team ranging from A-C. Each round player A will throw down against the opposing teams players A, the same goes for players B and C.
Each couple of players will play a best of 1 match so over all three pairs a best of 3 score will be represented; if two players from one team manage to win their matches then there will be no need for the third match to reach its conclusion, it’ll just be eating into camera time for another pair of teams. The standard point system is applied for the winning team; 3 points for the winning team, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss.
Day one consists on 7 rounds: 3 rounds of team sealed and 4 rounds of team unified standard.
In the sealed portion teams will crack 12 boosters and are tasked with making three 40 cars decks, one for each player. There are no restrictions just like in regular sealed and players can decide who gets to play what cards. This format can result in some very powerful decks for players depending on what build around me cards are opened or how strong certain themes are, for example; Merfolk is a good deck in limited if you can get the right pieces - Shapers Of Nature, Jade Guardian, Deeproot Waters - a lot of the time that may be more unlikely to happen. In team sealed however the chances of opening these cards are not only higher but you have a good chance of doubling up on them and, as anyone that’s played Ixalan limited will attest to, Shapers Of Nature are stupid good in pairs.
Next up is 4 rounds of Team Unified Standard. Some of you may not be familiar with this format, in normal team standard players can play with at least 60 card decks and have restrictions to the normal 4 copies max of a card, barring basic lands, across all 3 decks. So if one player is playing 2 copies of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance, there can only be another 2 copies among the three 2 decks your team mates are playing. Team Unified still has all three players playing with minimum 60 card decks but instead of being able to spread out the use of a card if one player is playing any copies of a card their team mates cannot have any copies in their decks. So using Chandra as an example again, if one player is playing even just one copy of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance the rest of the team cannot have any copies of Chandra, Torch Of Defiance in their decks. This does mean that no three man team can have multiple copies of the same deck. Temur Energy may be one of the top decks but only one player will have access to any of the cards I that deck.
Out of the 7 rounds of play each team will be aiming for 4 wins to make day 2. What makes this even sweeter is that those teams don’t even need to finish on a 4-3 record, as soon as a team gets 4 wins for the first 7 rounds that team goes straight through to day 2. So if a team can 3-0 the limited portion and get a match win in the first round of Unified Standard, that team gets byes for the rest of the day and is automatically through to day 2. Other teams that haven’t got their 4 wins before round 7 will have to play out the rest of the day to be in with a chance of making day 2.
Saturday, day 2: Team Unified Standard is the format to start off Saturday, with players playing the same decks that they ran on day 1. With 32 teams making day 2 those teams will be split into pool of 8 groups of 4. It’s fairly simple from there on out, win two matches. Teams that win two matches will qualify for the second stage of the groups, but it’s not single elimination in the first group stage. Teams have to win 2 matches to make it to the top 16 but each team has two chances, if they lose a round they can still pull off two wins in a row to make the cut.
The second group stage works in exactly the same way; teams that go 2-0 make the top 8 cut and any teams on 1-1 will battle it out to fill the final spot.
For teams that make it to the top 8, they will battle it out in a single elimination match - first team to win two individual matches - to be in with a chance to represent their country in the final of the World Magic Cup.
Action kicks off on Friday 1st December and runs over the entire the weekend. Make sure to tune into twitch.tv and root for your country or preferred team, and make sure to keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates. Remember to hit up Arcanecards.co.uk for all your Magic singles and awesome articles.
Enjoy!
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