GP Barcelona with MTG Madness
Welcome new and old MTG readers! I know its been quite some time since I’ve written about MTG but today we have something special. A GP Barcelona Report! Now I wasn’t there myself but the fine folks at MTG Madness have provided us with some videos they made while at the tournament.
If you are unfamiliar with MTG Madness, they are a MTG pro team with a website that has articles and also sells products. You might be recognize some of Pros on there team, including:
Chris Fennell – Top 8 Pro Tour Born to the Gods
Patrick Dickmann – Top 8 Pro Tour Born to the Gods
Pierre Dagan – Top 8 Pro Tour Theroes
Jeremy Dezani – Winner Pro Tour Theroes
As you can see they have had alot of recent success. Among these four there are loads more of top players on the team.
Now GP Bacelona was a bit different then most GPs. It was a Team Sealed tournament. If you are new to Team sealed it requires 3 players to team up and make decks out of sealed product. Its the same as sealed deck but you have more packs since you have 2 other players with you. Each player is assigned A, B, or C respectively. Each round when you are matched against another team, the A, B, and C players play there corresponding letter counterpart of the other team. Each game is best 2 out of 3 between the players. For a team to get the round win they need 2 of their players to win there match.
With this GP being only a week after the Pro Tour alot of pros decided to hang around Span for a week to compete in this event., That helped bring the event to 539 teams, a total of 1,617 players. That is alot of teams. Teams needed to have a 7-2 record at the end of day 1 to advance to day 2. At the end of day 2 instead of cutting to a top 8 it is cut to the top 4 teams.
At GP Barcalona the Top 4 teams were:
Turtenwald/Jensen/Duke
Duport/Lam/Ballivet
Gräfensteiner/Gräfensteiner/Seibold
Hauck/Hauck/Schwarz
With the eventual winner being the team of Gräfensteiner/Gräfensteiner/Seibold
The only team I’m familar with was the team of Turtenwald/Jensen/Duke which as put up amazing results at team events. It doesn’t hurt that the team is a Hall of Famer, a formar Player of the year and a MOCS champion. But putting that aside if you have the chance to work with a team for a long period of time you can develop a chemistry and put up results.
The MTG Madness had 2 teams finish in the Top 16 which is a very solid finish. Melissa Deltora and Hall of Famer Ralph Levy joined Jeremy Dezani to finish 7th. The team of Tomelitsch / Leitner / Macki finshed 12th.
I’ve only played in one large Team Sealed event. Even though we did not do that well we had alot of fun. Its something different and I highly recommend doing it given the chance. Find friends or other players that you work well with. If you are arguing about who will run what cards or decks its not going to pan out well. Team chemistry is something to take into account when going into these kind of events.
Now lets take a look at the MTG Madness videos .
This first video will introduce you to some fo the MTG Madness teams and GP Barcelona itself
Here in the next video we catch up with some teams mid Day 1 seeing how there tournament is going.
A recap at the end of day one to see who is moving to day 2
Lets see how our day 2 teams are doing.
We get to see where the MTG Madness teams finished out and the players give there final thoughts on the GP.
It looks like they had a blast at the event. I’ve mentioned this in other articles but anytime you go to a large event with your friends its a blast. I’ve been to events where we all have done poorly but we still come back with good memories and stories. Of course you want to do well but you will always have stories to talk about in the years to come.
Thanks to the MTG Madness crew for providing me with the videos and Congrats to them for doing well. Good Luck in the next event MTG Madness!
– Bob
Twitter – @counterbob
Twitch – http://www.twitch.tv/thecoutnerbob
Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/counterbob8
You can out more about MTG Madness at https://www.mtgmadness.com/
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