After 19 rounds of Magic, Eli Loveman defeated Matt Sperling to win Mythic Championship II London.
Don’t miss our recaps of Day 1 and Day 2.
Loveman was one of three Humans players in the Top 8. He beat Javier Dominguez’s Izzet Phoenix deck in the quarterfinals, and then overcame two straight difficult matchups, defeating Tron in the hands of Alexander Hayne in the semifinals and Matt Sperling on Affinity in the finals. He leveraged Meddling Mage in multiple games to strand some of his opponents’ most important cards in their hands, giving him enough time to close out those games.
This was Loveman’s first career Mythic Championship Top 8 and Sperling’s third. Sperling made the Top 8 as the eight seed when Yuuya Watanabe, who was locked for Top 8 himself, was disqualified for marked cards after the final round. Sperling made the most of his opportunity, landing multiple Turn 3 kills with his Affinity deck to make it to the finals.
During the Top 8 lunch break, Wizards of the Coast announced that the Magic Pro League will start on May 11. It will feature weekly matches in month-long seasonal splits between four divisions, with each division winner being automatically qualified for Day 2 of the associated MTG Arena Mythic Championship. The first split, the Spark Split, begins May 11 and will qualify division winners for Day 2 of Mythic Championship III, which will take place Jun 21-23 with Standard Best-of-3 as the format.
2018-19 Team Series Standings
With three of the four Pro Tours/Mythic Championships in the 2018-19 season in the books, Hareruya Sword is in a very strong position to make the Team Series finals. ChannelFireball is currently in second, which would qualify them for the second spot in the finals, but only has six points separating them from Legion and nine from KMC-Genesis. ChannelFireball’s lead could easily be overcome by a a strong Top 8 finish by either Legion or KMC-Genesis at Mythic Championship IV Barcelona in July.