Team Modern Super League 2 continues next Tuesday at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -4) on twitch.tv/magic. Michael Rapp also contributed to this post.
Wow, what an opening week of Team Modern Super League 2!
Pamplemousse, the team of Logan Nettles, Reid Duke, and Gabriel Nassif, swept reigning Team Modern Super League champions Play Design Team 4-0 in Week 1 of Team Modern Super League 2. They played Goryo’s Vengeance, U/W Control, Grixis Death’s Shadow, and Jund, but did not need to use Humans since a fifth match was unnecessary.
Play Design Team, which is made up of nine members of Wizards of the Coast’s Play Design team, was represented in Week 1 by Adam Prosak, Michael Hinderaker, Jadine Klomparens, and Andrew Brown. They played Ad Nauseam, Dredge, Jund, and U/W Spirits, but did not get a chance to use R/G Valakut. Play Design Team will have a chance to score a win and stay in contention for the Top 4 in a few weeks during Round 2.
Focusing In: Match 3, Game 3
In Match 3, we saw Reid Duke play Goryo’s Vengeance versus Jadine Klomparens on Jund.
Duke took Game 1 with a sneaky play, pitching two Simian Spirit Guides to splice a Through the Breach onto a Nourishing Shoal, pitching a Worldspine Wurm to gain 11 life AND put a Griselbrand into play. The game ended after a single attack from that Griselbrand followed by a Borborygmos Enraged and a flurry of discarded lands.
Klomparens picked up Game 2 in typical Jund fashion, with a Thoughtseize and Fulminator Mage as disruption, plus Tarmogoyf to close out the game.
Game 3 was too exciting not to talk about in this piece—have a look for yourself!
(Skip to 1:43:00 if the embed doesn’t do so for you.)
The swings in the game were crazy! Duke drawing the Simian Spirit Guide on Turn 2 gave him the option to put a Griselbrand into play that turn, but he instead chose to play around Surgical Extraction by casting Collective Brutality to remove any disruption from Klomparens’s hand. I believe Duke took the correct line here, but Klomparens drew Surgical Extraction on the very next turn to blow him out when he went to put his Griselbrand in play!
Klomparens looked firmly ahead at this point in the game and began to press the advantage. Just when Duke looked to be out of it his Night’s Whisper found Desperate Ritual and Through the Breach to go with the Worldspine Wurm in his hand…but he still needed Red mana and was running out of time. On the next turn, Klomparens added a Tarmogoyf to the board and attacked to put Duke on a one turn clock. But Duke’s draw step yielded the perfect draw, a Simian Spirit Guide, making the Red mana he needed to cast the Desperate Ritual and Through the Breach the Worldspine Wurm to win the game! What a rollercoaster of a game!
Must See Match of the Week: Match 2
The Match of the Week was Match 2, which saw Gabriel Nassif playing U/W Control against Michael Hinderaker playing Dredge. The plays in this match were some of the sharpest of Week 1 and both of these players navigated their turns masterfully.
(Skip to 0:45:00 if the embed doesn’t do so for you.)
In Game 1, we see the first example of an extremely high-level play, where Hinderaker has two Bloodghasts and a Prized Amalgam in play with a third Bloodghast in the graveyard. Nassif was planning on casting Detention Sphere to clean up the Bloodghasts on his turn, and made the heads up play of casting Path to Exile to remove the Prized Amalgam, trying to induce Hinderaker to play a land into play to trigger Bloodghast and return it to the battlefield, which would allow Nassif to get all three with his Detention Sphere.
But Hinderaker saw through Nassif’s play and declined his Bloodghast Landfall trigger, leaving it in the graveyard to return it at a later point. This forced to cast his Detention Sphere to clear the two Bloodghasts in play, but leaving the third in the graveyard. Hinderaker was able to rebuild his board on the next turn with a Narcomoeba, a Bloodghast, and a Prized Amalgam in play, which, in combination with Creeping Chill getting dredged on the next turn and a Conflagrate in the yard, closed out Game 1.
After Game 1, Nassif made the interesting decision to sideboard out Path to Exile for Game 2. On the surface this seemed like a strange decision, but it makes sense when you realize that keeping the Dredge player’s land count low is important so they can’t do things like cast Life from the Loam and flashback Faithless Looting in the same turn.
Game 2 saw some impressive discipline out of Nassif when he passed up on casting Rest in Peace on Turn 2—against a Dredge player! That decision paid off for Nassif as he got to counter a Life from the Loam instead, which happened to be Hinderaker’s only Dredge card, allowing Nassif to cash in big when he played the Rest in Peace on Turn 3. Even though Hinderaker had the answer in Assassin’s Trophy, losing his Life from the Loam left him very low on resources. Nassif used this opportunity to play a Narset, Parter of Veils, which makes Cathartic Reunion-like effects useless…which was the only business spell left in Hinderaker’s hand. From this spot it was easy for Nassif to have enough time to play a couple Snapcaster Mages and a Restoration Angel to protect his Jace, the Mind Sculptor and take over the game.
In Game 3, Nassif showed his knowledge of the matchup once again, shipping what seems like a completely reasonable seven-card hand in search for a Rest in Peace. He also threw back a medium six-card hand, but found a five-card hand with one land and a Rest in Peace. Nassif had to hit a land off the top of his deck and fade a good first two turns from Hinderaker, which he managed to do and resolve the Rest in Peace on Turn 2. The game slowed down to what looks like a game of limited, with Hinderaker is hardcasting Prized Amalgams, which unfortunately for Play Design ended up getting wrathed away. Hinderaker managed to run out a pair of Stinkweed Imps, but Nassif eventually found a backup Rest in Peace and a Detention Sphere to deal with the Imps. Once the board was clear, Nassif found a Jace which dug up a couple counterspells to seal the game.
Standings
1-0 Pamplemousse
0-0 Brothers Who Bash
0-0 ChannelFireball
0-0 Brew Crew
0-0 Mage Market
0-0 Stream Team
0-0 Scary Pterrys
0-1 Play Design Team
Schedule
Round 1:
June 4
Brothers Who Bash vs Stream Team
June 11 (Modern Horizons is legal!)
ChannelFireball vs Mage Market
June 18
Scary Pterrys vs Brew Crew
Round 2:
June 25
TBD
July 2
TBD
July 9
TBD
July 16
TBD
Quarterfinals:
July 30
TBD
August 6
TBD
Semfinals:
August 13
TBD
August 20
TBD
Finals:
August 27
TBD
Was there anything you liked that we didn’t cover? Anything you want us to talk more about next week? Just want to tell us if we did a great job? Let us know on Twitter! @RappaciousOne and @ZKannermtg. Find us back here next week for more exciting Team Modern Super League action!