Fabrizio Anteri won the MagicFest Online Season 1 Finals last night with Rakdos Sacrifice, defeating David Rood on Jeskai Fires in the finals two games to one.
Anteri (LaCriaturaBB) entered the Top 8 as the second seed and breezed through his quarter and semifinal matches without dropping a game. Rood (laboomboom), who won Pro Tour Atlanta in 2005, squeaked in as the eighth seed and defeated the mirror in quarterfinals and the Magic Rivals League’s Luis Salvatto in the semifinals, advancing to face Anteri in the finals.
The Top 8 bracket for MagicFest Online’s Season 1 Finals.
In Game 1, Anteri quickly assembled Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven (with plenty of backup) to pressure Rood’s life total. Rood got stuck on four lands and used two Deafening Clarions to try to slow Anteri’s momentum. But Anteri was able to combine enough cat triggers and a hasty Stonecoil Serpent—thanks to a key Claim the Firstborn, for which Rood’s deck had no legal targets—to attack for lethal.
Rood’s deck started cooperating in Game 2. He was able to chain a Fires of Invention into a Cavalier of Flame into a Kenrith, the Returned King, which was barely enough to fight through Anteri’s combo with Rood hanging on at three life.
Anteri was again able to assemble his combo in Game 3 with a Cauldron Familiar, Witch’s Oven, and Mayhem Devil. Those sacrifice synergies combined to apply too much pressure to Rood’s life total, who was unable to find a Fires of Invention to try and scrape his way back into the game and succumbed to a lethal Stonecoil Serpent.
With his victory, Anteri is the first player to win a Season Finals event for ChannelFireball’s new MagicFest Online series, which was created to fill the void left by the cancellation of in-person MagicFests until at least July. The series is made up of Daily Qualifiers that feed two-day Weekly Championships, which earn players invites to a two-day Season Finals event. Top-finishing players in the Championships and Finals can earn invites to the Players Tour Series and the two finalists in the Season Finals are invited to the Players Tour Final.
MagicFest Online Series 1 is Anteri’s sixth Grand Prix/MagicFest victory. His five previous trophies all came at in-person Grand Prix from 2014-2016, the last of which was at Grand Prix Barcelona in April 2016. The next month, at Grand Prix Manchester, Anteri was caught manipulating his deck by using “a shuffling technique which made his deck have a beneficial distribution of lands and spells,” for which he was suspended for 18 months.
Anteri came clean in 2018 in a statement on Twitter. “My name is Fabrizio Anteri, I cheated at Magic,” he began, and admitted to mana weaving and said that he felt “entitled” to win matches against less-skilled opponents. He apologized, saying: “I am truly sorry for what I’ve done, not only to the specific players I’ve stolen from or the judges I disrespected with my behavior, but to the entire community for the negativity and stress I brought into it.”
MagicFest Online Season Finals Deck Lists
Standard Rakdos Sacrifice by Fabrizio Anteri (1st Place)
| Creatures (27) 2 Stonecoil Serpent 4 Cauldron Familiar 2 Gutterbones 4 Priest of Forgotten Gods 3 Rix Maadi Reveler 4 Mayhem Devil 4 Midnight Reaper 4 Woe Strider Spells (4) 4 Claim the Firstborn Artifacts (4) 4 Witch’s Oven | Lands (25) 4 Blood Crypt 3 Castle Locthwain 4 Fabled Passage 4 Mountain 6 Swamp 4 Temple of Malice Sideboard (15) 1 Redcap Melee 3 Agonizing Remorse 3 Embereth Shieldbreaker 1 Epic Downfall 3 Noxious Grasp 2 Scorching Dragonfire 1 Act of Treason 1 Pharika’s Libation |
Standard Jeskai Fires by David Rood (2nd Place)
| Creatures (17) 4 Bonecrusher Giant 2 Haktos the Unscarred 4 Sphinx of Foresight 4 Cavalier of Flame 3 Kenrith, the Returned King Planeswalkers (4) 4 Teferi, Time Raveler Spells (7) 3 Aether Gust 4 Deafening Clarion Enchantments (5) 4 Fires of Invention 1 Elspeth Conquers Death | Lands (27) 2 Castle Vantress 3 Fabled Passage 4 Hallowed Fountain 1 Island 2 Mountain 2 Plains 3 Sacred Foundry 4 Steam Vents 2 Temple of Epiphany 4 Temple of Triumph Sideboard (15) 1 Aether Gust 4 Devout Decree 4 Robber of the Rich 2 Tithe Taker 3 Mystical Dispute 1 Elspeth Conquers Death |