The F2F Tour went to the Eastern part of Canada this past Saturday to host a Tour Stop in St. John’s, Newfoundland. As usual, the players there were excited about the event and shortly opening the hall, the room was filled with people battling in Modern and Commander.
58 players competed in our main event Open. Calvin Gregory took home the trophy by piloting Murktide.
Murktide Regent – Calvin Gregory (1st)
Artifacts (4)
I decided to ask The Newly Crowned Champ how he felt about Ledger Shredder and the deck as a whole, and he was kind enough to share his insight with me:
“I believe Ledger Shredder is a fantastic card and will be a Modern staple for years, but the bird still has its flaws. In Murktide specifically, it diversifies our threats, makes us less vulnerable to graveyard hate and Chalice but noticeably raises the mana curve. There is a lot of tension in hands that want to resolve both a Shredder and Counterspell early.
The Murktide deck is at its best when playing a tempo game plan and I feel the zero-DRC lists are leaning too heavily into UR control, weakening their ability to play an aggressive “protect the 1-drop” style against everything that isn’t 4-color or the mirror. DRC may be the weakest individual card in Murktide nowadays but is still a necessary piece of the puzzle.”
Caleb Yetman, who piloted Death’s Shadow and finished in 3rd, is a name that I’ve recognized over the years since we starting hosting Opens, so it was cool to see another strong finish from him.
Death’s Shadow – Caleb Yetman (3rd)
Artifacts (4)
He was kind enough to tell me why he decided to pilot this archetype:
“The reason I chose to play Grixis Shadow was that I felt it had even to favourable matchups in every matchup besides Burn. Also the deck has a lot of complex spots that cause people to make mistakes and a lot of people sideboard incorrectly against you. An example of this is Murktide players bringing in Hearse/other forms of graveyard hate against you when my board plan is to take out 3 DRC and 4 Drown in the Loch so they basically only get Kroxa which is already a 1 for 1 and opens them up to Kolaghan’s Command.
The meta I would recommend this deck in would be any meta with lots of Cascade, Murktide and 4C. The Murktide matchup is even but there is a lot of room for skill expression and mistakes from both sides and the other two matchups are very favorable for Shadow.”
Now, I also saw a Mono-Green Tron deck finish in the top 4 in the hands of Nick Gosse.
Mono-Green Tron – Nick Gosse (4th)
He told me that he wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though:
I love the deck because I’ve been playing Tron for about 8 years, requires a lot of luck however it mulligans better then any deck. That being said no I wouldn’t recommend it. It is not very well positioned in the current meta, I just have an unhealthy love for Tron so it’s basically all I play. I was quite literally the only Tron player that entered this tournament, trust me I checked.
And that’s all for me on this event. Our next stop? We can’t wait to hit up Charlottetown on Saturday, July 30th! Check out the event page for full details!
Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.