HFXGames 2024 Player’s Championship Recap
Just a few weeks ago we held our first Player’s Championship. The culmination of months of Qualifiers and grinding Leaderboard points have led us to this tournament. 16 of the Maritime’s best players qualified through either Standard, Pioneer, Modern, or consistent finishes in all the above through out the year. We wanted to make this tournament the most prestigious thing you could qualify for outside of the path to the ProTour, with the prizes to match that feeling of importance. With almost 2.5k in cash prizing for our Top 8, as well as a playmat and goodie bag worth >$100 for each of our 16 attendees, we feel like we accomplished this goal.
Speaking of ProTour prestige, what better way to emulate the top of competitive play, than starting the tournament off with a Draft? We decided for this tournament that we would do 3 rounds of Draft, followed by 3 rounds of Modern with a Modern Top 8 playoff. To add to the excitement and value of this event, we decided to have our players draft the elusive Mystery Booster 2 set! The possibilities in this Draft format are endless, with many different possible archetypes to build. With an even 2 Draft pods, we were left with 2 players at 3-0 after 3 rounds. Those 2 players were Doug Maguire and Adam Joyce! These guys really showed off their experience in deckbuilding, managing to pull off these undefeated lists on the fly in an extremely chaotic Draft format:
Doug Maguire – Five-Colour (3-0)
Adam Joyce – Golgari (3-0)
I absolutely had to catch up with one of our top drafters, Doug Maguire, to get an insight into how he put together his winning Draft deck. With a set of over 1800 unique cards, where do you even begin? Well, here’s how Doug tackled this Draft:
T: What did your prep look like for this Draft? Was it even possible with over 1800 cards in the set?
D: For the Draft prep, I have drafted for the last 20+ years evaluating cards in a vacuum. With the cards all being mostly reprints, having previously evaluated them in older draft formats helps. You have to prepare for the Draft similar to Cube, you need to read the signals and make sure to push strong signals in the other directions to not be cut. It is not like a normal set where there can be build around cards (Spider Spawning I’m looking at you), or opportunities to get multiples of the same card to give you added consistency. Plus, the playtest cards are hard to evaluate, as the mechanics could be too strong or do nothing. Dairy Cow, what does 15 Milk Counters on it do? Other than intimidate your opponent.
T: Yeah, I saw that name in your list and was thinking “What on Earth is Dairy Cow?” So, what was your Pack 1 Pick 1? Did that influence the way you built your deck, or did you just lean into reading signals like you said and build your deck more based off what you saw over time?
D: P1P1 was Kenrith, the Returned King. Just a powerful card that leaves you open to any colours. The biggest direction I took was taking a Conspiracy card pack one pick 6 or 7. Hymn of the Wilds had high upside and low opportunity cost to take. It made me take creatures higher, and being able to still play artifacts and planeswalkers allowed me to prioritize abilities that I could use without having instants and sorceries. In Limited, a lot of times curving out on your opponent is important, and my curve was a turn faster than my opponent’s. Being the only white drafter at the table, I was surprised but not surprised that I got such a great top end. Pack one there were some strong multicoloured cards that wheeled that made me feel safe that I was in the right colours (Naya). I didn’t open a lot of bombs but was rewarded with my seat and being passed some.
There you have it! Doug’s experience and grasp of Draft fundamentals paid off and earned him a great start. At 3 wins and 0 losses, he was one of the only 2 undefeated players halfway through the 6 round Swiss. Draft is only half the battle though, and even if a player left something to be desired from their Draft rounds (Editor’s Note: the author of this article bombed his Draft lmao), they could still win the constructed portion of the tournament and make it into the Top 8! So, our players from here on out had to draw from their knowledge of the Modern format to find victory. Contrary to popular belief, this Modern metagame was not dominated by the ever-present Boros or Mardu Energy deck. The deck that’s been dominating the online metagame was represented by only 2 of our 16 players. Both however, did make it into the Top 8. If you choose to separate Boros Energy from Mardu Energy, our Top 8 was extremely diverse with all 8 players choosing a different deck. Let’s look at the 8 decks that made it to the cutoff, and the pilots behind them!
Travis Benedict – Dimir Frog (1st)
Tijler de Jong – Broodscale Combo (2nd)
Adam Joyce – Boros Energy (3rd-4th)
Gabe Vienneau – Sultai Satoru Ritual
Doug Maguire – Mono-Blue Belcher (5th-8th)
Christopher Brackley – Jeskai Control (5th-8th)
Norm Labelle – Ruby Storm (5th-8th)
Olivier Mayer – Mardu Energy (5th-8th)
It was I, Travis Benedict, who ended up taking down the Top 8! After drafting a lackluster deck, I was able to scrape out one win to end the draft at 1-2. I told myself it was okay, Limited isn’t my strong suit and I’ll get my wins back in the constructed portion. I was mostly right, managing to 2-1 the Constructed rounds, only losing to Gabe Vienneau’s Sultai Satoru deck. With there being 5 people with a 3-3 record, only 2 would make the cut to Top 8. Luckily, my tiebreakers were just good enough to land me at 8th place after the Swiss. From there, I was able to win 3 more matches of Modern, with a scary last match vs Tijler de Jong’s Basking Broodscale Combo deck. With Grafdigger’s Cage in play stopping my Abhorrent Oculus from making manifest creatures, I had to try to answer every threat that Tijler played while chipping away at his life total. It came down to having one last Force of Negation I was able to leave on top with my Oculus trigger, and then Consider into to answer The One Ring so I could attack for lethal.
I chose the Dimir Frog deck as I felt very good about the deck’s matchup across the field minus the Energy deck. I didn’t expect a lot of Energy in the room, which panned out well with only 2 people playing it. I did have to beat it once in the semifinals, in the hands of Adam Joyce. My historic win rate against Adam is less than favorable to go along with this less than favourable matchup. Even with Adam on a mulligan to 5 in game 1, I was barely able to squeak out the win while at 1 life. This Frog deck has the tools to win in any matchup, having a strong proactive game plan with hard-hitting threats (Psychic Frog, Abhorrent Oculus, Murktide Regent), as well as having some of the best reactive spells (Fatal Push, Thoughtseize, Counterspell), so I’m happy with my choice to pick the deck up.
All of us here at HFXGames would like to thank everyone who came out to play any of our events this year! With 70+ individual players in our events this year, we want to get that to over 100! Our first Qualifier in the new year will be our Standard RCQ on January 18th! You know what that mean: Our 2nd HFXGames Player’s Championship will be taking place December 2025! Get ready to earn your invite through winning a Qualifier or a top Leaderboard spot!
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Written By: Travis Benedict Pro Tour Competitor, Cat Lover |
