Mythic Championship IV Barcelona

Mythic Championship IV Barcelona
Date	July 26–28, 2019
Location	Barcelona, Spain
Attendance	457
Format	Modern Constructed and Modern Horizons Booster draft.
Prize pool	$500,000
Winner	Thoralf Severin
Previous Pro Tour: Mythic Championship III Next Pro Tour: Mythic Championship V

Mythic Championship IV, or Mythic Championship Barcelona 2019, took place on July 26–28, 2019, in Barcelona, Spain. The winner of the Mythic Championship, Thoralf Severin from Germany, took home $50,000, while second place was awarded $20,000, third and fourth places $15,000, and fifth through eighth places $10,000. Players that finished in the Top 16 received $6,000 and the tournament paid all the way down to $500 to anyone placing lower than 180th.

With a Top 8 comprised of faces relatively new to the Sunday stage, it was also the first Pro Tour since Pro Tour Kobe 2006 where there were no American competitors in the Top 8 - the highest placing American player was Eli Kassis at 15th, compared to Brian Hegstad at 9th in Kobe.

Format

Mythic Championship IV featured two formats: three rounds of Modern Horizons Limited and five rounds of Modern Constructed on Days 1 and 2, and Modern Constructed for the Top 8 single-elimination bracket.

Course of events

The Modern metagame Day 1 of Mythic Championship IV Barcelona was dominated by the Hogaak Vine deck, with over 21% of players—98 of the 456—choosing to play it. Despite Hogaak's huge share of the metagame, the deck did not manage to dominate the Top 8 that ermeged on Day 2. On Day 3, Thoralf Severin from Germany won the finals with Tron.

Day One

The first draft followed MPL member Marcio Carvalho and Hall of Famer Paul Rietzl. Carvalho's draft was noted to be messy, but more from unclear signals than drafting error; he ended up with a baseline white-blue aggressive deck that didn't rely on the expected Blinking synergies in Modern Horizons. Rietzl defeated Carvalho in the finals with a Blue-Red deck; as it turned out, everybody at the pod found the packs weak and consequently all the drafters were unenthused with their decks.

Hogaak was the biggest archetype in the room, with a 21% metagame share; not significant over Modern's history, but a sizeable portion. With the open decklists, maindeck graveyard hate was common, typically in the form of Surgical Extraction (in Phoenix decks), Nihil Spellbomb (in Jund and control decks) and Relic of Progenitus (in Tron-based decks). Despite its strength, not many decks were outright pushed out of the format, though Green Tron shifted to more Eldrazi Tron. Wrenn and Six cleared out the other varied Rock and Abzan archetypes and established Jund as the Green-Black midrange deck of choice. The other popular decks were similar to that in London, in that of Phoenix, White-Blue Control and Humans.

The top eight players after day one:

Rank	Player	Points
1	Arnaud Hocquemiller	24
2	Bernardo Santos	22
3	Guillaume Wafo-Tapa	21
4	Allen Wu	21
5	Edgar Magalhaes	21
6	Thoralf Severin	21
7	Christian Calcano	21
8	Christian Hauck	21

Day two

Coverage followed the undefeated Arnaud Hocquemiller, whose draft was seen from both him and the coverage team to be a minor disaster - the White-Black deck panned out to a disappointing 0-2-1. Christian Calcano was the second drafter, looking towards a Blue-Black Ninjas draft but eventually settling into an aggressive Blue-Green Snow variant with Fallen Shinobi. Thoralf Severin, eventual champion, won the pod with a Red-Green deck with multiple Igneous Elementals. At the end of round 11, Severin co-led with David Mines at 10–1.

Despite Hogaak's popularity, the top tables were not overwhelmed by it - it had become so powerful the leading teams concluded that it should maindeck Leyline of the Void, causing cannibalization of its matchups. There were no particular standouts in the field, with Manuel Lenz, Sean Gifford and Alvaro Fernandes Torres reaching 36 points at round 14. Lenz and Torres drew consecutive rounds, and later with Mines and Gifford. Juan Jose Rodriguez Lopez found himself down a game against Gifford and accepted a draw, looking to win round 16. Martin Müller knocked out Guillaume Wafo-Tapa for a draw with Thoralf Severin, who won over Yves Sele. Jelger Wiegersma also went to 36 points after a win over Adriano Moscanto, but with bad tiebreakers he was paired down against Rodriguez Lopez - an incredible string of Manamorphose draws gave him an unlikely win against Wiegersma's Hogaak deck, and the final place was taken by Zhiyang Zhang on his 7th win in a row against Moscanto also.

Top 8

	Quarterfinals					Semifinals					Finals
	1	Manuel Lenz	2
	8	Zhiyang Zhang	3
						8	Zhiyang Zhang	1
						4	Thoralf Severin	3
	4	Thoralf Severin	3
	5	David Mines	0
											4	Thoralf Severin	3
											2	Alvaro Fernandez Torres	1
	3	Sean Gifford	3
	6	Juan Jose Rodriguez	1
						3	Sean Gifford	1
						2	Alvaro Fernandez Torres	3
	2	Alvaro Fernandez Torres	3
	7	Martin Müller	2

Place	Player	Prize	Mythic Points	Deck	Comments
1	Thoralf Severin	$50,000	50	Mono-Green Tron
2	Alvaro Fernandez Torres	$20,000	42	Hardened Scales
3	Sean Gifford	$15,000	37	Eldrazi Tron
4	Zhang Zhiyang	$12,500	37	Jund
5	Manuel Lenz	$10,000	32	Urza ThopterSword	Second Pro Tour Top 8
6	David Mines	$9,000	32	Jund
7	Juan Jose Rodriguez Lopez	$7,500	32	Mono-Red Phoenix
8	Martin Müller	$6,000	32	Turbo-Hogaak	Third Pro Tour Top 8

Trivia

• Four players posted 6-0 draft records, including champion Thoralf Severin and sixth placed David Mines; the others were Jack Kiefer and Jacob Wilson. Notably not was Paul Rietzl, who had not lost in a Mythic Championship draft pod since round 2 of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, a 19 match streak and 22-2 so far.
• The best Constructed record was 9–1, posted by Kristof Prinz with Izzet Phoenix. Top 8 competitors Zhang Zhiyang with Jund and Martin Müller on Turbo-Hogaak both posted 8-1-1, though the context of their draws were different; Muller's was an ID, while Zhiyang drew in round 4.
• Brad Nelson broke a Pro Tour attendance streak due to a passport expiry problem. The last Pro Tour he had missed was Pro Tour Gatecrash in 2013.