Pro Tour Amonkhet
Pro Tour Amonkhet is the third Pro Tour of the 2016–17 season. It takes place on 12–14 May 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.
Structure and payout changes
The top 8 playoff system was reverted to traditional single-elimination starting with Pro Tour Amonkhet, as WotC deemed the bracket format used in Pro Tour Kaladesh and Pro Tour Aether Revolt to have little effect on reducing intentional draws among top players. However, as a purpose to favor high finishes in the Swiss portion of the event, the money and Pro Point payouts were slightly adjusted; players finishing in third- through eight-place receive payouts based on relative finish in the Swiss. Additionally, players who finished with 31-32 match points receive one fewer Pro Point than under the previous system.[1]
Format
The Standard format prior to the release of Amonkhet was dominated by Mardu Vehicles and Felidar Guardian/Saheeli Rai combo decks, and many commented that the Felidar Guardian decks in particular stifled innovation in what was considered one of the least diverse Standard formats of all time.[2] Felidar Guardian was not banned on the March 14th B&R update, but when Amonkhet did not prove to have the tools to fight the combo, it was widely expected to be banned on April 24th, prior to the Pro Tour. However, no changes were announced to the Standard format; instead, it was stated that WotC would re-evaluate the situation a few weeks after the Pro Tour.[3] But two days later, citing a stale Magic Online Standard format, WotC posted an addendum to the B&R announcement with the immediate banning of Felidar Guardian.[4]
Prior to the Pro Tour, there was a Star City Games Open event in Atlanta featuring Standard with Felidar Guardian banned. The top eight sported five Mardu Vehicles decks, not unlike the decks that were used to great success at Pro Tour Aether Revolt.[5] This led to the question of whether Mardu could be dethroned in Standard.[6]
Day one
The event kicked off with a triple Amonkhet Booster draft, with Martin Jůza, hot off of a top eight at Pro Tour Aether Revolt and the leader in the Draft Master race for the 2017 World Championship, being covered. Jůza drafted a Blue-Red spells deck that he described as "the best deck he ever had", though he still fell to Gabriel Nassif in the second round. Jůza finished 2–1, while Nassif got the 3–0 with his Red-Green deck. Other famous players to 3–0 their draft included Eric Froehlich, Shōta Yasooka, Owen Turtenwald, Yuuya Watanabe, Jelger Wiegersma, and Seth Manfield.
In Standard, by far the three most popular decks were Mardu Vehicles, Temur Aetherworks, and Mono-Black Zombies, with no other decks making up more than 5% of the field. The largest, unsurprisingly, was Mardu Vehicles, being favored by 26% of the players. Hot on its heels at 20% was Temur Aetherworks, built around the namesake Aetherworks Marvel, hoping to use the powerful artifact to play an early Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Mono-Black Zombies was in third, occupying 17% of the metagame. Several new cards from Amonkhet with significant Zombie synergies allowed the deck to rise from obscurity to competitive, with the most important cards being Lord of the Accursed and Dread Wanderer. At the end of the day, there were two remaining undefeated players: Team Opportunity's Pierre Dagen (playing Green-Black Energy) and Chris Fennell (Black-White Zombies) of team Lingering Souls. In terms of team standings, Genesis was the best performing team on day one, with Martin Müller setting the pace at 7–1, and four additional players on 6–2 records. Co-leader in the team standings from Pro Tour Aether Revolt, Musashi, was the second most successful team.
The top eight players after day one:
| Rank | Player | Points | Rank | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Template:Flagicon FRA Pierre Dagen | 24 | 5 | Template:Flagicon USA Christian Calcano | 21 |
| 2 | Template:Flagicon USA Chris Fennell | 24 | 6 | Template:Flagicon JPN Shōta Yasooka | 21 |
| 3 | Template:Flagicon JPN Kazuaki Fujimura | 21 | 7 | Template:Flagicon USA Eric Froehlich | 21 |
| 4 | Template:Flagicon AUS Oliver Oks | 21 | 8 | Template:Flagicon USA Gerard Fabiano | 21 |
Day two
For the second Amonkhet Booster draft, coverage followed the drafts of the two undefeated players, Chris Fennell and Pierre Dagen. Fennell had been an outspoken dissenter against the conventional wisdom that the format was very fast and all about Exert creatures, and drafted a fairly slow Blue-Green deck that took him to a 2–1 record, losing in the last round of draft to Eric Froehlich. Dagen, on the other hand, struggled in the first pack to find his colors; he settled into White-Blue, but could only post a 1–2 finish with the deck. On pod two, also on 7–1 going into the draft, Denmark's Martin Müller pulled off the 3–0 to advance to 10–1 and in joint lead with Fennell and Froehlich. As the format changed to constructed, Fennell kept winning, and locked up a top eight berth with three rounds to go. The next players to clinch tickets to Sunday were Germany's Mark Tobiasch, and Christian Calcano. Calcano had been a Pro Tour fixture for seven years, having played every event since his debut at PT San Juan 2010, but had never reached the top eight before; his emotional response in the post-match interview got a lot of positive reactions on social media.[7] Round 15 had multiple win-and-in matches: Eric Froehlich against Ken Yukuhiro and Gerry Thompson against Daniel Gräfensteiner, and Reid Duke would advance if he beat Chris Fennell (Fennell was already ready for quarterfinal play, but opted to play in order to improve the position of his, Lingering Souls). Lastly, in the match between William Jensen and Martin Müller, Müller would advance with a win, while Jensen needed to win in round 16 as well. Yukuhiro, Thompson, Fennell, and Müller won, meaning six of the top eight players were decided. The final two were most likely decided by the round 16 matches Eric Froehlich against Seth Manfield and Yuuya Watanabe against Reid Duke. All players were on 11–4, but a win would likely be enough thanks to good tiebreakers. Froehlich and Watanabe won, and indeed advanced. In 9th-place on tiebreakers was Gerard Fabiano. Interestingly, this resulted in a top eight completely without Mardu Vehicles decks.
Top 8
| Quarterfinals | Semifinals | Finals | |||||||||||
| 1 | Chris Fennell | ||||||||||||
| 8 | Yuuya Watanabe | ||||||||||||
| 4 | Christian Calcano | ||||||||||||
| 5 | Martin Müller | ||||||||||||
| 3 | Marc Tobiasch | ||||||||||||
| 6 | Gerry Thompson | ||||||||||||
| 2 | Ken Yukuhiro | ||||||||||||
| 7 | Erich Froehlich | ||||||||||||
The first couple of quarterfinals were Chris Fennell against Yuuya Watanabe, and Christian Calcano against Martin Müller. Hall of Famer Watanabe, in his fourth Pro Tour top eight and piloting Temur Aetherworks Marvel, took the first game from Fennell on the back of a couple of early Censors staving off the early offense from Fennell's Black-White Zombie deck. In the other quarterfinal, Müller quickly won the first game from Calcano, and looked in good position to take the second. However, thanks to a series of misses with Aetherworks Marvel, Calcano came back from a mulligan and a slow start and threatened to take the game, but ultimately, after a back-and-forth game, a Chandra, Flamecaller swept the board of Zombies and put Müller two games up.
Trivia
- Six players went undefeated (6–0) in Booster draft: Ken Yukuhiro, Marc Tobiasch, Eric Froehlich, Daniel Gräfensteiner, Josh McClain, and Raymond Perez, Jr..
- The two best Standard records, each 9–1, belonged to Chris Fennell (Black-White Zombies) and Yuuta Takahashi.
- David Brucker returned to the Pro Tour after a 10-year absence. He finished 41st.