Pro Tour Ixalan
Pro Tour Ixalan is the first Pro Tour of the 2017–18 season. It takes place on 3–5 November 2017 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.
Format
Pro Tour Ixalan marked the first time since the 2011 World Championships that the event took place not 2-3 weeks after the release of a new set; instead, Ixalan had been available for purchase for five weeks as Pro Tour Ixalan took place. As a result, the Standard and Booster draft formats had both been well explored prior to the event, with William Jensen having won the 2017 World Championship with Temur Energy four weeks prior, and five Ixalan Limited Grand Prix events had taken place already.
Day one
An Ixalan Booster draft kicked the event off, with the featured players being former Player of the Year Brad Nelson and Yuki Matsumoto, who was coming into the event with a lifetime Booster draft win record of 76%. Nelson drafted a White-Black Vampires deck that the commentators thought ended up fine, especially considering the weak start to the draft; in the first pack, Nelson didn't get many good cards. Matsumoto drafted a Blue-Black Pirates deck favored by the commentators. In the end, Nelson finished 1–2 in the draft, while Matsumoto won the pod, going 3–0. Other famous players to also post a perfect 3–0 start to the Pro Tour included Luis Scott-Vargas, back from an absence from the professional scene; Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, winner of the previous Pro Tour; Gabriel Nassif; Owen Turtenwald; Paul Rietzl; and both newly minted Hall of Famers, Martin Jůza and Josh Utter-Leyton.
Five rounds of Standard followed. The biggest decks by far were Ramunap Red, at 19.6% of the metagame, and two flavors of Energy decks: Temur at 23.6% of the field, and Four-Color at 19.6%. Other decks to make appearances included various God-Pharaoh's Gift decks, Mardu Vehicles, Black-Red Aggro, and Blue-Black Control. Wilson Hunter started 7–1 with Mono-White Vampires; Guillaume Matignon did the same with Jeskai Approach of the Second Sun. However, the two 8–0 players, Piotr Glogowski and Wing Chun Yam, were playing known quantities, fielding Temur Energy and Ramunap Red, respectively.
The top eight players after day one:
| Rank | Player | Points | Rank | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Template:Flagicon POL Piotr Glogowski | 24 | 5 | Template:Flagicon USA Samuel Ihlenfeldt | 21 |
| 2 | Template:Flagicon HKG Wing Chun Yam | 24 | 6 | Template:Flagicon BRA Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa | 21 |
| 3 | Template:Flagicon CHN Qi Wentao | 21 | 7 | Template:Flagicon CHN Han Xiao | 21 |
| 4 | Template:Flagicon USA Brad Maxwell | 21 | 8 | Template:Flagicon FRA Guillaume Matignon | 21 |
In the Team Series, the runaway leader after day one was team ChannelFireball. With three players at 7–1 (Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, Ben Stark, and Mike Sigrist), two players at 6–2 (Martin Jůza and Josh Utter-Leyton), and one player at 5–3 (Luis Scott-Vargas), ChannelFireball scored fully 24 match points better than their closest competitor, team Genesis.
Trivia
- Pro Tour Ixalan was the first Pro Tour since Pro Tour New York not attended by Raphaël Lévy, who ended his streak of 91 consecutive Pro Tours played due to the birth of his first child.
- The event also saw the return of Luis Scott-Vargas to competitive play; after posting three Pro Tour top eights in 2015–16, Scott-Vargas had taken the 2016–17 Pro Tour Season off to do coverage.