First of all Jim, congrats on your success at the PT...But holy shit this was awesome. I would love to see other epic games of magic narrated by your pro brain.
after the first 3 games ended under 5 minutes i had kinda stopped paying attention and then when i noticed game 4 had gone WAY over that i rewound it and watched the entire game with my heart in my throat...amazing magic, props to jake and christian
That is why they play for 50K. Those were plays that a very large majority of players would have never done and it really shows the difference between most players and Pro Players
Wtf?tron vs scam,the most linear decks of modern.Calcano was lucky his opp did not get any bomb with ragavan and thats it.His plays were very clear to me,try to survive until i crack the o stone and start from there,any good topdeck for the rakdos player and it was over
@@ALFREDODBSIt's one thing to watch people playing a game and say to every individual play "yes, that is a play I could have seen and made," another thing entirely to recognize you would have had to see all of them, without a prompt, consecutively, with bright lights on you and everything on the line, in a single game, to have a remote prayer of winning the way Calcano did.
@@YourPalJamieEllis man,the guy plays tron, hus only line of play is to play o stone an try to survive until he cracks it an then tron do the rest.If you thunk he plays around kroxa you are on crack,he just make the right play of leaving four mana for ballista and he was lucky his last card was a spell not a land.The guy plays well,but he plays fucking tron
One of - if not the absolute best - games of magic I've ever seen was one of yours back in Ixalan I think. You were playing Dunkin Dinos and you ended up beating your opponent when you had zero cards left in your library. It was a thing of beauty.
Not playing that Chromatic Star was the smartest thing he did all tournament. It’s the only reason he made it through to game five when Kraxos was played by Jake. Great hold.
Great game and overall match. My best still goes to PVDDR Pro Tour (Amonket?) semifinal that was the burn mirror and several mulligans. Which is most remembered for his opponent forgetting to dump cards to Hazoret for the win. But other games were well played and tense.
The thought process and just pure fortitude to hold star in the potential face of kroxa was such a wild point in the match. Such a good call on Calcano
A potentially huge thing at 18:32 as well, where Jake draws, looks quickly at the card and taps BR, and then untaps the lands and just passes. I'm not sure if Calc saw that & had that put the fear of Kroxa in his mind, I sure missed it when I watched this game on stream but I noticed it now in this video. If you put on your big brain hat, Jake tapping that way after not having played anything the turn before with 4 mana available, you could potentially (correctly) put them on bolt in hand, provided that the card draw was in fact Kroxa. I think any spell (outside of Fury which is not castable & does not really matter in terms of you dying in this board state) other than bolt would have been played, so from Calcs PoV the card from last turn is either a bolt, a land or a fury (I'd guess 😅) Crazy game, literally had me on the edge of my seat when I watched it live & great break down here, Jim!
Very surprised to see Jim talk so shining about a modern match, but these are the type of marches I see most often. It’s a higher skill based format where every decision in the game matters more than most others. Yes there are some non games when one player just has it, but these type of games are much more the norm. I hope we get to see more modern. Thanks Jim.
When Jake discarded both Rags to Fable…I’m thinking he didn’t like his chances in a post O-Stone world, even with dashed Rag. At this point, he’s got 49 cards left in his deck and he’s thinking, “I haven’t seen a Bowmaster yet.” He was digging for the Orc. If Calc doesn’t hit land 5 for OS, it’s a 2 turn clock. But, if Jake has an Orc ready to flash in in response to a Ring activation, that shaves an entire turn off the clock. By contrast, if Jake holds a Rag for post-O Stone, Calc is at 3, dashed Rag puts him to 1, and the Calc gets to untap with a zillion mana and god knows what.
Calc went for the no guts no glory play trying to find that land and play the mite to destroy the ring, if he hadn't found that land with that sphere, it's over because he cant play the mite. Magic is a game where you have to make intuitive decisions to stay alive when needed, that's why is SOOOOO hard to take chances when so much is on the line.
Can discarding 2 ragavan be considered a mistake? I get you can rebuy grief but with ostone face up on the table dashing ragavans seem a good way to win
I would win a game like that in front of all people that loves magic than win that tournament. Calcano is a living legend in my local, who is Jake the scammer? 😂 Btw, both great players
Edit: I forgot you can pop Ostone at instant speed, my bad 11:49 couldn’t Beardsley hard cast Fury with Feign Death up, and just win? He has 6 mana, and Calcano can’t deal with the board and with a 4/4 Fury, and Beardsley knows that since he just Thoughtseized.
Continuing the armchair expert conversation, Jake B made three mistakes that game, that I think compounded cost him the game. One was pointed out by Jim: not using treasure mana in response to oblivion stone being popped which prevented him from playing Fable, which would have put him up to two cards deeper in his library. Second was tapping for RB signaling the Kroxa play (you can see that at 18:36 in this video) and then taking it back. Calcano saw RB being tapped and nothing played. This probably factored into him holding Chromatic Star, as Kroxa also deals 3 to an empty hand. The opportunity cost of holding on to that star was small compared to playing it and getting punished. The fact that he smiled after seeing Kroxa further tells me he probably realized Kroxa was in hand and planned accordingly. Jake's third mistake was not realizing the Kroxa read. If the bolts at the end of turn and holds Bowmasters instead of the blind Kroxa, he'd possibly have it too. Either Christian plays and cracks star (dies to Bowmasters) or he does his turn as he did, dies to Bowmasters blocking sundering titan + Kroxa next turn). In any case, this was an insane game and incredibly entertaining to watch. EDIT: Actually nevermind, with a Walking Ballista in play all of Jake's creatures just kind of die. He'd have to find another source of burn in his Fable cards to maybe still win.
I still don’t understand why Calcano chose to play a chromatic before tapping The One Ring for 2 at the start of the complex turn. Choosing to play chromatic just seems worse to me because it guarantees that you won’t be able to activate o-stone for another turn. If he failed to find land, he still could play the chromatic afterwards to use haywire mite to blow up his ring.
Yeah, the only benefit that I can think of that Calc's sequence is that if he draws land, he can mite Blood Moon and O-Stone in the same turn, so he can keep the ring around on 1 which gives him more options as opposed to feeling like he has to blow it up on 2. Still seems much better to me to maximize the chances of basically sealing the deal right there and stopping 7 damage (and not getting Griefed by Reflection) even if you're locking in another point of damage from the ring. Bowmasters might be another consideration to not ring first because if you don't O-Stone that turn you auto-lose while Jake might not play Bowmasters into Sphere, but after missing with Sphere, it's odd that he would tap Ring then and not Stirrings first if that was the logic.
glad jake won but not using the clue to copy grief here could've potentially cost him the pt, not having the mana to play his fable post o-stone was a pretty big deal
The best game of magic I’ve ever seen was Shahar Shenhar v Reid Duke in the world championships. Shahar had a terrible matchup and managed to pull the match out of his ass somehow.
love the coverage from jim but like. are people really impressed with this game? this is kinda just what interactive magic games look like. this game was a nice close game of magic. but like this isnt anything special to me. watch 2012-2016 era pro tours and this gameplay is pretty commonplace
Way too many misplays by Jake to be considered one of the best games. Might be top 1000 but I doubt it. Jake is very young and can still learn a lot from watching this replay.
Note to all mtg content creators: For the love of all that is holy, stop adding -ski and -orino to the end of card names. Its not cool, it's annoying and cringe af. 17:19
I thought that game was super boring. Just another zero-interaction Modern game. Two ships passing in the night. Not even in my top 100 PT games. Probably not in my top 1000.
I disagree about the “zero-interaction Modern game” part, in fact the most impactful plays of the game were interactive IMO. Turn two Blood Moon, Oblivion Stone activation, using Haywire Mite to save life on Ring tax, etc. All drastically swayed how both players went about trying to win the game.
Hey Jim, you said Jake misplayed by not using his treasure to cast fable of the mirror breaker but i assumed calc was using O stone at the beginning of combat step which could make Jake would lose the treasure mana and not be able to cast fable. This is my assumption but i would love to get clarification and your thoughts. thanks.
He used one of his lands to use the Reflection of Kiki to copy Grief, leaving him with two untapped lands. What he should have done is use a treasure instead, leaving him with 3 lands to play a post-combat Fable.
Would love to see this become a regular series where you break down the best high level matches from magic’s history.
Finals Game 2 PT Columbus 2004 😎
First of all Jim, congrats on your success at the PT...But holy shit this was awesome. I would love to see other epic games of magic narrated by your pro brain.
Same here, Jim!
Calcano throwing the Ulamog was also iconic lol.
after the first 3 games ended under 5 minutes i had kinda stopped paying attention and then when i noticed game 4 had gone WAY over that i rewound it and watched the entire game with my heart in my throat...amazing magic, props to jake and christian
That is why they play for 50K. Those were plays that a very large majority of players would have never done and it really shows the difference between most players and Pro Players
Wtf?tron vs scam,the most linear decks of modern.Calcano was lucky his opp did not get any bomb with ragavan and thats it.His plays were very clear to me,try to survive until i crack the o stone and start from there,any good topdeck for the rakdos player and it was over
@@ALFREDODBSyeah, none of th3se were particularly amazing plays. All came down to what was on top of the decks.
@@ALFREDODBS You're a heehaw
@@ALFREDODBSIt's one thing to watch people playing a game and say to every individual play "yes, that is a play I could have seen and made," another thing entirely to recognize you would have had to see all of them, without a prompt, consecutively, with bright lights on you and everything on the line, in a single game, to have a remote prayer of winning the way Calcano did.
@@YourPalJamieEllis man,the guy plays tron, hus only line of play is to play o stone an try to survive until he cracks it an then tron do the rest.If you thunk he plays around kroxa you are on crack,he just make the right play of leaving four mana for ballista and he was lucky his last card was a spell not a land.The guy plays well,but he plays fucking tron
This game was legendary, unfortunately after this game we got an ending as anticlimactic as it could be.
Like opening a new hyped booster.....
For real. That game 5 was one of the magic games ever.
Always legendary to see tron lose
“That’s Magic Baybeee”
What happened??
Congrats on your success at the PT, as an aspiring spike I love this kind of content!
I love your narration of these things. Wizards should hire you as an announcer
One of - if not the absolute best - games of magic I've ever seen was one of yours back in Ixalan I think. You were playing Dunkin Dinos and you ended up beating your opponent when you had zero cards left in your library. It was a thing of beauty.
ua-cam.com/video/IvQBjXi5eME/v-deo.html was a classic!
I also remember that play around Cling to Dust in Ravnica Standard
Loveeee this video format! Breaking things down with the “why” is so good for us amateurs to learn!
Not playing that Chromatic Star was the smartest thing he did all tournament. It’s the only reason he made it through to game five when Kraxos was played by Jake. Great hold.
Great idea for a video, thanks! I don't even play Modern.
This game was the PERFECT example of playing to your outs. Well done, Calc!
game 2 of this set was also amazing. Especially for a novice player. Noone expects the turn 3 ulamog
I'm normally not a big fan of magic commentary but this was very insightful.
Great game and overall match. My best still goes to PVDDR Pro Tour (Amonket?) semifinal that was the burn mirror and several mulligans. Which is most remembered for his opponent forgetting to dump cards to Hazoret for the win. But other games were well played and tense.
I was there at magic con watching this, felt like the entire venue was on the edge of their seats. Amazing game
The thought process and just pure fortitude to hold star in the potential face of kroxa was such a wild point in the match. Such a good call on Calcano
Love this kind of content, a pro players perspective on high level competitive play is awesome
Watching this live was so crazy. When Jake drew the Kroxa I thought it was over. Calc played his ass off. Great video Jim
100% agree, I was in shock when it was over. Just a masterclass game on both sides.
Great game and awesome commentary! I haven’t watched modern in a while so it was nice having my hand held through it lol
Congrats on your finish Jim. I didn't find the finals matchup super exciting but I love the review you've done 👍
Upvote for Jim to be a PT Gameplay Coverage guy
Woke up to this game on Sunday. Was really rooting for him. Happy for Jake, seems like a great guy, but wanted Calcano to win soooo bad
A potentially huge thing at 18:32 as well, where Jake draws, looks quickly at the card and taps BR, and then untaps the lands and just passes. I'm not sure if Calc saw that & had that put the fear of Kroxa in his mind, I sure missed it when I watched this game on stream but I noticed it now in this video. If you put on your big brain hat, Jake tapping that way after not having played anything the turn before with 4 mana available, you could potentially (correctly) put them on bolt in hand, provided that the card draw was in fact Kroxa. I think any spell (outside of Fury which is not castable & does not really matter in terms of you dying in this board state) other than bolt would have been played, so from Calcs PoV the card from last turn is either a bolt, a land or a fury (I'd guess 😅)
Crazy game, literally had me on the edge of my seat when I watched it live & great break down here, Jim!
The live commentary by Thoffal and Mengu was great, but I appreciate the different perspective a retrospective analysis provides
Thnks for giving ur insight for all of the not so knowlegeable ppl( like me ), keep it up man!!! .
I watched this game and, for the first time spectating it felt genuinely good!
I love this video format. It would be cool to see more of these
Loved this video! Great game, great commentary.
Cool breakdown, dude navigated a minefield there
Saw this live it was AMAZING
Dat foil karn foe doh
Also huge Calcano fan 👏
Very surprised to see Jim talk so shining about a modern match, but these are the type of marches I see most often. It’s a higher skill based format where every decision in the game matters more than most others. Yes there are some non games when one player just has it, but these type of games are much more the norm.
I hope we get to see more modern. Thanks Jim.
I haven’t loved what Modern has become, but that doesn’t mean it can’t produce great games sometimes
@@JimDavisMTG I have the same problem with Pioneer. I don’t like the direction it has gone, but I have played some really fun games in the format.
Thanks for the blow by blow!
watching the protour made me realize why I never could be a top player. I would never have the patience to play around one-offs.
When Jake discarded both Rags to Fable…I’m thinking he didn’t like his chances in a post O-Stone world, even with dashed Rag. At this point, he’s got 49 cards left in his deck and he’s thinking, “I haven’t seen a Bowmaster yet.” He was digging for the Orc. If Calc doesn’t hit land 5 for OS, it’s a 2 turn clock. But, if Jake has an Orc ready to flash in in response to a Ring activation, that shaves an entire turn off the clock. By contrast, if Jake holds a Rag for post-O Stone, Calc is at 3, dashed Rag puts him to 1, and the Calc gets to untap with a zillion mana and god knows what.
Damn that was a game!
I would totally watch if you did more commentary vids
Calc went for the no guts no glory play trying to find that land and play the mite to destroy the ring, if he hadn't found that land with that sphere, it's over because he cant play the mite.
Magic is a game where you have to make intuitive decisions to stay alive when needed, that's why is SOOOOO hard to take chances when so much is on the line.
Very tight.
Calc played the game of his life. Unfortunately game 5 was scammed away from him 😔
Lord knows I'm ecstatic about tron being back baybeeeee
Modern has healed
Pardon my language, but this is why I fucking play magic
Love you Jim. Made sure to like
Can discarding 2 ragavan be considered a mistake? I get you can rebuy grief but with ostone face up on the table dashing ragavans seem a good way to win
But Jim! None of these deck lists run Weather the Storm! (bad joke reference to 15:13)
Why would he not block with the mite and then sacrifice it?
I would win a game like that in front of all people that loves magic than win that tournament. Calcano is a living legend in my local, who is Jake the scammer? 😂
Btw, both great players
Edit: I forgot you can pop Ostone at instant speed, my bad
11:49 couldn’t Beardsley hard cast Fury with Feign Death up, and just win? He has 6 mana, and Calcano can’t deal with the board and with a 4/4 Fury, and Beardsley knows that since he just Thoughtseized.
Continuing the armchair expert conversation, Jake B made three mistakes that game, that I think compounded cost him the game.
One was pointed out by Jim: not using treasure mana in response to oblivion stone being popped which prevented him from playing Fable, which would have put him up to two cards deeper in his library.
Second was tapping for RB signaling the Kroxa play (you can see that at 18:36 in this video) and then taking it back.
Calcano saw RB being tapped and nothing played. This probably factored into him holding Chromatic Star, as Kroxa also deals 3 to an empty hand. The opportunity cost of holding on to that star was small compared to playing it and getting punished.
The fact that he smiled after seeing Kroxa further tells me he probably realized Kroxa was in hand and planned accordingly.
Jake's third mistake was not realizing the Kroxa read. If the bolts at the end of turn and holds Bowmasters instead of the blind Kroxa, he'd possibly have it too. Either Christian plays and cracks star (dies to Bowmasters) or he does his turn as he did, dies to Bowmasters blocking sundering titan + Kroxa next turn).
In any case, this was an insane game and incredibly entertaining to watch.
EDIT: Actually nevermind, with a Walking Ballista in play all of Jake's creatures just kind of die. He'd have to find another source of burn in his Fable cards to maybe still win.
Not using the treasure was a bad mistake. Oh well
I still don’t understand why Calcano chose to play a chromatic before tapping The One Ring for 2 at the start of the complex turn. Choosing to play chromatic just seems worse to me because it guarantees that you won’t be able to activate o-stone for another turn. If he failed to find land, he still could play the chromatic afterwards to use haywire mite to blow up his ring.
Yeah, the only benefit that I can think of that Calc's sequence is that if he draws land, he can mite Blood Moon and O-Stone in the same turn, so he can keep the ring around on 1 which gives him more options as opposed to feeling like he has to blow it up on 2. Still seems much better to me to maximize the chances of basically sealing the deal right there and stopping 7 damage (and not getting Griefed by Reflection) even if you're locking in another point of damage from the ring.
Bowmasters might be another consideration to not ring first because if you don't O-Stone that turn you auto-lose while Jake might not play Bowmasters into Sphere, but after missing with Sphere, it's odd that he would tap Ring then and not Stirrings first if that was the logic.
@@Duall8 it was highly confusing for me. He would have lost on the spot if he hadn’t drawn a land with the second chromatic he played that turn.
Wait wait.
I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT KARN HAVING ACCESS TO EXILED ARTIFACTS CLAUSE HOLY SHIT I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A WISHBOARD CLAUSE
Did they ban the one ring yet?
Some editing to point out what you're talking about would do wonders for this video...
glad jake won but not using the clue to copy grief here could've potentially cost him the pt, not having the mana to play his fable post o-stone was a pretty big deal
How does he activate Reflection the turn it flipped? Just some casual cheating in the finals of the pro tour?
The best game of magic I’ve ever seen was Shahar Shenhar v Reid Duke in the world championships. Shahar had a terrible matchup and managed to pull the match out of his ass somehow.
Thank god smellovision doesn’t exist
Not even close. Recency Bias
I think Jake missed using the treasures multiple times. that was big miss from his part. Could probably given him the win.
love the coverage from jim but like. are people really impressed with this game? this is kinda just what interactive magic games look like. this game was a nice close game of magic. but like this isnt anything special to me. watch 2012-2016 era pro tours and this gameplay is pretty commonplace
And the game 5 was a non-game, thx to grief, hate that card, free spells sucks
C'mon... Tron IS Easy
Why does Jim keep saying "they" when rereferring to Jake because if it's because Jake identifies as non-binary I swear to f-ing God!
Lol “tron is easy to play”
Way too many misplays by Jake to be considered one of the best games. Might be top 1000 but I doubt it. Jake is very young and can still learn a lot from watching this replay.
What a shit comment
Note to all mtg content creators:
For the love of all that is holy, stop adding -ski and -orino to the end of card names. Its not cool, it's annoying and cringe af. 17:19
😪💤
1game in a bo5 in of the worst metas overall. Cherry picking at its best
I thought that game was super boring. Just another zero-interaction Modern game. Two ships passing in the night. Not even in my top 100 PT games. Probably not in my top 1000.
I disagree about the “zero-interaction Modern game” part, in fact the most impactful plays of the game were interactive IMO. Turn two Blood Moon, Oblivion Stone activation, using Haywire Mite to save life on Ring tax, etc. All drastically swayed how both players went about trying to win the game.
It's "Four"-est. Drives me insane every time you saw "Far"rest
It’s leviOsa
reported for copyright
Of course not dogshit protour the number of viewers are declining each pt and the quality of players is decreasing so hard each pto
Hey Jim, you said Jake misplayed by not using his treasure to cast fable of the mirror breaker but i assumed calc was using O stone at the beginning of combat step which could make Jake would lose the treasure mana and not be able to cast fable. This is my assumption but i would love to get clarification and your thoughts. thanks.
He used one of his lands to use the Reflection of Kiki to copy Grief, leaving him with two untapped lands.
What he should have done is use a treasure instead, leaving him with 3 lands to play a post-combat Fable.