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The Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Set Championship has come and gone, and what an event it was!
Aside from showcasing fairly vibrant Alchemy and Historic formats, on a personal note I was able to pace the field by going undefeated in the Swiss on my way to making my first Pro Tour Top 8! It obviously feels amazing after playing competitive Magic for almost 20 years to add that one to my resume and I go over my entire event here in this video.
This makes last week's predictions article for the event a true inside job, as I had a personal hand in making three of the five predictions come true - For once "rigged!" is a fair thing to say!
Today I'm going to go over those predictions and what they mean for both Alchemy and Historic, as well give a mini-recap of my event as well.
Prediction One - Naya Runes Is Going to Get Crushed In Alchemy - Correct!
A lot of the early hype from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty was how the powerful new enchantment cards meshed with some of the cards already legal in Standard and Alchemy from Kaldheim - namely Runeforge Champion and Showdown of the Skalds.
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And there's no doubt the Naya Runes deck is very good. It won the Hooglandia Open after Neon Dynasty's release and has been very successful on the ladder. However, going into a pro level event where every player is gunning for you is not a great place to be and this showed heavily in the standings.
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The tools existed to beat runes in the format and players were completely loaded up and ready to go. Mono-White Aggro with maindeck Archon of Emeria was the most played deck in the format, supplementing the hateful three-drop with many copies of Skyclave Apparition and Brutal Cathar // Moonrage Brute. All the other decks were ready too, with everything from sideboard Annuls to maindeck Farewells and everything in between.
As a result, Naya runes got aptly crushed in the event to an astoundingly bad 33.8% win rate. I don't think I've ever seen a win rate so low for a deck that was one of the most played decks in the field in the history of competitive Magic. The target was crystal clear and almost everyone hit it.
If you're a Naya Runes player I wouldn't worry too much about it however. The field at a Pro Level event is very laser focused on a particular spot in the metagame. Now that the event has passed and Naya Runes faltered, it is very unlikely you'll be seeing maindeck Archon of Emeria anymore. The deck is still good as long as everyone isn't out to get you, but be ready to change gears if needed.
Prediction Two - The Wandering Emperor Will Make Top 8 Of Both Formats - Incorrect!
The Wandering Emperor is one of the best designed planeswalkers in a long time.
It's a very powerful card, as it was all over Alchemy as well as making numerous appearances in Historic, but it's not a planeswalker that feels insurmountable if it stays in play for a few turns like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Much of the power of The Wandering Emperor is front-loaded on that first cast, while the rest is just solid.
While The Wandering Emperor was in many of the Alchemy Top 8 decklists, it did fail to crack the Top 8 on the Historic side, despite seeing a good amount of play in the various Azorius Control lists.
The Wandering Emperor is a card that isn't going to transcend all formats like Teferi, Time Raveler or Oko, Thief of Crowns, but it is still very playable in formats as far back as Modern due to its versatility. I'd like to give myself partial credit here, but I won't so we'll call this one a miss.
Prediction Three - The Orzhov Venture Deck Is Going To Be The Success Story Of Alchemy - Correct!
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the entire event was the popularity and success of the rebalanced venture cards in Alchemy.
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With an almost 62% winrate, the Orzhov Venture deck was the talk of the tournament. Melding some of the great Orzhov cards like Vanishing Verse and Liesa, Forgotten Archangel with many cards featuring the venture mechanic like Triumphant Adventurer and Nadaar, Selfless Paladin, the deck was able to play a very solid midrange game but also occasionally go off with great venture draws.
I was the one of the victims of one of these great aggressive venture starts unfortunately in Game 3 of the Top 8, being taken down by Eli Kassis who would go on to win the entire event.
Orzhov Venture | Alchemy | | Eli Kassis, 1st Place Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Set Championship
- Creatures (20)
- 1 Intrepid Adversary
- 1 Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor
- 2 Liesa, Forgotten Archangel
- 4 Archon of Emeria
- 4 Citystalker Connoisseur
- 4 Nadaar, Selfless Paladin
- 4 Triumphant Adventurer
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 The Wandering Emperor
- Instants (8)
- 1 Infernal Grasp
- 1 March of Otherworldly Light
- 1 Power Word Kill
- 2 Vanishing Verse
- 3 Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit
- Sorceries (3)
- 3 Duress
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Precipitous Drop
This deck is great and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good Alchemy deck, but remember that it was built for a specific event! Those Archons can go back into the sideboard for more generically good cards in the maindeck.
Prediction Four - This Will Be Fable Of The Mirror-Breaker's Coming Out Party - Correct!
When I joined up with Andrea Mengucci's Open Team to test for this event, the first thing I did was check out the Grixis Midrange deck they were working on. It was based on my Rakdos Midrange deck that I used to qualify for the event, so I was eager to see what they had come up with. However, one card stood out as bizarre to me.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker didn't really register with me when I did my set review, as without haste on the backside it just looked too slow to really make an impact.
Boy was I wrong.
Fable of the Mirror Breaker is just a really good Magic card. For three mana you get four power and toughness spread over two bodies, both of which have very good abilities that need to be dealt with. You wouldn't pay three mana for any one of the three effects on the card, but the fact that you get all three effects for only three mana and one card is phenomenal. It feels really bad to have to kill the token, and then know that you also need to kill the actual Reflection of Kiki-Jiki as well. In a lot of ways it reminds me of History of Benalia, just a bit slower but with tokens that actually do things.
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Add this to the fact that there are already a ton of great creatures you already want to play that are phenomenal targets to copy with Reflections of Kiki-Jiki and you've got a real winner. People were saying good things about the card in Vintage Cube as well, which means it's probably not long before we start seeing it show up in other formats as well.
Get your copies now!
Prediction Five - Someone From My Testing Team Will Make Top 8 - Correct!
When I made this prediction, I was putting my faith in the fact that I was working with about 20 awesome Magic players.
From young and hungry up and comers to established and successful pros, it was a great mix of Magic talent as well as a good number of players. With a good mix of talent, a good handle on the metagame, and about around 10% of the field on the roster, this felt like a really safe bet.
"I played a lot of Pro Tours in the late 2000s, and despite a few Top 32s I never had that breakthrough performance that got me on the train, and eventually stepped away from Magic for a while, so it feels pretty damn good to finally get one."
— Magic Esports (@MagicEsports) March 12, 2022
Congrats on the Top 8 @JimDavisMTG! pic.twitter.com/xuD1KOvTFX
Little did I know it would be me getting the job done!
Four Out Of Five Ain't Bad!
I could probably give myself partial credit for the Wandering Emperor prediction, but considering that I had a personal hand in many of the other ones I'll settle with four out of five.
This event was quite the wild ride for me. It was unlike any pro level event I've ever played before, for many reasons:
Rather than being in Japan or Paris in some fancy convention center in a wonderful place I would have normally never gotten to see, I was in the comfort of my own home and office.
Despite being in my office and at my desk, rather than having the lights on and the cameras rolling as I perk up and try to entertain, I was able to put some music on and just get into a groove.
Rather than walking around the event hall looking for reasonable food with friends and acquaintances between rounds, I spent most of the downtime cleaning my office (while occasionally saying hi to Karn or doing some pushups to keep active).
Rather than going 10-6 for a medium finish and hoping to make min cash and maybe requalify for the next event, I finally was able to put together a good run in the swiss and capture the Pro Tour Top 8 that has eluded me for so long.
Rather than scrambling for cards and playing in paper, we were playing online on MTG Arena. I miss paper Magic too, but it wasn't so bad playing the event on MTG Arena, and it was also kind of nice not needing to maintain any sort of poker face while being able to talk to myself while playing.
I definitely cherish the time I spent a competitively hungry but financially poor Magic player galivanting around the world playing in Pro Tours, but I'm much happier now with the stability and enjoyment that comes from doing content creation full time instead. However, it sure is vindicating to past me to finally get that Pro Tour Top 8 I put so much effort into getting back in the day.
Here are the decks that I played, of which I recorded a short deck tech for each on my own YouTube:
Azorius Auras | Historic | Jim Davis, 7th Place Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Set Championship
- Companion (1)
- 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den
- Creatures (18)
- 3 Selfless Savior
- 3 Stormchaser Drake
- 4 Esper Sentinel
- 4 Kor Spiritdancer
- 4 Sram, Senior Edificer
- Instants (5)
- 2 Karametra's Blessing
- 3 Spell Pierce
- Enchantments (15)
- 2 Curious Obsession
- 2 Staggering Insight
- 3 Arcane Flight
- 4 Cartouche of Solidarity
- 4 Sentinel's Eyes
- Lands (22)
- 7 Plains
- 3 Island
- 4 Hallowed Fountain
- 4 Hengegate Pathway // Mistgate Pathway
- 4 Glacial Fortress
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Dovin's Veto
- 2 Cerulean Drake
- 2 Soul-Guide Lantern
- 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den
- 3 Hushbringer
- 2 Heliod's Punishment
- 3 Portable Hole
Grixis Midrange | Alchemy | Jim Davis, 7th Place Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Set Championship
- Creatures (15)
- 2 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton
- 2 Town-Razer Tyrant
- 3 Rahilda, Wanted Cutthroat
- 4 Bloodtithe Harvester
- 4 Citystalker Connoisseur
- Planeswalkers (5)
- 1 Sorin the Mirthless
- 4 Kaito Shizuki
- Instants (8)
- 2 Abrade
- 2 Flame-Blessed Bolt
- 2 Power Word Kill
- 2 Voltage Surge
- Sorceries (2)
- 2 Duress
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
- Lands (26)
- 1 Swamp
- 1 Mountain
- 1 Den of the Bugbear
- 2 Hive of the Eye Tyrant
- 2 Shipwreck Marsh
- 3 Stormcarved Coast
- 4 Blightstep Pathway // Searstep Pathway
- 4 Clearwater Pathway // Murkwater Pathway
- 4 Haunted Ridge
- 4 Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Duress
- 2 Annul
- 2 Nighthawk Scavenger
- 1 Soul Transfer
- 2 Disdainful Stroke
- 2 Mind Flayer
- 3 The Meathook Massacre
- 1 Sorin the Mirthless
There's Always Next Time!
To close, I just want to say thank you to everyone who was cheering me on during the event, be it on Twitch live, in YouTube comments, or on Twitter. It was awesome peeking into coverage and seeing my emotes being spammed in chat and people asking how I was doing. I love y'all and your support is incredible.
Thanks to everyone so much and I look forward to the New Capenna Set Championship!
