Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Team Power Rankings Top 8 - PT Valencia

Team rosters gotten from here:  http://www.gatheringmagic.com/lauren-lee-02192014-teams-at-pro-tour-born-of-the-gods/

General thoughts:

I think teams for this PT will be more important than almost any past event thanks to the delay of the B&R announcement to not even a month before the event.  THis gives such a huge edge to teams that know how to organize, efficently

1)  CFB Pantheon

This is definitely the team to beat coming into the event.  On top of featuring some of the most dominant names form magic history, the team also has Sam Black and Patrick Chapin who, if their is a deck to break in the new Modern format, are the two most likely to do so.  In addition, the team features some of the most dominating names from Magic present and will for sure be the team to beat coming into the event.

2)  CFB

While not as strong in this format as their sister team, the old CFB roster still has some high potential to crush as shown by Wrapter's finals appearance (EDIT:  Erroneously thought Wrapter won PT Philly at first) in the first modern PT (although it did require one of the most improbably sequences of events from Sam Black to accomplish).  Having the #1, 2, and 4 players from the (admittedly flawed, maybe I'll write something about this another day) leaderboard cements this team's strength and, if the PT wasn't modern, I would have put them at #1.

3)  Elaborate Ruse

Third place was a tough call between ER and Revolution, but I think the size of team Revolution and lack of strong catalysts for creative non-control deck building from the team puts ER slightly ahead.  Ruse will be the most underrated team of the event by many, but the team is insanely strong and I fully expect them to put up the results to prove it.

4)  Revolution

I think this team is strong overall, but the sheer size of the team and lacks some cohesion.  Of the top four, this is the team that will either greatly exceed my expectations of them or fall dramatically short, but given their performance in the past I think the former is a more likely result.

5)  TCGPlayer.com
6)  13 Angry Men
7)  Face2Face
8)  MTGMintCard