Brian Boss packed his bags, gathered his cards, and took off for the airport. His final destination? Amsterdam. He sat on a crowded plane for eight hours as he traveled across the world with one goal in mind: To qualify for Magic World Championship 30.
With the third and final Pro Tour of the year coming a few months before Magic World Championship 30 in October, Boss knew there would be time for sightseeing, bike riding, roosters crowing, or any of the other ways players entertained themselves at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 after the event. But until then, his focus was on securing that final invitation at the end of the Pro Tour path, the concrete validation that his time and energy invested has a real payoff.
There's no twists in this story—like he has done all year, Boss delivered on his strengths when it counted most, turning in a 5-1 Draft record at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 to secure the World Championship seat.
Well, he had one other goal, too. He wanted to earn draft trophies.
My goals for this weekend were simple: get draft trophies and qualify for worlds. I only got one draft trophy, and still a bit upset with myself for not doing better in the second draft, but overall a pretty successful weekend. This year will be my first worlds!
— Boros Boss (@BorosBoss) June 30, 2024
Draft "trophies" are shorthand for winning an eight-player draft pod, or being the only player in the pod to go 3-0. It's Magic Online parlance—you're awarded trophies on the client and the trophy leaderboard is hotly contested—but it makes the point well enough. At every Pro Tour we talk about how important the Limited rounds are. Having a strong Limited game backstops your game at the Pro Tour, helping deliver the bread-and-butter finishes that make for a successful season even without a breakthrough.
That's where Brian Boss comes in. The longtime player and Grand Prix Kansas City 2019 Top 8 competitor hasn't appeared in a Pro Tour Top 8 yet, but he's spent a lot of time playing on camera in feature matches. As the Pro Tour Top 8 draws near, his deck selection and high level of play has kept him alive deep into tournaments.
His PT finishes don't immediately jump out at you. 27th place at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor, then 50th at Pro Tour Thunder Junction, followed up by Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3, where again Boss played deep into Day Two before missing the Top 8 and finishing 13th.
None of those finishes, taken individually, are typically enough to get talked about. But remember what reigning Pro Tour champion and Player of the Year Simon Nielsen told us last week? The best player in the world might not be the player with the most Top Finishes right now. A lot has to break your way even if you play perfectly to make the Top 8 of an event as difficult as the Pro Tour. When you take Boss's finishes in totality, a Top 16 with an average finish inside the top 30 may not be quite the same as the run Nielsen is on, but it's extremely impressive in its own right.
"I went into the Pro Tour with only two goals: get draft trophies and qualify for worlds on adjusted match points. I was already close to worlds and didn't need much help, so easily crushed that goal," he recounted. "I spent the majority of my preparation based around the Modern Horizons 3 draft format; I drafted on MTG Arena and was doing on average a little over three drafts a day from when it came out until the Pro Tour, and listened to a range of podcasts and other Limited content to check my assumptions on the format."
While Boss may feel like he left one trophy on the table, his 5-1 Draft record in Amsterdam propelled him to another big finish and his first-ever World Championship opportunity.
Beyond the Top 8
That's why it's always worth it to go beyond the Top 8. Boss's accomplishments would be lost in the wash if we just ignored the stories of those who barely missed competing on the Sunday stage. The margins in high-level Magic are incredibly thin both in the gameplay and in the tiebreakers, any longtime player knows the pain of the pairings algorithm not breaking your way.
Don't let the lack of a fancy stat fool you. Making the Top 16 of a Pro Tour means you were one draw away--one slightly different attack step--from making the elimination rounds and having a chance to win it all. We remember the champion who drew what they needed, when they needed it most, and rode the wave to glory, but the player on the other end of that exchange shouldn't be overlooked.
To that end, here's the 9th-16th players from Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3:
- Matt Sperling
- Jacob Nagro
- Jean-Emmanuel Depraz
- Ken Yukuhiro
- Brian Boss
- Eliott Boussaud
- Carlos Oliveros Guntin
- Collin Rountree
If you thought the Top 8 was stacked, the Top 16 is no less so. Matt Sperling made the finals of a Mythic Championship in London in 2019, Yukuhiro did the same at Players Tour Nagoya in 2020. and by the way. that's JED, the defending World Champion, standing as the perfect example of consistency long before he took home the world title.
That's what a lot this really comes down to for the best players in the world: the chance to win it all. Ask a Pro Tour player if they want to make the Top 8? Well, of course they do. But ask them which Top 8 they'd most like to make? There's no other answer. The tournament to win is the World Championship. So, while a Pro Tour Top Finish comes with a slew of benefits, chasing a World Championship seat via the Regional Championship or online play circuits, or by qualifying on season-long match points, remains the goal for many competitors.
Having a long-term goal also helps to lessen the short-term sting from a near-miss. For Sperling, who did in fact finish in the dreaded 9th-by-tiebreakers spot, his rollercoaster of a Pro Tour did ultimately qualify him for the World Championship.
"Prior to deck submission, I felt like I understood Modern, but none of the decks felt like 'my' deck. I ended up selecting Esper Goryo's Vengeance, despite having played zero games with it myself," Sperling explained. "After the deadline. I figured I'd get a few practice games in against a teammate and LSV was available with the Storm deck he submitted. In the four games we played, not only did I lose every one, but I never even put a legendary creature into my graveyard. I was feeling some buyer's remorse."
But the Pro Tour had some magic to spare for Sperling.
"I needed to make Day Two to secure a World Championship invite, and 4-4 makes Day Two so I was feeling good about it, until I finished the first three rounds of draft without a single win," he recalled. "My back was against the wall. My first turn cycle of the Pro Tour, I fetched a surveil land was able to put
"The rest is history, I suppose. I went 10-0 in Modern, 1-4-1 in Draft, and finished in 9th on tiebreakers. That's always a mixed bag. In this case, since my goal coming into the event was to qualify for worlds and I did so despite starting winless in the first draft, I was actually, unequivocally happy about the result."
Between the result of this and the fact that I didn’t have to move my flight and miss my wife’s birthday, maybe I was supposed to get 9th place at the PT on breakers. (Definitely sounds better than needing to work on my limited game).
— Matt Sperling ⚡PWP⚡ (@sickofit) June 30, 2024
Awesome that both Kai and Edgar Qd!
🐐 https://t.co/8mWzSbRvGX
It's all about perspective—and Magic World Championship 30.
The Road to the World Championship
Speaking of world champions, the one and only Kai Budde, the German Juggernaut for whom the Player of the Year trophy is named, borrowed Sperling's cards while he hopped on a jet. It was a Sunday, so Kai didn't lose. Budde won a Pro Tour Qualifier with Sperling's same deck.
Magic World Championship 30 is just over three months away, and until then Frank Karsten and I are looking back at all of our previous World Championship winners and the mark they left on the game.
This week takes us back to 2010, and one of maybe the top two wildest seasons of play I've seen since I started the game in 2007. The Player of the Year title often comes down to the World Championship at the end of the season, and 2010 was no exception. With a robust circuit across the globe and ample opportunities for play, the points lead went around for months until the 17th Magic World Championship brought together players from across the world to Chiba, Japan, where history was made.
We've all experienced the disappointment of being paired against a friend in a big tournament. We don't travel for events to play the same matchup we could at our kitchen table. But if you are going to have to play against your friends, and in high-level tournament Magic you absolutely will, you at least want it to come at the end of the tournament. Heck, why not the finals?
That's exactly what Guillaume Matignon and Guillaume Wafo-Tapa did at the World Championship. With the Player of the Year race on the line, the two teammates who were actually rooming together at the event met in the last possible match: The championship finals. When Matignon emerged victorious, it did more than just crown him World Champion—it set up an epic, first-of-its-kind Player of the Year playoff with Brad Nelson.