Play the game, meet the world. That was the tagline for Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes at MagicCon: Amsterdam, and the final match of the tournament reflected that perfectly as first-time Top Finisher Lorenzo Gruppi—a key part of the incredible story and run put together by the Italian Team NOVO TCG eBay in their first event—met Japanese legend Yuuki Ichikawa, who was making his sixth career Top Finish and angling for his third premier event trophy this decade.

To accomplish that goal, he would need to win just one more draft trophy. Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes featured the first Top 8 draft in fifteen years, and the monumental nature of the occasion was not lost on the Pro Tour field as teams put more work than ever into perfecting their draft strategies.

The result was a Top 8 that featured some of the very best Limited minds in the world, and the Pro Tour crowd was treated to a gem of a draft with the Black Lotus trophy on the line.

The Games

Both players kept their openers, each with a healthy mix of lands and spells, and it was Gruppi who took the first action on the play, resolving a Red Room Recruit to connive away a land. With that, the best-of-five finals was officially underway.

And with the gas tank on full. Both players found their ambitious splash colors, and the early turns featured several hectic combats that left Bullseye, Death's Dealer alive on Ichikawa side to set up value, while Gruppi resolved an even bigger value engine with Madame Masque. From there, Ichikawa slowed down and began to grow the Zabu token created by Ka-Zar of the Savage Land. Their life totals sat at 17-15 in Ichikawa's favor, but little else pushed things forward.

And that's how things went: slowly. Ichikawa let his life total be whittled down to 8, in exchange for clearing away several of Gruppi's tokens via combat. Then The Vision joined the battlefield, and soon the six-time Top Finisher Ichikawa found himself in control of the battlefield despite the life discrepancy.

Gruppi needed an answer but only found more questions—it was Ichikawa who had all the answers. He chained a pair of removal spells into Gruppi's already shrinking board, and one giant combat later it was the Japanese pro who took the first game.

The second game came less easily. Ichikawa's opener featured a basic landcycler and just two basic Mountains to go with it. After some debate, he opted to keep the hand and ultimately wasn't punished for the slow-developing draw, as he made it to turn four at a healthy 18 life and staring down just one creature from Gruppi.

That changed on Gruppi's next turn, as he added the potentially game-changing Captain Mar-Vell, Space-Born. But with his mana situation mostly settled, Ichikawa leaned on Repulsor Blast to remove the flyer while deploying Web Up to remove another creature. That left the game heading toward another stall—albeit this time with very few creatures in play.

At least, until Ichikawa brought two creatures into the fray by playing Ka-Zar of the Savage Land for the second straight game, bringing a Zabu token along with it that threatened to end the second tilt in a hurry as its first swing knocked Gruppi down to 6 life–which turned out to be the ideal setup for The Ruinous Wrecking Crew. Ichikawa deployed the rare Villain, and one draw step later Gruppi conceded and moved on to the post-sideboard games down deep in a 2-0 hole.

Onto the sideboard games, where the Italian on the run of a lifetime making his first career Top Finish would need a stroke of good fortune to climb back into things—or at least a hand from Ichikawa that didn't involve Ka-Zar and a grip of removal.

Instead, he faced a trio of on-curve plays from Ichikawa: Guerilla Gorilla into Bullseye, Death Dealer into Pet Avengers. This time, though, Gruppi was able to answer back with some heat of his own in the form of Agent Phil Coulson plus Captain America, Living Legend, putting pressure on Ichikawa's steadily dwindling life total.

But it wasn't meant to be. Bullseye plus a clutch Go Nuts! from Ichikawa again cleared Gruppi's most serious threats. Despite now being down 6 life, the Japanese legend was able to find a critical fifth land to unlock the pair of Hulk, Gamma Goliath in his hand.

Unfortunately for Gruppi, he also found land atop his deck–two of them. He was forced to watch his carefully earned lead slip away, and a Widow's Bite two turns later simply wasn't enough to match up to the Hercules, Prince of Power that Ichikawa followed with. As Ichikawa, in search of his third career title and first in five years, turned his entire board sideways, there was nothing Gruppi could do but extend his hand and congratulate Ichikawa on winning Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes—much to the delight of his teammates on Team Moriyama Japan, whom Ichikawa immediately thought to thank for the incredible run.