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Zendikar Rising Championship Day Two Highlights

December 05, 2020
Corbin Hosler

184 players entered the Zendikar Rising Championship, and about half returned on Saturday for Day Two. Eight rounds of play, split evenly between Standard and Historic formats, gave us our Top 8: a stacked group of competitors returning on Sunday to work through a double-elimination bracket and crown a new champion.

This is what you missed on the journey here.

The Top 8 is Set

It was an exciting race to Top 8, filled with back-and-forth matches all afternoon as players battled to keep their tournament chances alive. Jan-Moritz Merkel—back at the top tables after winning a Pro Tour at the age of 17 in 2006—was the first to lock up a Top 8 berth, soon joined by a star-studded crew.



The Top 8 will be played out with Historic, and here's how it shapes up for Sunday:



You can find the Top 8 players' profiles with their Historic and Standard decklists here.

The matches leading up to the Top 8 were a pressure cooker, as every small decision was magnified by its effect on the outcome. In a Standard format that pitted some very different-looking decks against each other, it was a weekend that rewarded mastery of a mostly known field. It comes at no surprise to see a Top 8 filled with current frontrunner and former champions.

It wasn't quite wire-to-wire, but few have been better at Standard over recent Standard seasons than Autumn Burchett as she converted her undefeated Day One run into a Top 8 berth. The Gruul endboss lived up to their reputation this weekend, and with a belief in Embercleave and picture-perfect decisions, Burchett put on a show through to their second straight Top Finish.

But no one has been on as much of a run the past year as Hall of Famer Gabriel Nassif. He continues his assault on the record books, notching an incredible 15th Top Finish—now within two of matching all-time leaders Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Jon Finkel.

The Frenchman's famous yellow hat made an appearance on stream as he dispatched Ondřej Stráský in a clutch Round 15 win-and-in victory in a matchup Stráský believed was in his favor.

But the Top 8 featured more than these luminaries. Several challengers made their first career Top Finish. Bradley Barclay had his friends in his local Magic community staying up late into the Scottish night to watch him lock up his first Top Finish, while Rivals League member Luca Magni celebrated his first major tournament as a member of the league by also notching his first Top Finish.

It's been a year of magical runs, and the Zendikar Rising Top 8 continues that tradition for us to watch history in the making.

Beneath the Historic Surface

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Yasharn, Implacable Earth may grab the headlines, but there is plenty going on in Historic if you dig just a bit deeper. The format quickly become a fan favorite in part due to how many players found success going rogue this weekend.

Some of those picks belonged to legends. Hall of Famer Kai Budde worked with Pro Tour and Players Tour champion Joel Larsson, and came armed with a deck that mashed the colorless ramp deck with Uro. It's a monster of possibilities and lines, and the emerging combo deck was only of several newer archetypes to officially hit the map this weekend.

Another combo captivated viewers this weekend, and it involved cats. Rivals League member Grzegorz Kowalski's Nine Lives—a Solemnity combo deck put that together with Nine Lives could just end games on the spot—even against a fully loaded and powerful board. Kowalski missed Day Two, but his Historic performance put Nine Lives on the map.

League Races Continue

Coming into the Zendikar Rising Championship, Hall of Famer Luis Scott-Vargas led the early-season points race for the Rivals League with Matt Sperling lurking just behind. The two have competed alongside each other for years, so even at this early stage of the season—it's a long way until the postseason—there's been plenty of banter.

Sperling finished 10-5, while Scott-Vargas wrapped at 9-6. We're sure to be following this storyline for the rest of the season, along with any burritos that might come with it.

In the MPL race, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Gabriel Nassif gained the most from the tournament, and will lead the points race heading into the next League Weekend this January.

Looking Ahead

With 15 rounds behind us, the tournament begins anew—the Top 8 players return Sunday morning for a double-elimination bracket that will deliver us a champion.



Watch Historic history happen again when live coverage of the Zendikar Rising Championship Top 8 begins Sunday, December 6 at 9 a.m. PST on twitch.tv/magic.

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