What does winning a Pro Tour, and becoming a Pro Tour Champion, mean to you?
Winning a Tier 4 is the pinnacle of the competitive scene – there’s this idea that at a Calling, not everyone is going to make it, and some people might show up not having tested as much as they could have, or playing a deck that’s less competitively serious, whereas at a Tier 4 everyone goes all out. Having had a lot of Calling success but less Tier 4 success (I’d never gone better than x-5 before Las Vegas), I wanted to prove to myself that I was still able to win when everyone else was bringing their best.
4-Time Calling Champion, National Champion, EU Player of the Year, and now Pro Tour Champion. What else is there to do on your to-do list? What’s next for you?
I don’t think of it like a to-do list, I just really enjoy the process of preparing for a tournament and then getting to compete. Something a mate said to me that really stuck is that the feeling of being in the late stages of a tournament, alive to win it, and battling against an opponent where you can feel that you both desperately want to win is one of the best feelings in the world. In the past, I feel like I’ve not wanted it enough, which is a slightly crazy thing to say, but I’d often get to a point where I knew I was happy with what I had already achieved and would lose a bit of focus because of it. This year, I decided I would not slip into that pattern and strive for the ‘year of winning’.
How nervous were you throughout the weekend?
I was quite nervous, but I think that’s good. Feeling nervous is a sign that you care, and right from the start of the Pro Tour I had the feeling that this one was going to be different. I’ve had some Tier 4’s where I’ve felt very good about my Classic Constructed prep (particularly Nuu at Osaka and Gravy Bones at Singapore) and some where I’ve felt very good about the draft (Hunted at London), but this was the first Tier 4 where I felt very good about both. So as I was playing, I was feeling like I really didn’t want to waste this chance where I had such a good shot.
What was your favorite game this weekend?
I had a lot of really cool and interesting games which makes it hard to pick a favorite. One game I would highlight is my semi-finals vs Vore, he had brought a really interesting brew which I’d not seen before, so after I won my quarter-finals I knew it was likely he was going to beat Majin, so I immediately started going around the venue trying to find someone who had an Oscilio deck even close to his. Fortunately, one of the vendors had an Oscilio deck they let me borrow and Aaron Boyhan helped me proxy the cards he was missing, and then played the deck into my Arakni while the other quarter-finals were going. Having to work out how I was going to play into his deck was very interesting and I felt like we came up with quite a good approach. Vore hadn’t lost a game of Classic Constructed up to that point so I knew I was going to have to take advantage of the prep time that his previous opponents hadn’t had in order to beat him.