MT: Strength winner talks about MT: Agility

We've invited a lot of well-established Artifact players to participate in Mighty Triad: Agility, and among them was George "Hyped" Maganzini, of course. The winner of Mighty Triad: Strength. We had high hopes for him, but unfortunately, George didn't manage to reach the playoffs. Let's listen to what he has to say about his unlucky plays.

1. WePlay!: It was really sad to see you lose in the group stage despite the fact that all the odds were in your favour. How are you feeling after that?

   Hyped: I was pretty upset, on the one hand, there's not too much difference in second place and last place in my mind, and I can't win every tournament... But on the other hand not making it out of groups means it will be very hard for me to make it back in the next WePlay! tournament.

2. WePlay!: Everyone had high hopes for you since you've won the previous tournament. Were you determined to reach the finals?

   Hyped: First place is always the goal when I enter any tournament.

3. WePlay!: You've managed to score first against Shana, your first opponent. What went wrong after that?

   Hyped: The draws just weren't with me. In game two, my opening hand was extremely top-heavy, with 2 Thundergod's Wraths and a Bolt of Damocles, and also 2 At Any Costs which weren't that useful in the matchup, and in game three I also had 2 copies of both At Any Cost and Thundergod's Wrath again. Since my opening hands were so slow I got run over pretty easily.

4. WePlay!: He has actually reached the finals and won the 2nd place. Did you feel he was a tough opponent when you faced him?

   Hyped: Definitely, I could tell he was a good player, but I went into the tournament expecting all of the qualified players to be good considering the qualification process was quite gruelling.

5. WePlay!: Have you learnt anything from Shana's performance?

   Hyped: Not particularly, no.

6. WePlay!: Against dpmlicious, the story has repeated itself. You've scored first - and then lost twice in a row. What happened there?

   Hyped: This time it was my RG Ramp deck that couldn't score the win. In the mirror I wasn't finding any of my finishers and managed to draw the game out as long as I could but I never saw a single Time of Triumph or Emissary of the Quorum all game (which I don't know that I've ever experienced) and it's simply impossible to win the mirror if you never find those. In the last game, I was versus Red/Black aggro which is a very unfavoured matchup but I tried my best.

7. WePlay!: Do you think you could've avoided these defeats?

   Hyped: I think I played well, so in that sense no. My biggest regret was a small change I made to my Monoblue deck in cutting a copy of Aghanim's Sanctum, but at the end of the day, a single card probably wouldn't have made too much of a difference. In a broader deckbuilding sense, I think Maggo made the right call in targeting RG Ramp. I wish I had teched my decks even harder against it so that my opponents would have trouble getting their RG Ramp deck through my lineup.

8. WePlay!: During Agility, we saw that each and every professional player we've invited has lost to nonames/underdogs from qualifiers. What advantages could these players possible have against professionals?

   Hyped: The only advantage is just a bit more anonymity. For example, my opponents could make a decent guess as to what decks I was bringing whereas I did not have much information about them.

9. WePlay!: Did you feel that the meta has changed a lot since the previous tournament?

   Hyped: It definitely has, because of some of the balance changes, but also because of the Conquest format. A lot of decks auto-lose to Monoblue so they have a hard time just existing; however, some (RB Aggro, UG Storm) saw play in the tournament because they were really good against RG Ramp which was the most popular deck (which loses pretty hard to Monoblue, but is also playable because of the Conquest format).

10. WePlay!: Are you coming back for more in the third tourney here at WePlay!?

    Hyped: I will try my best, but I know the competition for qualifying will be fierce!

In case you've missed the finals of Mighty Triad: Agility, the tournament was won by MaggoGX who was referenced by Hyped above. You can find the interviews with the finalists through the link.