The 2013 StarCityGames.com Open Series has come to an end this past weekend at the StarCityGames.com Open Series: Las Vegas featuring the Invitational. Despite not having an Open Series stop in 2013, Arizona managed to gather more than 20 qualified players for the event! In fact, only four Open Series events were held within driving distance for most Arizonans, but we saw plenty of successes for Arizona players at the Open Series this year.
The first West Coast Open Series went to sunny San Diego on January 12-13th. The Standard Open saw two Arizona players make the Top 8, Josue Rojano with Four-Color Peddler, and Jax Remitio, with Esper Control. For the Legacy Open, however, Tony Murata took home Arizona’s second Open Series trophy with 12-Post, a somewhat fringe deck at the time, but has since then remained in the minds of Legacy players as one of the many crazy things you can do in Legacy.
The second Open Series stop was in Las Vegas in March. While Arizona didn’t take home the trophy, the Standard Open was utterly dominated by Arizona, taking half of the Top 8 slots – Evan Boritas with Experiment Jund, Scott Seligman with Human Reanimator, and Gary Wong and Alex Etzel, both with UWR Flash. Unfortunately, the Legacy Open Arizona players didn’t fare quite as well, with only one slot of the Top 16 being from Arizona, Billy Gogol with Shardless BUG.
The third West Coast Open Series stop showed up a whopping 8 months later. Held at Stan Lee’s Comicaze in Los Angeles, the Standard Open had over 650 players. Jax Remitio nearly made his second SCG Open Top 8, falling in the last round but securing 13th place with Esper Control yet again (but a different Standard format). The Legacy Open saw Jason Abong make his third SCG Open Top 8 with UWR Delver and Eddie Caudill “sneak” his way to the Top 16.
Finally, the last Open Series stop was certainly the biggest one for the West Coast this year. The Invitational featured 8 rounds on Day 1, 4 Standard rounds and 4 Legacy rounds, and 8 more rounds on Day 2. The Top 8 would play it out in Standard. As mentioned before, over twenty Arizona players showed up on Friday at noon to battle. Many of the Arizona players struggled early on in the Invitational, with many losing the first couple rounds. Only four managed to secure a record good enough for Day 2 – Billy Gogol, Sam Meyer, Phimus Pan, and Jason Abong. After a long Day 2, Billy finished 14th, Sam Meyer finished 17th, and Phimus Pan managed to snag the last money slot at 32nd.
The Las Vegas Standard Open saw former Arizonan Robb Miknus make his second Standard Top 8 in as many weeks, and Daniel Sharpy finishing 19th. The Legacy Open saw three Arizona players make the Top 32 – Billy Gogol at 15th, Kyle Fader at 20th, and Jeff Abong at 31st. Lastly, Sam Meyer took down the Sealed Classic on Sunday!
Congratulations to all of the Arizona Top Finishers this year at the 2013 StarCityGames.com Open Series. The 2014 Open Series pegs two Open Series stops on the West Coast in the first half of the year- March 22nd-23rd at Los Angeles, and June 20th-21st in Las Vegas. With Grand Prix Phoenix happening between those two, we are going to have a busy first half of the year. Are you ready?