Japan Stands Tall at Worlds Again

2011 Magic World Championships 

Let this sink in...over the last four days, Jun’ya Iyanaga played 18 rounds of Swiss, 11 rounds in the Magic Online Championship, and three single-elimination rounds under the Sunday spotlight. That’s 32 rounds of high-pressure competition and the Japanese player came through with flying colors—Red-Green Wolf Run Ramp, to be precise—to take home the title of World Champion.

Pro Tour Historian Brian David-Marshall and Statistician Rich Hagon recap the 2011 World Championships from San Francisco, including an interview with Player of the Year Owen Turtenwald.
 

SUNDAY ARCHIVES

• Awards Ceremony: YouTube 
• Finals: YouTube 
• Team Finals: YouTube 
• Magic Online Finals: YouTube 
• Semifinals: YouTube 
• Quarterfinals: YouTube 
• Preview: YouTube 

The download files are opitmized for smartphone (smaller size) and tablet (larger).

Iyanaga defeated Richard Bland of England 3-0 in the finals. Iyanaga earned his spot in the main event by winning the Magic Online Championship Series last-chance qualifier barely a month ago.

Iyanaga’s individual title was matched by his countrymen Makihito Mihara, Tomoya Fujimoto, Ryuichiro Ishida on Team Japan with their victory over Norway (Sveinung Bjørnerud, Kristoffer Jonassen, Andreas Nordahl) in the World Team Final. Mihara added a World Team title to his individual World Championship from 2006, and the nation of Japan repeated its feat from 2005 when it swept both the individual and team World titles.

In the Magic Online Championship, Reid Duke defeated Florian Pils in a tense best-of-three match in the Modern format. Well-timed Bloodbraid Elves and a Grave Titan sealed the deal for the two-time MOCS player.

The Player of the Year storyline was incredibly muddled at the start of Sunday due to the presence of three hopefuls—Luis Scott-Vargas, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, and Josh Utter-Leyton—in the Top 8. Quarterfinal losses for each meant that Owen Turtenwald locked up the POY title on the back of his record-setting seven Grand Prix Top 8s and high Pro Tour finishes. Rookie of the Year front-runner Matthias Hunt had his own tense moments on Sunday waiting on Sveinung Bjørnerud’s performance in the team final, but when Norway fell to Japan the title belonged to Hunt.

• Standard and Modern Metagame Analysis
• Top 5 Cards of the 2011 World Championships

top 8 bracket

 

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