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Tarmogate

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There our hero sat. Drafting in the Top 8 of the largest Magic tournament ever. With a finals finish, he would make serious headway towards qualifying for the world championship. One pack in, he like where his Boros deck was going. That's when it happened. He didn't know it, but over the course of the next minute he would face the most publicly scrutinized decision of his entire life.

Burst Lightning, or foil Tarmogoyf?

By now you've no doubt heard of #tarmogate. Or #goyfgate as the extremely unoriginals prefer to call it. Many pro players have cast rather harsh judgment on Pascal Maynard for basically rare-drafting in the Top 8 of GP Vegas, while the general consensus has been that the Tarmogoyf was the much higher EV pick.


There have been a lot of fallacious arguments with regard to the discussion of the pick, because, you know, people are talking. Some pose the question "would you have paid $500 to have Burst Lightning in your draft deck?" In reality, picking the Burst Lightning is akin to denying $500 for a first pick out of pack two. Money out of pocket is pretty different from money being offered, but that discussion isn't terribly interesting either.

What the situation boils down to, is would you rather pocket a foil Tarmogoyf or give yourself the best odds to play in the world championship? As a commoner, it's pretty clear that the Goyf is the right pick for me. As Pascal Maynard, well, he's publicly admitted that he missplayed. That said, his play ended up being higher value than he could have possibly imagined.

If you haven't heard, Pascal has put up the foil Goyf on e-bay, pledging to donate half of the final sale price to Gamers Helping Gamers. So, if you're interested in owning a piece of Magic history, donating to GHG and Pascal, and have over $12,000 to commit to these ends then you can find the auction here.

Personally, I think that the Burst Lightning that he passed and then lost to in the semis has more value as a piece of Magic history, but alas, that one isn't up for auction.

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Ryan Overturf

Ryan has been playing Magic since Legions and playing competitively since Lorwyn. While he fancies himself a Legacy specialist, you'll always find him with strong opinions on every constructed format.

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5 thoughts on “Tarmogate

  1. I believe he’s not wrong. The fact that a foil Tarmogoyf (which was worth $500 the moment he picked it, not $10k as it becomes after all this attention) is enough incentive for someone to money-draft in the Top 8 of the biggest tournament ever, is proof that the prize support is way insufficient.

  2. I would have made the same pick. That Burst Lightning is good, but not having it doesn’t really make the deck that much worse. I try to listen to the advice on Limited Resources when Marshall says that no individual pick should make or break your draft. I’ve had to abandon my first pick or so many times while drafting so I’m used to not playing the sweet rare when circumstances dictate. That’s the opposite of what happened, taking the mythic over a good common, but still a comparable experience. The pros might denounce rare-drafting but very few of them have actually been in such a position to make that choice with only seconds to do it.

    Considering the average value of an opened MM2015 pack, rare drafting is more common than people might think. At a draft just 2 days ago that I took part in, I took a pack 3 pick 1 foil Daybreak Coronet over a Lightning Bolt in my R/U mostly elementals deck and never looked back. It might be bad advice to do so, but that card paid for the draft while the bolt would have been number 3 and wouldn’t have made the deck better enough to give up all that monetary value. That I lost a game round 2 to a Lightning Bolt to the face was true karmic justice, I admit, but I would still make the same pick.

  3. Those people that criticized him for making the pick are just jealous. Put them in the same shoes I’m sure they would pick the foil goyf anytime.

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