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Sam Pardee wins the Strixhaven Championship

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The North-American player played against the French John Girardot in the finals, in a Jeskai Turns mirror.

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Sam Pardee is the champion of the Strixhaven Championship.

The tournament's Top 8 was clearly dominated by the Jeskai Turns deck, a combo-control archetype that uses the combination of Indomitable Creativity with tokens to play Velomachus Lorehold and, from there, play an arbitrary amount of extra turns, with a total of five copies of the deck in the Top 8.

And of course, the finals of the event was carried out by a rematch and a mirror of Jeskai Turns between Sam and John Girardot, which both players had already faced each other in the Upper Bracket and Sam emerged victorious.

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In the finals, where the winner is defined in a best of 3 rounds, with 3 games in each round, Sam won the first round for 2-1 against John.

In the second round, Sam extended his advantage by winning game 1, and in game 2, John seemed to have all the pieces to win the game by playing a Mizzix's Mastery with Overload that played a mix of Brainstorm + Prismari Command + 2 copies of Magma Opus, for a total of drawing 6 cards + putting two 4/4 tokens + dealing 8 damage on Sam Pardee.

However, John Girardot's graveyard didn't have an extra turn to win the game on-spot, and in the next turn, Sam used a Perilous Voyage to filter the top of the deck in his upkeep and then played a Brainstorm, which brought from the top of his deck the exact combination of Time Warp + Mizzix's Mastery he needed to get around the extremely unfavorable situation and win the game.

Sam then cast Time Warp to play the extra turn, and in the next turn discarded his Magma Opus to create a Treasure token and played his own Mizzix's Mastery with Overload to recast Time Warp and Magma Opus, thus managing to turn the tables, secure victory and become the winner of the Strixhaven Championship!

Those were the lists used by the player in the tournament:

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