My Hall of Fame Ballot for 2016

I crossed the pro point threshold to have a Hall of Fame vote again, and I am very excited about it. I always love reading about other peoples' ballots, and I'm so happy to contribute my thoughts about mine.








Owen Turtenwald



Put simply, I think Owen is the best Magic player right now, and I've felt that way for quite some time. I think he is one of the two best embodiments of "professional Magic player" I have ever seen. (The other is Craig Wescoe.) I read everything Owen writes, and his writing reveals a lot of his method. He is highly focused on finding out how to win the most games, and he is the most unbiased of anyone I've ever encountered when it comes to exploring ways to win those games. His methods are also simple and straightforward - that gives me the impression that he uses all of his preparation time outside of tournament matches very efficiently. I think he is one of the best to ever play the game, and that combined with enough stats and accolades makes it very easy for me to vote for him.


It's not often that my opponents make plays that impress me. (I'm not sure how much of that is from me having "seen it all," so to speak, after 10+ years of playing competitive Magic, and how much is from the truly impressive plays being invisible to me because I'm so bad that I don't notice how I'm subtly being mastered, but definitely at least a little of each). However, Owen made one against me that legitimately impressed me. The play itself is not going to razzle-dazzle you, especially because I can't remember the precise details, but it was something like this. It was PT Dark Ascension in 2012, and I'm playing the crappy Illusions deck my "team" "came up with" against Owen, playing some version of the Wolf Run Ramp deck. Deep into the game, Owen is kind of short on lands, and he untaps and draws and starts to think. Then he makes an attack that convinces me to use a Vapor Snag (or some other super useful card) in my hand. After combat, he plays an Inkmoth Nexus and something else.


That play is so subtle, but I remember thinking about it again and again for a very long time after that match. Owen wasn't about to miss another land drop, lamenting his mana screw, sitting and thinking about how unlucky he was. He was carefully planning his turn out, figuring out how he could get me to make the play he wanted me to make. I remember feeling very ahead in the game, and being surprised and feeling like I got swindled when he played that Inkmoth after combat. I think it was that exact moment when I realized "wow, Owen is really damn good," and pretty much everything he's done since then has just driven that point home further.




Yuuya Watanabe


Yuuya is a master. He is unbelievably consistent. In this modern era of Magic, I think it's remarkable how some players never find themselves in doubt that they'll make Platinum and play in Worlds, and Yuuya is one of those players. It isn't just generic success, either - a closer look at some of his big finishes reveal a very deep understanding of the game. (The one I can think of off the top of my head is GP Manila in 2012, where Yuuya won with a UW Delver deck in Standard that shaved down to 19 lands, which was outrageous at the time. I know that was a GP and not a PT, but whatever.) In my mind, Yuuya is one of the all time greats and has definitely earned my vote.


I've only played against Yuuya once, but it was in a feature match at PT Return to Ravnica. The video is available online here, and it's great because it's the one where Zac Hill calls me "Alex MY-la-ton" over and over, which resulted in a lot of jabs from my friends in the years afterward (both at me and Zac).


Anyway, I remember this match very well. Yuuya actually made a mistake in game 3, and I was able to beat him because of it. It was a sneaky mistake, that Yuuya might have made because of a change to the rules that was reasonably recent (if I remember correctly). He had Avenging Arrow to destroy one of my creatures post-combat, but 2 of the only 3 mana he had available to cast it was from Axebane Guardian, and he used an 0/2 wall to chump another attacker in that combat phase, so the timing didn't work out in his favor and he lost his ability to cast it that turn. I wish I could say I led him into that mistake (the same way Owen led me into a play in the previous anecdote), but it just happened naturally and I definitely benefitted from it. It made me realize that even the top players are human and still make mistakes, and after thinking about that play for months (years?) afterwards, it also made me realize that top level Magic play isn't always just about technically perfect play - it can also be about noticing technically imperfect play from your opponents, and finding spots to induce it, and then capitalizing on it. I could write an entire post about this concept I think - maybe I will at some point.


Yuuya, sorry that my personal memory of you involves you punting a match. Hopefully my vote for you for the Hall of Fame provides some consolation.




Despite both of these players' current stats being a tiny bit light on top 8s and top 16s, they can both pass the "Was this player ever considered the best player in the game?" test, which is something I place a lot of value on. I am confident that if they didn't get voted in this year, we wouldn't have to wait too long until their stats were beefy enough to remove any doubt for their inclusion.
If I were a "small hall" kinda guy, my ballot would end here, but I'm not. I have plenty of thoughts about small hall vs. big hall, as well as the Hall of Fame in general, but I'll save them for another post.



Mark Herberholz


I like Mark's stats. In the places that they are a little weak (no additional top 16 finishes outside of top 8, for example), I think he more than makes up for it with his intangibles - the most prominent of which is deckbuilding prowess. That's a tough intangible to have, since you don't always personally get to enjoy (or get the glory for) the fruits of your labor. Gabriel Nassif wrote a post on Facebook detailing some of Mark's deckbuilding accomplishments, including a bunch that I didn't already know about, and that was more than enough to convince me. I feel like during his career he was a lot more than just a great player, and that's what makes me feel more confident voting for him.


As for my personal encounter with Mark, it was at Grand Prix St. Louis in 2006. I'm playing in my first limited GP day 2 ever, it's time for the second draft, and this is my pod:


25 Rasmussen, Ben D    24 72.18%
26 Baum, Nathan *      24 70.77%
27 Krempels, Craig C   24 69.93%
28 Stoddard, Samuel P  24 69.73%
29 Gomersall, Sam J    24 68.22%
30 Herberholz, Mark D  24 68.20%
31 Reeves, Neil N      24 67.93%
32 Majlaton, Alex S    24 66.62%


Not really the pod I was hoping for in my first day 2.


As I'm sitting with a few of the other players waiting for the draft to start, Neil Reeves walks up to the table and announces "Gun." (It took me a minute to figure out what it meant, but I'm pretty sure he was calling shotgun on 3-0ing the draft.) Mark responded immediately with "Blitz." What happened after that was an escalation of ridiculous shotgun calls between the two of them, most of them almost certainly made up on the spot, and arguments about the validity of each other's calls, with Craig Krempels in the background shouting "You can't triple stamp a double stamp! You can't triple stamp a double stamp!" The fight ended with Mark's call of "Winger dingers," which apparently meant that the winner of the right to 3-0 the draft would be determined with a wing eating competition.


I remember laughing about what happened, thinking about how awesome being on the Pro Tour must be. You get to play the best game in the world and make goofball jokes to entertain your goofball friends in situations like that - situations that would normally make amateurs like me nervous enough to crap their pants. I consider myself very lucky that I got to live some of that reality for the next 10 years.


Anyway, Mark beat me in both pods on day 2 of that GP.




Tsuyoshi Ikeda


Tsuyoshi's stats are excellent. They aren't necessarily dominating, but they are excellent. For comparison, EFro got voted in last year, and his stats were better than Ikeda's, but not overwhelmingly better. The only major difference, in my eyes, is that Ikeda did a little bit worse in the mid level (fewer top 32s, fewer top 64s) and he had more tries (59 PTs played to Eric's 41 at the time). If you count that as a strike against him, I can't say I blame you, but I don't like the idea of doing that.


Like many other voters, I'm also not really familiar with exactly what Ikeda's extracurricular contributions are. I know he's a clean player, I know he stopped competing so that he could start a chain of Magic stores in Japan, and I know that he organized at least one Grand Prix in Japan, and I know PV interviewed him for an article on CFB in a previous year's Hall of Fame season, but that's about it. I read a comment by Ron Foster on Facebook detailing some more of his character and his contributions, but I've since lost the post it was made on. If you are interested in researching Ikeda a bit more, my recommendation is to reach out to Ron Foster.


I never met Tsuyoshi Ikeda, so I don't have a cool personal anecdote for him, but I still feel very strong about voting for him for the Hall of Fame because I feel a strong personal connection to his career.


I've played in a lot of Pro Tours (26 at the time of writing this). I haven't done particularly well in any of them. In fact, I'm on the ballot this year, so you can go see how miserable my stats are. I'm the only player on the ballot with zero top 32s. And yet, I still find myself interested in qualifying, and occasionally able to qualify, for PTs. If I were to ever get my act together and start figuring out how to win at PTs enough to make it into the Hall of Fame, my stats would likely eventually resemble Ikeda's. I'd have to play in about 30 more PTs, and in those 30 I'd have to top 8 four of them, make top 16 an additional 4 or 5 times, and make the top 64 in another ten or so of them, all while fighting off the accusations of being a cheater*** (since it would look pretty suspicious for me to start dominating out of nowhere after ten years of mediocrity). That hypothetical career by itself would have a pretty good chance of getting voted in. I would like to think that a career turnaround like that would be good enough for the Hall of Fame, but if you add on my first 26 crappy PTs, my stats would start to look a lot more like Ikeda's. It would feel pretty bad to be punished for, essentially, not immediately giving up as soon as I figured out that I wasn't enough of a prodigy to dominate the game.


I think a career turnaround like that is reasonably unlikely to happen any time soon, so the best I can do is channel that philosophy into a vote for Tsuyoshi Ikeda.



Justin Gary


I keep looking at Justin's stats and wondering why he isn't in. Outside of top 8s, the rest of his stats are phenomenal (not that three top 8s with a win is bad or anything). Five additional top 16s and TWELVE additional top 32s is incredibly strong. I also remember the tail end of his career coinciding with the very beginning of mine - I played against him in my first premier event ever, US Nationals 2004 - and I always remembered the coverage of tournaments at the time being focused on what deck innovations the YMG guys would come up with next.


In 2003, I was playing an Onslaught team sealed PTQ in Maryland, and in round 3 our team got paired against the all star team of Osyp Lebedowicz, Eric Froelich, and Morgan Douglass. I sat down to play against Osyp, and he introduced himself as Justin Gary, and then engaged in a bunch of cartoony, Osyp-like pre-game banter in which he was pretending to be Justin. This was something he could definitely pull off at the time, since it was back in the era of team names instead of actual names, so his real name wasn't on the slip. Still, not knowing who either Justin or Osyp were at the time, I wasn't really aware enough to get the joke (which was probably Osyp's intent), and it didn't hit me until much later that I played against a PT winner pretending to be another PT winner. I ended up beating Osyp with Words of War, and my teammate John Moore ended up topdecking something to beat Morgan, so we won the round and the team of 2003-era Morgan, Osyp, and EFro was probably about as salty as you could imagine. Unfortunately for us though, we lost the next two rounds, and I think they ended up either winning the PTQ or selling the slot in the finals.


A year later, I'm playing in my first premier event, US Nationals in 2004. I get paired against Justin Gary himself, and since I knew who a lot of the pro players were by this point, I told him about my encounter with Osyp and he had a chuckle over it. He asked me "he was nice to you otherwise though, right?" and I figured he was just making conversation, but in retrospect (and ESPECIALLY after hearing Osyp's coverage of the top 8 of US Nats 2004 and PT Philly 2005), he was probably trying to make sure that Osyp wasn't out there making him look bad to random PTQ players. (And he wasn't - hopefully this doesn't make Osyp look bad at all. His coverage of both of those top 8s was really funny, even if it wouldn't fly by today's coverage standards, and every encounter I've had with Osyp since then has been really pleasant.)


When it comes to Mark, Justin, and Ikeda, I feel like this year is more or less their last chance to get in without any future success. I will probably continue to vote for Ikeda as long as I'm allowed to out of principle, but if it becomes clear that the community at large generally doesn't think any of them should be in as they are, I'll reevaluate my voting criteria.

I could go on forever about the people I'd vote for if I had a couple more votes, the people that I wish were in, the people that I think will likely get in if they keep playing, and any other cool stories I'm lucky enough remember, but in the interests of both keeping this post short and saving some content for future posts, I'll stop here.

The ballot I intend to submit for the Hall of Fame 2016:


Owen Turtenwald
Yuuya Watanabe
Mark Herberholz
Tsuyoshi Ikeda
Justin Gary


Thanks for reading.


***PLEASE NOTE: I don't cheat at Magic, I don't intend to ever start cheating, and I don't condone cheating in the slightest.