G1

Bant Company keeps a 2 land hand with 3 Spell Quellers, casts a Selfless Spirit and doesn’t find a third land until turn 6. Spiral Blue, on the other hand, casts intuition on turn 3, a Mana vault on turn 4 and Mind Over Matter on turn 5. In response to an endstep Spell Queller, Spiral Blue casts another Intuition – for Stroke of Genius, which is a bit risky since it only leaves one left in the main deck. A Turn 7 Brainstorm meets another Spell Queller, so instead Spiral Blue casts the Stroke of Genius to draw 11 cards. Then, a Time Spiral finds 2 more Strokes for the win. Spiral Blue 1-0.

G2

T1 Mana Vault from Spiral Blue. T2 Duskwatch Recruiter from Bant. T3, Spiral Blue plays around Spell Queller by tapping the Mana Vault to help cast Intuition, leaving 2 islands untapped. Spell Queller in response gets countered by Counterspell. Then Spiral Blue casts a 2nd Mana Vault with the floating colorless mana. T4 Mind Over Matter leads to a Turn 5 Time Spiral, a Brainstorm with counterspell backup to overcome another Spell Queller, a 2nd Time Spiral, Meditate, Stroke of Genius drawing 27 cards, then Stroke of Genius the opponent for a turn 5 win. Spiral Blue 2-0.

G3

Bant mulligans to 6. Spiral Blue has T1 Mana Vault again, into a turn 4 Mind Over Matter. Immediately after the Mind Over Matter resolves, Spiral Blue starts to discard cards to make mana so Bant casts Dromoka’s Command to destroy the Mind Over Matter, which surprisingly works! So Spiral Blue just discards most of his hand for mana and casts Time Spiral, then Brainstorm, then Intuition naming Mind Over Matter. Turn 5, the Mind Over Matter is back, but since Spiral Blue is at 9 life, he decides to go for it. Strokes himself for 10 cards, Casts a Mana Vault and a Meditate, and finds another Stroke for another turn 5 win. Spiral Blue takes first place. 3-0.

Our normal rule is that a deck has to take 1st place twice to get retired to the Hall of Fame, but the prospect of running a whole tournament again with Spiral Blue seemed too obnoxious, so we’re retiring it to the Hall of Fame now. The only question is whether it should bump Delver to become the “3rd best ever,” or go onto the list after Delver and become the 4th best? To determine that, we’ll have to stage a special match of Spiral Blue versus UW Delver. Stay tuned.