So I got my 2010 Magic Pro Tour Selection Committee Hall of Fame ballot today.
In case you guys haven’t been reading for that long, the first ever post on this blog was my 2008 Hall of Fame ballot; way back on October 6, 2008. You can check that action out here (and by “here” I mean, like, this awesome blog).
Anyway there are a bunch of people eligible for Hall of Fame this year; I am not going to list them all. Instead I am just going to run out my gut-pulls:
Marco Blume
William Jensen
Scott Johns
Anton Jonsson
Brian Kibler
Katsuhiro Mori
Gabriel Nassif
Daniel O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Carlos Romao
Tomoharu Saito
I have voted for more than one of these players in the past.
They are all deserving misers but a man gets only five Hall of Fame ballot votes. Briefly…
Marco Blume
I always chuckle when I read Marco’s name. I wrote an article on Ponza ~11 years ago which was viciously plagiarized by The Pojo. You can still read “their” article, which has “Maro” Blume credited with a German Ponza deck, a misspelling I made all those many years ago, surviving still on “theirs”.
[LOL! I hadn’t read the 2008 ballot before writing this, and didn’t realize that I had just re-bought my own line from two years ago.]
William Jensen
Billy “Baby Huey” Jensen has a better resume than a fair number of the people already in the Hall of Fame. It’s basically silly he hasn’t been inducted yet. I’ve learned a lot from him.
Scott Johns
Ditto on William Jensen. Scott is a Pro Tour winner with five Top 8s and years of service to the community.
Anton Jonsson
To be honest I didn’t have the Limited master on my original short list but when i sorted the 2010 candidate pool and saw how many Top 8s he had, it seemed negligent not to consider him. Unfortunately I have little frame of reference on Anton’s game, but he comes very highly recommended by friends like Brian David-Marshall and Teddy Card Game.
Brian Kibler
I had already decided to vote for my old Underground and Team Red Bull teammate the Dragonmaster last year. Then he went and won a Pro Tour and Grand Prix and so on. Kibs is going to be a landslide this year and I plan to jump on.
Katsuhiro Mori
A few weeks ago I had this conversation with Zvi Mowshowitz:
Me: What are the chances someone other than Katsuhiro Mori has the MTGO nickname “Katsuhiro Mori”?
Zvi: Pretty low, why?
Me: Because I just bashed him in a queue, but I kind of don’t believe it was really him.
Zvi: No?
Me: He was playing Mono-Red.
Zvi: What were you playing?
Me: Eldrazi of course. Can’t lose; I mulled to five Game One and 2-0’d him anyway.
Zvi: Nah couldn’t have been him, but weird MTGO name.
Mono-Red? Nah, couldn’t have been him.
Katsu is super fun to play against, for fun at least (I have never played him in a tournament). He once beat me in same-deck of Pierre Canali’s U/R Wafo-Tapa deck. He was super tricky, which is about par for the course for him.
Gabriel Nassif
Hat is basically everyone’s hero (mine included). Neither Jon nor Kai (nor Bob, nor Dirk) got unanimous inductions, so I greatly doubt Nassif will. But he’s certainly got This Girl’s vote.
Daniel O’Mahoney-Schwartz
It was just Danny OMS’s birthday! Happy birthday Danny OMS! Katherine and the kids and I are going to Shake Shack with him this weekend. Dan is a good friend and I hang out with him pretty much every week. However My annual OMS brother vote is going to…
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Should have voted him in first class. My bad.
Chris Pikula
Ditto on Chris.
Carlos Romao
There are few Constructed players I admire as much as Carlos. The Psychatog master just added a notch to his already much-perforated belt with a Planeswalker Top 8 that helped cement little Jace as a pre-emptive Staple in Standard.
Tomoharu Saito
Not only did his just win another big tournament, but he’s basically the best deck designer in the world.
This year I decided to do something different moving from the short list to the shorter list. I am just going to run all the automatic votes and see how many slots I have left over.
As I am not a buffoon I am obviously voting for Nassif, Saito, and Kibler; master, master, and DragonMaster. I think Nassif is as worthy a unanimous ballot-gatherer as ever drew breath. Saito has been around the best player in the world for some years if not the clear best. I wouldn’t have half so much glory as a deck designer if he hadn’t helped Andre Coimbra in the Extended portion of Worlds; so mise! Like I said, I was going to vote for Kibler even before he won that Pro Tour and Grand Prix because in order for the American block to start getting our O’Mahoney-Schwartz brothers and Pikulas into the Hall of Fame we have to stop fracturing our votes. That means getting our deserving boys off the ballot and into the Hall of Fame so that we can make more room for our, you know, additional deserving boys. That starts with Kibler. Congratulations old friend. The enemy’s gate is down!
With two votes left, that makes for a wonderfully convenient number of openings for SteveO and Chris.
Final ballot:
Brian Kibler
Gabriel Nassif
Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Tomoharu Saito
Much love, all around.
LOVE
MIKE
9 comments ↓
I think everyone on your short list is probably worth of getting in, but I think it’s more likely it’ll be Nassif and Saito for sure, then maybe Kibler and Mori, because they are still relevant, whereas some of the voters may not remember some of the others.
Also, funny story, the first time I read the line, “the enemy’s gate is down,” I thought it meant that the gate was open, as in, to go for the gate because the gate was down and therefore vulnerable to attack.
One Man’s Ballot, again…
Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…
I love Pikula, but I vote in Huey over him. Huey did a lot more for the game imo, and was one of the geniuses during his high run.
People probably haven’t voted Huey into the HoF for the same reason we don’t vote for all the other cheaters. Huey’s savage, and will never get my vote no matter how many Pro Tours he may win in some theoretical future.
well at least one cheater is in the hall of fame(ruel) so might as well let others in like long and whoever else
Why does everyone always mention Ruel about that and not Maher? I guess people just like him better.
Maher turned himself in (and, as I understand it, someone was cheating on his behalf), accepted his ban, and came back better than he was before. Ruel has a bit of a long term record for sketchy behavior with a DQ for, I believe, lying to a judge within a year prior to his induction. I think that time from the offence, one incident instead of multiples (as far as I know), and the fact that Maher was forthcoming with his offence make quite a big difference. Plus, I think people like Bob more.
My apologies…Maher made it look better. i remember when all that came up i wasnt sure what to believe if he knew and accepted it or not. still dont……but i agree he probably gets off because he was forthcoming and most people do love bob. I just dont think people cant vote for someone anymore because they were a cheater as there are cheaters in the HoF now.
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