Taro Kageyama

Sideboard Staff

Taro "John" Kageyama is a familiar face at Japanese events. He is the founder of Team John, which includes and two-time APAC Champion Masaya Mori among its members. Kageyama placed in the Top 8 of GP Sapporo last September, and has also been on the Pro Tour a number of times.

Kageyama won the first Open tournament today with an Opposition-Static Orb deck. We sat down with him after his victory to get his thoughts about the tournament.

Congratulations on winning.

Thank you. I'm very excited. I played in Nationals three years ago, and this is my first time to make it since then.

The Opp-Orb deck has attracted a great deal of attention lately. Why did you choose to play with it today?

I like it from the first time I read about it, and saw how well it did at German Nationals. It's very strong against Fires, which given that today's tournaments are singe elimination I expected to see a lot of. CounterRebel and NetherGo are also popular in Japan right now, and Opp-Orb does well against those decks, so I felt it was a strong metagame choice.

What are your predictions for Sunday?

I imagine a lot of people will be playing the decks I mentioned above. I also expect to see a lot of Opp-Orb as well.

19 Island
1 Rath's Edge
2 Rishadan Port

4 Glacial Wall
1 Mahamoti Djinn
2 Merfolk Looter
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Thieving Magpie

4 Counterspell
2 Foil
3 Gush
2 Misdirection
2 Opposition
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Static Orb
2 Thwart

4 Gainsay
1 Hibernation
2 Misdirection
4 Stinging Barrier
4 Wall of Spears