Rivals Member Chris Kvartek Joins MTG Arena Zone!

Hello everyone! We are excited to announce that the illustrious Chris Kvartek is officially joining MTG Arena Zone as a content creator! We are more than excited to have such a rare talent in the Magic community to produce wonderful content for all of you.

WHO IS CHRIS KVARTEK?

Chris Kvartek is a 24 year old Magic grinder from Long Island who has been playing Magic for nearly his entire life. Starting at age 6 playing with his older brothers, Chris quickly became engrossed in the game and it was a major part of his early years, playing consistently up through elementary, middle, and high school. He just recently graduated from college with a Nutrition degree and looks towards working for his Masters degree to eventually become a registered Dietician.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Chris started playing competitively in 2012 and had sporadic success. Early on he won a TCGPlayer States title in New Jersey and secured a top 8 finish in SCG Edison in 2014. However, beyond many PTQ top 8s and decent GP finishes, Chris was mostly a local player.

However in 2018, Chris decided he would make a real effort to try and break into competitive magic. He would play as many PTQs as he can amassing a lot of top 8s, but the win out of his grasp. However, in December 2018, he finally achieved his life long dream: a PTQ win and a trip to the pro tour.

On the back of his first PTQ win after 20+ top 8s, Chris went to his first Pro Tour, PT Cleveland (Mythic Championship 1) looking to make a splash. Unforuntately, he fell way short of his goal of requalifying via 11-5 when he failed to make Day 2.

Undeterred and learning from his mistakes, he launched himself back into tournaments and was very quickly rewarded with another PTQ win not even a month after Cleveland. This qualified him for PT London, his second Pro Tour, and his first top 8. He always had aspirations to make it into professional magic, and this top 8 would be the potential gateway for him to achieve his dreams.

His next event would be the first Arena MCQ open to all players who hit top 1200 the previous month. Back then, the top 16 finishers would qualify for the Mythic Championship rather than those who got 7 wins in day 2. Piloting his Monogreen Aggro homebrew, Chris secured the top 16 finish to go to Mythic Championship 3.

At Mythic Championship 3, he was the first player to make Day 2 by going an undefeated 5-0 with his take on Simic Oko. Day 2 unfortunately didn’t pan out as well for him and he finished in a brutal 17th place to lose out on some extremely important Mythic points.

With some time between events, he decided to keep playing PTQs in case he didn’t do well in Barcelona. He lost in the finals of a PTQ shortly after and then won the very next PTQ he played in.

At PT Barcelona a few months later and barely misses on top 8ing there a well! Despite this insane streak, he was hardly done.

Undeterred, Chris focused his energy into qualifying for the next Mythic Championship through the next Arena MCQ. This would be pivotal for him to have a shot and making MPL but at this point, nobody has qualified through the MCQs twice. Despite that, Chris managed to pull it off again with a top 16 finish to qualify him.

Pro Tour Richmond (Mythic Championship 6) came around to give him some much needed Mythic points to lock up his MPL slot, but he unfortunately had a middling performance there leaving a chance that he wouldn’t make it.

Mythic Championship 7 was his last chance to lock up his MPL spot and if he failed to perform, there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it at all. Pouring everything into his testing, he picked GB Henge which was a complete meta call and used that to secure his second Mythic Championship top 8. With that, Chris had the most Mythic Points out of any of the non-MPL members and secured his spot in the MPL for the 2020 season.

Despite the 2020 season not going well for him, Chris is now in the Rivals League ready to battle in tournaments again once the new season starts up.