The Las Vegas $10K has a strong attendance of 125 players. With the Super Bowl this weekend, some players used this event as an excuse to come to Vegas . . . perfectly reasonable, right? Aside from the pigskin, Las Vegas is home to countless distractions. Judging from the number of players that got no sleep on the night prior to the $10K, many have enjoyed what Vegas had to offer.

Most of the field is comprised of local gamers from the Southwest, with only a few recognizable faces having made the trip. Ryan Jones and Robert Leander did not make it to this event, but a handful of their Realmworx teammates did. They arrived around midnight the night before the tournament, tired but eager to play.

One notable Realmworx member that made the trip was Billy Zonos. After having a bad run at PC LA with Teen Titans, Billy decided to return to his old pride and joy—Solitaire Stall. He took the deck to the $10K Championship at Gen Con So Cal a few months back and placed with it in the Top 8 of the Marvel bracket. He’s running the same deck today, hoping once again to finish well with his bizarre mixture of teams and activated abilities.

Vidianto Wijaya, who placed in the top 4 of PC LA, is also here to compete today. He unfortunately could not attend the New Jersey $10K in January, so he was looking forward to the big Vegas event. Vidi spent all of last night lamenting over whether to run Titans or Curve Sentinels. From the amount of play the League of Assassins is seeing today, Vidi made a good choice by picking the purple robots. His first round match was against Sergio Leon and his League of Assassins deck. The game was in a close race on turn 8, with Ra’s Al Ghul, the Demon’s Head halting the power of Bastion, and Lady Shiva, Master Assassin landing the finishing blow on the big sentinel. However, Vidi was able to make a comeback and bring Sergio down to -1 for the game. Vidianto was at 4 endurance at game’s end.

Josh Witanen also came to play. He placed in the Top 4 of last year’s Texas $10K with his “UnCommon Enemy” deck. John Rich entered today’s tournament, as well. Overall, however, Las Vegas is a showcase of local players, local decks, and local ideas. With the diversity of deck choices in this event, many of those locals will surely be better known at weekend’s end.