Day 1 is halfway over, and there were only four undefeated players going into round seven. Table 1 was a match between Alfonso Bueno and Tim Rivera. Both players had played Honor Among Thieves decks to 6-0 records to this point, but only one of them would keep a perfect record going into round eight.
 
While both decks shared Honor Among Thieves as well as plenty of the same thieves, the decks looked very different on paper. Tim’s deck ran a much more diverse roster of criminals, with thirteen different characters in his deck compared to Alfonso’s ten. The notable inclusions for Rivera that were not in Alfonso’s version were Carbone’s Assassins, Chameleon, and Silvermane.  
 
Both players were working out of Doc Ock’s Lab in the location department, but Alfonso also added Lion’s Den into his mix. The only plot twists that the two decks shared were Honor Among Thieves and Uprising. Rivera showed No Fear, Blown to Pieces, and Get Him my Petsss, while Bueno had Hired Goons and Spider Slayers doing his dirty work for him. Both players chose equipment from different arsenals, with Bueno opting for Goblin Glider while Rivera hopped in the War Wagon.  
 
I asked Rivera about the surprising inclusion of Get Him My Petsss, a card that is generally regarded as unplayable. He explained that it was added during playtesting to shift the matchup with X-Statix decks in his favor. Since X-Statix decks usually have only one character in play at any one time, you can usually KO the character you need to deal with when you need to deal with it.  
 
Rivera smiled as he looked around at the players in his immediate area. “It doesn’t look so good right now with all the X-Statix gone from the top tables.” 
 
When the two players were done with round 7, it was Bueno who was sporting the smile and the perfect record. Rivera looked forlornly at his resource row, which was all face down. He flipped up character card after character card with not a plot twist in sight.  
 
Jacob Rabinowitz was clashing with Stuart Wright one table over. Both players were running Underworld decks, but they had side dishes of very different teams. Rabinowitz was playing a YMG deck that was designed by Darwin Kastle and tweaked by committee. The deck was designed to abuse the abilities of Centurious, The Soulless Man and Brother Voodoo. It teams up Underworld and Marvel Knights, and has a Sentinel-esque feel when it gets Centurious going with Evil Awakens.  
 
The fact that Rabinowitz teamed with Marvel Knights in his version allowed for devastating use of Strength of the Grave thanks to a KO’d pile brimming with cards from Brother Voodoo. Knights also allowed him to play with Wild Ride, Midnight Sons, and all of the Mikado and Mosha/Dagger wackiness that goes with it.  
 
Stuart Wright was also running Centurious and Strength, but he relied on Roscoe Sweeny of the Crime Lords affiliation to stock his KO’d pile and smooth out his curve. Wright went with the blue-collar Marvel Team-Up to join his forces, although he did feature Lacuna to glam the deck up a bit.  
 
The matchup with Rabinowitz was probably not an ideal showcase for Stuart’s build, as his deck didn’t deliver anything on the appropriate turns, as evidenced by a turn-4 Roscoe Sweeny. It looked like Rabinowitz was going to stumble on his own curve on turn 5, but the last card he drew for the turn was exactly the Daredevil he needed. The only endurance loss he suffered was from moving his Daredevil into the hidden area to make him eligible for when Evil Awakens.
 
With Rabinowitz and Bueno winning, the stage was set for a round 7 feature match that would leave only one player with a perfect 8-0 record.