Faces and Squadron are definitely among the most prominent decks in the format. During the first day of the tournament, Khare’s teammate Adam Horvath faced off against a number of Squadron decks. Although he had a losing record in the matchup, he maintained that he was unlucky and that the matchup was in his favor. Khare and Richardson would argue for their archetypes’ supremacy in the best way possible—at the PC Top 8 table!
Players chatted amicably as they waited for the match to begin. They discussed cars, PC dinners, and of course, each others’ pace of play!
Khare: “The pace I play at may best be described as glacial. I am under the illusion that if I spend more time making decisions, I am then less likely to make mistakes.”
Richardson: “If we are not done in two and a half hours, we might as well go and kill ourselves.”
Game 1
Khare kept a character-light hand, but Richardson had to throw away a hand where the only character was his 6-drop! Khare won the die roll to take odd initiative, played his resource, and passed.
“Did you just miss a 1-drop?!” Richardson could not believe his luck.
“Yup,” Khare seemed unfazed.
Richardson recruited Ape X with Thunder Jet and used a Flying Kick to come in for 6 points of endurance loss. Joystick was his second turn play. Khare recruited a Yellowjacket into the concealed area with boost, searched out a Beetle, and recruited Nathan Garrett ◊ Black Knight. Richardson used a second Flying Kick and attacked through his opponent’s 1-drop, bringing Khare to 35 endurance on turn 2!
Khare took a particularly long time to figure out his next turn.
“I need to plan out the rest of the game on this turn,” he said only half-jokingly.
“I just go with the flow,” responded Richardson, eyeing his significantly better board position.
Having finally made a decision, Khare recruited Beetle and discarded a 1-drop to search for Archangel, then recruited that character and put X-Corp: Amsterdam into his hand. Richardson recruited Lady Lark, Skylark and exhausted Ape X to give his 3-drop Framistat. He activated it at the beginning of combat to give Lady Lark reinforcement and +1 DEF for the turn.
Armed with No Fear, Archangel took down Lady Lark. Khare’s other two visible characters team attacked Joystick, with Beetle getting stunned, and then finally Yellowjacket went after Ape X. Content to trade characters up until now, Richardson made his move here, powering up Ape X. Khare had no way to increase Yellowjacket’s ATK and had to lose an extra character. Richardson followed it up with Answer the Call, retrieving a Golden Archer from his deck. Endurance total stood at 31 to 45 in Richardson’s favor.
Golden Archer was the Squadron player’s obvious recruit on turn 4, while Khare agonized over trying to make the best of his sub-par draw. He recruited another Yellowjacket with boost, searching out Shocker, then recruited it and used its ability to stun Joystick.
At the beginning of combat, Richardson activated Framistat to make his Lady Lark a 10 ATK / 4 DEF, then attacked Archangel with it, trying to force as much damage as possible through—Archangel was in front of the exhausted Shocker and thus could not be reinforced by another character. Khare played Turnabout to give Archangel +3 ATK / +3 DEF, both reducing the amount of breakthrough he would be taking. After Richardson powered-up Lady Lark with the last card in his hand (Lady Lark, Skylark), Khare maximized the use of his 1-drop by exhausting it for Time Breach, fishing out another copy of Archangel and powering-up his character. While he took a fair amount of endurance loss, he was able to stun back the attacker, which could end up being crucial for his chances to make a comeback in this game.
Richardson passed, not attacking with his Golden Archer. When Khare passed as well, Richardson exhausted the Archer to use its ability, bringing endurance totals to 18 to 41 in his favor.
On turn 5, Khare teamed-up Thunderbolts and X-Men via Stormfront-1, recruited Speed Demon, brought an Ape X out with Hard Sound Construct, and finally equipped Blackbird Blue to Ape X. With seven characters in play, his board literally transformed from terrible to scary in the space of one turn. Richardson once again managed to keep up with the official Squadron playbook by recruiting Albert Gaines ◊ Nuke.
Before attacking, Khare used his two X-Corp: Amsterdam cards to search out two Faces of Evil, now ready to deal some serious damage with his weenie horde. Yellowjacket single-handedly took down Lady Lark. Khare flipped the last face-down card in his resource row to reveal Turnabout targeting Speed Demon and the attached Albert Gaines ◊ Nuke, then paid an endurance point not to stun. Speed Demon attacked as a 12 ATK / 7 DEF! Speed Demon’s second attack was to take down Golden Archer, but not before Richardson could activate it, bringing endurance totals to 10 to 22. Richardson would have preferred to save Panacea Potion until the end of turn so he could keep two characters in play for the next attack, but he could not survive a direct attack and was forced to bring back Albert Gaines ◊ Nuke just to stave off some damage. Khare had to team attack Nuke, then still had exactly enough breakthrough to bring Richardson down to 0 that turn.
Richardson was somewhat shaken, as he clearly did not expect the Faces player to muster up quite so much damage in one turn. But he put his game face on, preparing for round 2.
Game 2
With the desired initiative on odd turns, Richardson was off to the races with Thunder Jet equipped Ape X. Once again, Khare managed to miss his turn 1 play, and he took 3 points of direct endurance loss.
Khare’s opening hand was far more workable than last game, though, and he had a few turn 2 options. He spent much time contemplating his second turn.
“It can’t be that hard—you’re just playing a 2-drop,” prompted Richardson. Khare responded with his stock “I am planning out the rest of the game” answer. In the end, he elected to go with Beetle, searching out Dallas Riordan.
Richardson used Enemy of My Enemy to find Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird and went off-curve, recruiting the 2-drop alongside Joystick. Khare’s play was to recruit Shocker and spend the last point to stun Joystick. Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird took down Beetle, and then Richardson offloaded some damage via Ape X, playing a Flying Kick and an Airskimmer from his hand to force through some extra damage. Although he was able to bring Khare down to 31, this was not a good turn for Richardson, whose entire board got stunned. He chose to recover the Songbird, while Khare kept his Shocker around.
Having taken another five minutes or so to “plan out the rest of the game,” Khare used a Hard Sound Construct to return Beetle into play, fishing out an Archangel. He then recruited Archangel and used it to search for X-Corp: Amsterdam, then boosted Yellowjacket to fetch another Beetle and recruited Dallas Riordan. He used an X-Corp to find Stormfront-1 and teamed-up X-Men with Thunderbolts, drawing a card. He flipped over Faces of Evil, exhausted Yellowjacket to play Time Breach searching out another Yellowjacket and a Joystick, and then recruited Joystick. When the dust settled, he had six characters on the board.
To say that Richardson’s recruit step was less impressive might be the understatement of the tournament. He played Framistat on Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird and passed the turn. Khare’s attacks did not take him nearly as long as his recruit step, and a minute later, the endurance totals stood at 29 to 30.
Richardson did hit his 5-drop, recruiting Albert Gains ◊ Nuke, but there would be no coming back. In fact, perhaps the only thing that would have given him a chance to remain in this game was to have played Hawkeye on turn 4. Khare used another Time Breach to fish out a couple of characters. He recruited Archangel and Yellowjacket, replacing the copies of the same cards he already had in play in order to get their search abilities. He proceeded to recruit Nathan Garrett ◊ Black Knight, and spent his remaining 2 resource points to activate Shocker, stunning Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird. By the end of the recruit, Albert Gains ◊ Nuke was proudly staring down six weenie characters.
Nuke attacked Shocker, and after Khare exhausted a character to reinforce, he played out Airskimmer as a last card in his hand. He then played Other-Earth from his resource row, dealing 17 points of endurance loss to Khare! Khare did not counterattack, choosing to keep all of his characters for a devastating turn 6 instead.
At the beginning of the next build step, Khare chained to Melissa Gold’s ability to use Hard Sound Construct, then flipped it face down. He recruited several characters both from his hand and his discard pile, ending up with a fearsome board of twelve characters!
The best Richardson could do was to recruit Genis-Veil ◊ Photon. He took a good long look at the very uneven board and packed up his cards.
“There is no reason to play this out. You got it.” He shook Khare’s hand.
Despite his “glacial” play, Anand Khare was the first player to advance into the semifinals.