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This is it. The big show. Dean Sohnle has made around 90% of the money that anyone has ever made playing Fantastic Fun (his own creation) and is looking to add an extra $40,000 to that total. His opponent, Karl Horn, has been a silent but deadly competitor all tournament, taking the best players by storm in his second Pro Circuit. |
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The showdown. This matchup has been talked about for quite some time, with the champion of PC: Amsterdam, Adam Horvath, squaring off against PC: Indy champion David Leader in a battle of the two Modern Age champions for a cool five grand, original artwork, and bragging rights. |
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After a dramatic conclusion to Karl Horn’s quarterfinal match, we are now prepared to determine who will have a chance to play for $40,000. |
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So many things have been said about the members of the Top 8 that it’s almost unfair to say anything more. But I’ve never been one for the rules. Retired foot model Matt Tatar, famous for his Sprewell modeling campaign, is facing off against that modern day samurai Dean Sohnle. |
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During the quarterfinal match between Hans Joachim Hoh and Karl Horn, Hoh received a penalty of disqualification from the tournament without prizes for unsporting conduct—cheating. |
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Dean is here on the PC Top 8 stage for the first time. While he has never made the Top 8 at a PC, he does have two $10K Championship titles to his name. Neil returns to the Top 8 pit—after making Top 8 at PC Indianapolis—with the same deck archetype as he played in Indy. |
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No match in the Top 8 captures the "old meets new" feel of this Pro Circuit better than this one. |
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This exciting quarterfinal match features two prominent figures of the Vs. System landscape. |
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Check out Top 8 decklists, complete with commentary from Tim Willoughby! |
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Click here for profiles of the Top 8 players from Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2005! |
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Both Alex Brown and Neil Reeves have been near the top of the standings for the entire tournament. With both of them having solid Constructed and Sealed Pack records, the Top 8 has been well within their reach the whole time. Now, one final match stands between them and a Top 8 berth. |
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These two fine gentlemen don’t need any introduction. They are both very successful gamers. Neither of them has ever worked a day in his life—that’s how good they are at games. |
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In the penultimate round of the tournament, there are so many of my friends playing for Top 8 that somebody inevitably won’t make it. Both Josh Wiitanen and Vidi Wijaya needed two wins to get through, and both seemed confident in the quality of their decks. |
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The table 1 draft pod of the last draft of a PC is always a good one, but this one is especially high profile. Dave Spears, the Southern Dandy himself, is one, perhaps two victories away from back to back PC Top 8s. |
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Dean Sohnle is the truest example of a warrior without a master in Vs. System today. While he tends to test with various English and Canadian players from time to time, he is basically a free agent who roams from country to country, playing in Vs. tournaments to make his money. |
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Doug is a rock star from Tennessee and a $10K champion. He loves this game more than anyone else I ever met. He quit all other TCGs to pursue fame, fortune, and women in the Vs. world. |
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Let me hit you with some knowledge. The Scholarship Circuit is a way for young players to take their Vs. System skills and use them to pay the proverbial bills—the college bills, that is. |
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I wanted to get the players’ opinions about who has had the best performance overall. Just who is the best Vs. System player in the world? |
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Craig has an 11-4 record coming into this match, while Hans is at 12-3. Both players are 2-0 in the draft pod and have ridiculous decks. Craig’s Top 8 potential is on the line in this match, as five losses at this stage will most likely put him out of contention. |
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This round promised to be a fun one as both players shuffled up to begin. Doug “Tico” Tice is coming into this game with a hot 2-0 deck featuring four copies of Faces of Evil. |
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Mike won the die roll and elected to take the odd initiatives, busting out Dr. Decibel on turn 1 for some uncontested beats. |
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“This feature match has a lot of hair.”—Adam Prosak |
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Sam Kwang hails from New Zealand. Before the match started, all the Australians were cheering him on. He claimed that the only reason he was getting cheered on is because he was winning and there was no way Australians would cheer for a losing New Zealander. |
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Jumping in mid-game, I now bring you the exciting match between Tim Batow and Andre Muller. |
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For the second pod of Avengers draft for the day, I had the pleasure to be watching Andre Muller drafting Avengers two seats down from his teammate, the lion-maned scourge of the $10K tournament, Mr. Hans Joachim Hoh. |
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Neil Reeves made the Top 8 at PC #1. Since that historic Indianapolis event, he has been one of the more iconic Vs. players. He is considered to be the coolest and toughest Vs. player to walk around the convention center. |
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Ah, Josh Wiitanen. He’s one of the most outrageous characters on the Pro Circuit. From his amazing burgling of a dollar in the feature match area to his all-around overbearing personality, Josh is a pleasure to watch and a danger to the unwary. |
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Both players here are quite accustomed to the Underground Sentinel Base feature match area. Both were here in the Top 8 of the last Pro Circuit, and both have plenty of potential to make the Top 8 again this weekend if they can string together some strong drafts today. |
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As the players approached the table and saw me sitting there, Milton looked a little depressed. “Oh no. I hate feature matches. Now I can’t win.” |
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These two good ol' boys from the South were squaring off in a round 12 feature match. Dave Spears is sitting at 9-2 and looking good for Day 3, while Doug has three loses and needs a little more luck and skill to make a run at the Sunday stage. |
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Neil Reeves and Dean Sohnle both won the first rounds of their pod to advance to a 9-2 record. You know, after a while, it becomes difficult to say something new and fresh about Neil Reeves. |
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“I actually have two fifteen-card decks here, but each of them is insane!” |
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Tim Batow has won a $10K and is respected in the Vs. community, but he’s known for his Constructed mastery rather than his Sealed Pack skills. |
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Eugene Harvey started out the Draft portion with a 7-3 record, so another PC Top 8 is still well within his reach. I had an opportunity to talk to Eugene about his draft strategy beforehand, and he told me that he was hoping to force a Squadron empty-hand deck. |
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Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the members of Team VsParadise. These Aussies have been tearing up the $10K circuit this past year and have put up some of the best numbers that any team can lay claim to. |
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It is not yet nine in the morning, and as I write this, the players are seated and prepared to crack their first Avengers packs. I can tell you from experience that there is no more exciting moment in a pro event than right before you open that first pack for Draft. |
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Ladies and gentlemen, a new record has been set here at Pro Circuit Los Angeles. We now have our very first competitor in Pro Circuit history to go undefeated on Day 1. |
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Apparently, attacking for an extended art extra 5 is not as good as one might think. |
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PC LA is being heralded as the most open Golden Age format Vs. has seen so far. In a format as diverse as this one, there are bound to be some pretty wacky decks. One such deck that caught my eye was that of Billy Zonos, of Team Realmworx fame. |
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It turns out that if you’re looking for a name for your daughter, calling her Valeria will equip her with remarkable powers. Sure, her name will sound a bit like some sort of medical condition, but that will be made up for by her ability to do incredible things in beatdown metagames. |
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This round features two of the biggest names in Constructed Vs. System, Anthony Justice and Michael Jacob. Michael started the day at 1-3 and was on the verge of dropping before going on a 5-0 tear to end up at 6-3, which is where he sits now. |
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Continuing my series highlighting major teams present at the Pro Circuit, I had a chance to talk to a member of arguably the most successful team in the game—Team FTN. |
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Dean Sohnle is a two-time $10K champion and the original creator of Fantastic Fun. It's no surprise that he is 7-1 with his beloved deck. |
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Aaron Weil was the only 8–0 player thus far today. Coming out of nowhere to startle a large number of veteran players, his reign of dominance rivals Adam Bernstein’s win at PC NY for sheer surprise factor. He’s this event’s “guy you’ve never heard of who can totally kick your butt.” |
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There was a bit of confusion before the round as one player was left off of the pairings, and there was a re-pair. I was set to cover Hans’s original match, but the new match would see Hans featured as well—this time against Matt Boccio. |
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The metagame as a whole has featured a great variety of decks spearheaded by strong showings numbers-wise from Squadron Supreme, Sentinels, and Avengers Beatdown decks. Going into Round 9, I put my investigative reporter hat on and hit the tables to see which decks were the big winners and losers near the end of the Constructed portion of the PC. |
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Patrick Yapjoco is one of Team Realmworx’s headline players and was using an innovative endurance-gain stall deck that had been making waves all day. Adam Bernstein is the champion of PC New York, and, for this tournament, was piloting the popular Common Enemy deck. |
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Team VsParadise has descended on PC LA with a vengeance. You may not know the team by name, but its players are impossible to forget. They’ve put up some of the most consistent numbers on the Pro Circuit. |
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Neil Reeves, or J.T. Money, as he’s known in gaming circles, is 5-1 entering this round. He’s playing Common Enemy, a throwback to his Top 4 deck at the very first PC. His opponent this round is Alex Jebailey, a Vs. player from Orlando, Florida with a couple of solid finishes under his belt. Alex is running one of the super-fast Squadron Supreme decks. |
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These two fine gentlemen need no introduction—they are both superstars of the VS World. |
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“Just do it fast if you’re gonna do it,” said Zonos as he took his seat. It was his stall deck versus Lao’s Fantastic Fun, so Zonos wasn’t liking his chances. |
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Jason Hager first came to the attention of the world as the designer of Evil Medical School when he made a $10K Top 8 with it, and he graduated to the real big time when he finished second at PC New York with the updated version called New School. |
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Ko Okada was one of the Japanese players who made the trip all the way to the United States to compete this weekend. Hailing from Chiba, Japan, he was running Squadron Supreme, which at this point seemed to be the deck of the day. |
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This round 6 feature match pits Darwin Kastle of YMG, a New England team that’s been dominating TCGs since the dawn of cardboard, against Steve Horowitz. After a little deliberation about who would get the honor of using the scorekeeper, the players shuffled up for their match. |
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Masami Ibamoto is a professional trading card gamer from Japan who is sitting at 3-1 with his Squadron Supreme deck. David Frayer is a California player with two $10K Top 8s who is credited as one of the original designers of the Squadron Supreme deck that team Realmworx played at $10K Orlando. |
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Eugene Harvey and Josh Wittanen are two of America’s most recognizable Vs. System players. Josh hails from Las Vegas, Nevada, and is best known for his multiple $10K Top 8s and his close association with Titans master Adam Prosak. |
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Chaurette was one of the many players running a deck based around A Child Named Valeria. He depended on a Dagger, Child of Light engine to make his deck work: four copies of Dagger; four Midnight Sons; and four Wild Ride. |
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Golden Age has been a rather tumultuous format as of late. For as long as I can remember, Curve Sentinels has ruled with an iron fist over the legions of second-rate decks. But, as Bob Dylan once said, “The times, they are a-changin.’” |
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It was champion versus champion as Realmworx’s Ryan Jones went up against FTN’s David Leader. While Leader’s win at Pro Circuit Indianapolis is fresh in everyone’s minds, Jones claimed his victory almost a year ago, right here in Anaheim at Gen Con So Cal 2004. |
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I know everyone out there has been waiting for PC Los Angeles. It’s so exciting to see which professional teams broke the format. |
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“What are you playing?”
“I'll show you if you show me.” |
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November 18, 2005. Today is the beginning of the end for complacent Vs. players. The Japanese have arrived. Three players from Japan have come to California for a chance to show the Americans what real gaming is. |
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“I missed my connecting flight yesterday, lost my wallet, and had to be more-or-less strip-searched in the airport. I only got to the tournament site five minutes before the players’ meeting. I have to carry all of my luggage with me.” |
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Batow won the die roll and opted to take control of the odd initiatives. He recruited Micro-Chip on turn 1 and poked directly with it. |
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Alexander Sacal is a legend. Before the matchup even began, he was the moral victor, erasing Adam Prosak’s blunder of picking the wobbly table by fixing it with a wink to Pro Circuit photographer Craig Gibson. |
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Daniella Grijalva distinguished herself as a player to be reckoned with by making the Top 8 at $10K Chicago. |
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There are some rivalries that span across time and define the world as we know it. When an unlikely alliance forms between two classic enemies, we cannot help but sit up and take notice. |
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Scott Hunstad is the leader of the Australians, known for his Metagame articles and for his Top 8 finish at PC Amsterdam. T.J. likes to be known as the captain of the Deck Tech team. |
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Today is Matt’s birthday, although I couldn’t find out how old he is, because that’s not the type of information models disclose. |
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Starting the day off with a match between two of my all-time favorite players is always a blast. |
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“Man! Eugene got to look at my deck before the first round,” Nick started complaining. Ever the gentleman, Eugene offered, “I know what you’re playing, so I guess I’ll tell you that I’m playing Doom.” |
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Check out the breakdown of the different countries represented at Pro
Circuit Los Angeles 2005. |
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The Pro Circuit has yet to begin, but already there has been a revelation that created ripples of excitement across the room. |
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We are now proud to announce Silver Age, an exciting new format that will launch with the release of the tenth Vs. expansion, Infinite Crisis. |
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