1st Vidianto Wijaya
To Vs. players, Vidi Wijaya needs no introduction. In fact, he’s probably clinched the title of best player in the world with his performance at this Pro Circuit. The Pro Champion “curse” was blown totally out of the water, with Vidi coming out of the Swiss rounds in first place. Vidi also made the top of the Swiss at the last Pro Circuit—he really has been unstoppable in the past few months. Vidi played the Team FTN Squadron Toolbox deck, and only dropped one game on Day 1.
He refused to say what his chances were for his record fourth PC Top 8. His matchup is against Jason Hager, who is playing the “Killing Joke” Arkham discard deck. Most of his victories came from a continual abuse of Enemy of My Enemy, getting single bullets such as Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon. Vidi is quietly calm and confident for someone on the top of his game, and he is surprisingly modest about his abilities. He can’t keep that up for long at this rate!
2nd Gabe Walls
The professional gamer from Indianapolis, Indiana was so confident of his abilities that at the beginning of the event, he claimed that he would make the Top 4 of the tournament. Gabe is as friendly as he is cocky, and this has translated to a love of Vs. that is based on hanging around his friends, better known as the Donkey Club. Gabe hit Vs. stardom at the first Pro Circuit with a Sunday appearance, and he followed that up with a $10K Championship win in Chicago.
Gabe, ever the consummate gamer, is also known for making the final hundred at the World Series of Poker last year. But poker hasn’t stopped him from staying with his gaming roots—he still games regularly, and plans to keep playing for as long as it is fun.
Gabe decided on the “Killing Joke” Arkham deck, which the entire Donkey Club team is playing. Four of the Donkey Club members made the final day, which probably skews the results on how good the deck actually is, since all the teams members are extremely accomplished and probably would have done well with whatever they chose to play. Playing against his Donkey Club teammate Doug Tice in the quarterfinals, he’s supremely confident that he’ll make good on his pre-tournament prediction. In fact, he put his chances at about 60% to win the event—and with the field he’s up against, that’s quite an estimate, even for Gabe!
3rd Tim Batow
Tim Batow of Team Alternate Win Condition works by day at Wizard’s Asylum Comics and Games and spends a fair proportion of his spare time being name-checked in articles by teammate Michael Barnes. Diminutive in size but possessing an oversized talent for the game, Batow won a $10K with League of Assassins well before they were cool and wowed the crowd with some acrobatic celebrations. Hopefully, if he does well, we might see a few more on Sunday at this Pro Circuit.
Known for creative deckbuilding, Batow and his team have posted very successful finishes with decks sporting such oddball inclusions as Rigged Elections and Xavier’s Dream. For this Pro Circuit, he sported the alternate loss condition of Ahmed Samsarra and has been using him to deadly effect, fetching appropriate tech locations for every situation while keeping him alive with a team-up with Villains United in order to use The Science Spire. In the quarterfinal round, he is paired up against Ian Vincent, who took a slightly different approach to abusing the White King, for what promises to be one of the most interesting matchups on Sunday.
4th Michael Jacob
Michael Jacob, the calm, behatted member of Donkey Club from Michigan, is no slouch when it comes to Vs. With three $10K wins, spanning both Sealed Pack and Constructed, and experience in the Pro Circuit Top 8 arena also, there is a strong argument for MJ being one of the best technical players around.
A regular player at RIW Hobbies, Michigan, Jacob’s name is just one of those that stand out amongst the incredible roster on The Donkey Club. Going into the final draft of the day, he needed two wins to make the Top 8, and drafted what might arguably be “the most wretched deck featuring Blackbird Blue, ever.” In spite of predicting an 0-3 for himself, he somehow grinded out the wins he needed and snuck into what might be one of the most technically proficient Top 8 of all time.
5th Kimberly Caton
A member of powerhouse team FTN, Kim is a regular on the Pro Circuit with a $10K Top 8 already under her belt. Now she has a shot at joining the club of FTN Pro Circuit winners that already includes David Leader, Ryan Jones, and Vidianto Wijaya.
The Philadelphia native works by day as a mental health administrator but is a regular tester with FTN, and at tournaments she can be seen acting as “team scribe,” keeping track of everyone’s results. With the “Mexican Toolbox” burn deck, she will now have to let some other member of the team take over in terms of noting down results and cheering on from the feature match railings, as she will be busy taking on some of the best in the game for a run at the big trophy.
6th Ian Vincent
Ian “DT” Vincent was the only English player in the field at the start of the Pro Circuit, and after two days, he’s still going, having put up solid finishes in both the Constructed and Draft portions of the event in order to finish in sixth place after the Swiss. Ian first showed up at the Pro Circuit at its inception, finishing ninteenth with Teen Titans while they were still the “next big thing.” He has had numerous successes in various TCGs, having scored a trophy for every game that he has taken seriously—and that is quite a few games.
A civil servant by day and a game designer by night (his first game, Fruit Bandits, was published last year), Ian is one of a team of English and Canadian players including Dean Sohnle and team scrub Tim Willoughby. A rigorous deckbuilder, DT (who, believe it or not, played American Football in college . . . the DT not standing for Defensive Tackle), worked with a crew in London to put together the innovative League of Assassins/Checkmate deck that he will be battling with in the Top 8. He cites Ahmed Samsarra as the most ridiculous thing in the format, with the possible exception of Dr. Light, Master of Holograms . . . as long as the two are not in the same deck!
7th Doug ‘Tico’ Tice
Tico acquired his nickname from Donkey Club teammate Neil Reeves, who misread his opponent’s name when they were paired up and, upon sitting down opposite Doug, declared, “You aren’t Mexican!” Doug most certainly is not.
What he is, is a computer programmer who is something of a machine when it comes to succeeding at Vs System. He has won two Sealed Pack $10Ks and a Constructed $10K, and been beaten in the finals of another by Jason Hager. On top of this, in Atlanta, he was part of the team that won the Willoughby Team Classic. One way or another, Doug loves his trophies.
From Nashville, Tennessee, 29 year-old Tice is one of the four Donkey Club players to have made the elimination rounds with the Justice League of Arkham deck that Tice insists is called “Ivy League.” He will have to play teammate Gabe Walls in the first round of the Top 8—the price of having a big team with an incredible deck. When asked what the most ridiculous thing in the format is, his response was simple: Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon, referring to the “leak” that his team was playing Justice League of Arkham at the Pro Circuit that suddenly caused the 3-drop’s stock to rise significantly. There is little doubt that if nobody had seen the discard deck coming, they could not possibly have fought it, but for the sake of a more interesting Top 8, it’s probably not so bad.
8th Jason Hager
Jason Hager is part of the West Virginia Donkey Club contingent that is notable for prodigious deck design. Looking at the product that they (with input from the rest of the Club) brought to this Pro Circuit, it’s easy to see how this opinion came into being. Jason himself had a second place finish against Adam Bernstein at Pro Circuit: New York with New School, a radical update of Evil Medical School. Since then, he’s garnered a couple of $10K Top 8s, and finally a $10K win with the infamous “Light Show” deck while it was available to be played.
There exists a strange disparity between Jason’s smiley, happy personality and the decks that he chooses to play. While he himself is all smiles and good times, his decks tend to be some of the most frustratingly powerful and head-scratchingly complicated in the format. If Jason thinks something is abusively powerful, he will be playing it, and in the case of the discard deck he has this weekend, he has done it again.