David won the choice and elected to take the odd initiatives. Based on past experience, this seemed a little controversial, and Fielder declared that if he died on turn 6, he was probably wrong.

Fielder’s Electric Eve danced with Catseye on turn 1 and, with the extra plink in the recovery phase, took Tillman down to 47.

Roulette was Tillman’s play for turn 2, compared with Friedrich Von Roehm on the off initiative for David. He took a bit of a beating from Roulette, both when she hit and when she smashed her opposing 2-drop without a stun back. Electric Eve evaded, and Tillman beat in for a little extra.

For turn 3, each player had Healer, Life Giver, and each player formed up. At the start of combat, Roulette missed, revealing a Drain Essence—a very useful card for Fielder to know about.

Friedrich beat up Catseye, who was duly reinforced, and that was all of Fielder’s attacks as Healer stood around looking big. Tillman tried to attack back into Friedrich but fell foul to a Pack Tactics, which forced the evade from Bragg.

David had some evading to do, too, but just with Electric Eve to get in some extra burn.

For turn 4, Tillman had Roberto Da Costa, and formed up with everyone in attack mode. David then played Empath and formed up in a square.

At the start of combat, Roulette revealed Sewer System, and Tillman bemoaned all the tricks he was revealing. But the 2-drop did redeem herself by successfully taking down her opposite number on the other side of the board. Healer and Catseye then went for Fielder’s Healer. Roberto Da Costa gave a power-up for Tillman, while David used Massachusetts Academy to save his character, at the cost of his 2-drop. Catseye made Roberto Da Costa bigger, and the 4-drop swung into Empath. They traded, but it was bad times for Tillman, as Raising Hell allowed Electric Eve to trade for the 4-drop.

With the initiative, David tried to capitalize on his suddenly favorable board position with Firestar. Tillman answered with Wolverine, The Best at What He Does. David flipped District X so that he could name Physical in combat, and Tillman again revealed a plot twist with his Roulette.

Empath beat up Wolverine, and Healer went into Roulette. The little gambler exhausted to Drain Essence, to which David responded with another Massachusetts Academy activation. Firestar then went in, first to make Healer evade, and then to go to the face.

The endurance totals were 17 to 33 in Fielder’s favor. It was now time for Tillman to try to kill on turn 6 to prove the Canadian wrong about his choice of initiative.

With only Marrow for his turn 6 recruit, it was uncertain that this would be possible for the Timvitational winner. Fielder had Blow Hard to retort.

At the start of combat, Roulette again was not kind, revealing an Image Inducer that would have been a lot more useful in play for the turn than on the top of Tillman’s deck.

Wolverine swung at Blow Hard with some help from Turnabout. While this was fair play, David had an answer in the form of Immovable, discarding three Physical characters in order to keep the attack from working for Bragg.

This was enough to ruin Tillman’s chances for the turn, and he revealed a collection of characters in his resource row and extended his hand.

David Fielder wins!