At the start of the round, I had the delight of watching Gabe Walls in a feature match against a childproof vitamin bottle. In the end, he had to hand it to Jeroen Remie in the bleachers for a little help. But since he was all vitamin-ed up when the match began against Tennet, he was pretty happy.
Tennet, being the only English player at the Pro Circuit, should clearly have been the one I was rooting for. With his stellar record in Vs. thus far, I could probably have gotten fair odds on him doing well this weekend. But there’s just something about Walls, that cheeky bundle of fun, that made it so I went into the match looking more for a good fight than for any particular player to win.
Gabe had a turn 1 Thermite, and he was irked about having to discard a card. But he consoled himself in the fact that he was the only player recruiting that turn. With the initiative on turn 2, he recruited Melissa Gold ◊ Screaming Mimi to Tennet’s Macrobots, and then he got his beat on.
Tennet recruited Speed Demon, Second Chance Speedster on turn 3, a character who both players agreed looked pretty silly. Walls chose to go off-curve in the face of the racer with Blizzard and Doctor Decibel. With Walls controlling so many more characters, Tennet’s ability to do any real damage was dramatically reduced. After a flurry of attacks, the best he could do was take Gabe down to 42 endurance (compared to Tennet’s 45) and get rid of a single character. Meanwhile, Alex lost Speed Demon to a Stolen Power activation.
Each player teamed-up, and with the initiative on turn 4, Gabe recruited Heinrich Zemo ◊ Baron Zemo. He put the leader character in the front and center of his formation. Tennet then recruited Mr. Hyde, Engine of Destruction with a V-Wing (after a second team-up). Gabe studied the various cards, wary of losing to any on-board tricks, and he thought a little before attacking. He had a devastating turn, stunning both of Alex’s guys and KO’ing one with Hero’s Demise. The other one fell to Stolen Power.
On turn 5, Alex tried to recover with Amenhotep, who was definitely bigger than Gabe’s Paul Ebersol ◊ Techno, Gadgeteer and Beetle, Armorsmith, but he couldn’t really force through any great endurance loss. The endurance totals were 33 to 29 in Walls’s favor, and he looked in command of the game.
On turn 6, Gabe had no recruits, but he did have Crime Spree to make Melissa Gold a little bit bigger. Alex boosted out Falcon and recruited Bulldozer. Beetle stunned the Dozer, and then Melissa sent Amenhotep packing to the hidden area. Finally, Baron Zemo stunned the remaining character on Alex’s visible board, and Tennet was brought down to 2 endurance.
Fighting for his life, Tennet recruited Helmut Zemo ◊ Baron Zemo and passed with all of his fighters up front. Walls responded with The Wrecker as a reservist, and he didn’t use the replacement part of the ability.
As Tennet carefully planned out an important attack step, Walls got himself a little stretch of the legs. After having burned Alex down to -3 endurance with Melissa Gold, he wasn’t too worried about having to make tough decisions of his own. Walls stood up and contentedly observed Alex as if he were ready to zoom off and get high fives for his win at any moment. Alex had to make a 32 endurance loss happen just to make it to a tie, so he had his work cut out for him.
After a long time in the tank, Bulldozer was given flight using Windstorm, and then Alex attacked through Blizzard with him. That left 26 points to go. Alex again went to the tank, as he had a whole bunch of combat tricks, but things still looked very rough for him. When he had reached the point where he was confident that it wasn’t going to happen, he extended his hand.
Gabe Walls wins!