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This is it—the final showdown. |
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Jason Hager and Antonino DeRosa have at least one thing in common. Neither one had a close quarterfinal match. While Antonino was busy out-dropping and squashing fellow Curve Sentinels player Alex Shvartsman, Jason was handily dispatching Ryan Jones. |
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Michael Barnes and his Xavier’s Dream deck officially tore up the Constructed format this weekend. After Day 1, he was on top of the standings with an 11-1 record, and once he survived the Draft day to make it into the Top 8 at seventh seed, it was time to let the smashings begin anew. |
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I confess that I’ve been a Vidi Wijaya fan since I met him in Southern California in December. Since his PC Top 8, he has also torn up a series of $10Ks, adding four more Vs. System money finishes to his growing resume. His opponent today is none other than Adam Bernstein, a twenty-year-old gamer from Dallas, Texas. |
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Alex Shvartsman and Antonino De Rosa are no strangers to the sheen of final day lights. Today, these two accomplished TCG veterans did battle for the chance to win a $40,000 first prize and vault their respective names into the Vs. System stratosphere. |
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“I’m happy that it’s Curve Sentinels. I’m not happy that it’s Hans Joachim Höh.” |
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Welcome to the quarterfinals of Pro Circuit New York. Despite a long evening making the most out of my trip back to the city that never sleeps, I was the first reporter to make it in this morning, which meant that I got first pick of which match I wanted to cover. |
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The dust has settled and the players have gone home. Seventy-five people won a nice sum of money today, but only eight moved on to take a shot at winning even more tomorrow. |
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Check out the Top 8 decklists here! |
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Check out profiles of the Top 8 players here! |
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Both players slipped right into their seats and began playing quickly. Huzzah for matches played at a quick pace, right? |
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It's the final round of the day, and we have a match that will decide who makes Top 8 and who does not. |
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“There’s a small chance, but there’s a chance.” |
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Both of these gentlemen had six losses coming into this match, putting them on the cusp of elimination. |
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At this point in the day here in New York, players are playing for Top 8 or cementing their positions in the Swiss such that tie breakers won’t be an issue. Each player needs only two more wins out of the three rounds left to be playing on Sunday. |
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I first met Matthew Tatar in Amsterdam at about one in the morning, playing a game called Fruit Bandits with various Englishmen. He had never played before, but he was quite good at it. He is also none too shabby at Vs. System. |
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Neil Reeves, also known as JTMoney, is a well-recognized professional TCG player. His draft pod included notable players like Gabe Walls, Eugene Harvey, Brian Eugenio, and John Fiorillo, so he’d have his work cut out for him. |
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Going into Round 18, both Vidianto Wijaya and Alex Shvartsman are undefeated in draft, a particularly impressive feat considering that they have been at the top tables with the best possible competition. |
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De Rosa won the coin flip and selected the odd initiatives. Both players opted to mulligan, and though neither player had a drop, Fiorillo did flip Gravesite on turn 1. |
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I’m lucky I made it here. When coverage coordinator Toby Wachter told me to “go cover Barnes,” I thought he meant I was supposed to interview Gary Wise. |
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Antonino De Rosa showed himself to be quite the draft specialist in PC SoCal, going undefeated to earn himself a Top 8 slot. Matt Oldaker is better-known for his Constructed performances, being one of the original designers of classic Control Doom and the new Evil Medical School build known as “New School.” |
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Vidianto “Vidi” Wijaya and Ryan Jones are both members of Team Realmworx. They’re also two of the best Vs. System players in the world. Ryan Jones won PC So Cal, and Vidianto Wijaya has an illustrious Top 8 history at multiple PC and $10K events. |
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Alex was confident going into the first Marvel Knights draft of the afternoon. Marvel Knights draft is his best format, and the Kings Games owner drafts more Marvel Knights than almost anyone. |
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The odds are good that if you’re reading this you’re in the same boat I’m in. There’s no shame to it—the reality is that Green Lantern Corps has only been on the streets for three or four weeks at this point and Sealed Pack play can be difficult to find. |
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Green Lantern Corps has not really been out especially long, and for those of us looking to improve our drafting there is no better way to do it than to scrutinize what the best players in the game are doing. |
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You can’t help but be a little jealous of Michael Barnes and Ryan Jones. Sitting at first and second in the Swiss, both were 12-2 heading into their fifteenth-round match, meaning that a mere 4-3 over the final seven rounds should be good enough to take them to Sunday’s Top 8. |
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Both of these players are playing to win their first pod, which would give them a great position going into the first of two Marvel Knights drafts. |
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Harvey won the roll, and after mulliganing, he opened with the initiative to drop G'Nort and ping Prosak for 1. |
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The top table at the first draft of Day 2 was a tough place to be. While technically it should have been replete with the best Constructed players in the world, it ended up featuring the top two players in Sealed Pack in the world, along with no real “weak links.” |
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Hans Joachim Hoeh, the German double $10K champ of Bologna and Hannover, is playing a Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies deck. Hoeh uses an odd drafting balance, running three characters per drop at spots on the curve where most would use four. He remarked earlier that he had “drafted good support,” but he felt he would miss his curve and lose. |
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As you've probably already read, Matt Tatar is a man on a hot streak. Tatar went 9-3 yesterday despite playing Common Enemy in a Sentinel world, and now he's sitting at a powerhouse pod two, where he'll be looking at showdowns with Antonino DeRosa and Alex Shvartsman, amongst others. |
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If you are looking to draft, then there are few better players to scrutinize than the number one ranked Sealed Pack player on the planet, PC LA winner Ryan Jones. |
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Drafting with Jason Hager on his right, Hans Höh was gunning for a solid curve and some nice tricks. |
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Whenever a new set comes out, information about how to approach a draft is hard to come by. Let’s kick-start things a little and ask some of the top players in the world who are looking to conquer the Green Lantern draft tables. |
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See which countries and states the Day 2 players at PC NY represent! |
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The greatest field of competitors ever to assemble in the history of Vs. has fought a long and hard day here in the Big Apple. |
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Check out the decklists from the Top 10 players of Day 1! |
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This is the “bubble” match. On the last round of the day, one of these two players will be advancing to Day 2, to draft for nine rounds, while the other will miss out at the final cut. |
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Team TOGIT has had an interesting day. A few, like Antonino De Rosa, were in. Some, like Craig Krempels and Adam Horvath, were out. Two players were in a final round elimination match. |
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This is it. Do or die. The winner of this match goes on to play in Day 2. The loser doesn’t have to go home, but he can’t stay here. |
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Michael Barnes was running one of the most notable decks of PC New York, a tricked-out Xavier's Dream that tended to win like clockwork on turn 6. Jason Oliveri, on the other hand, was running Curve Sentinels, and he'd played it aggressively enough to have a commanding Day 1 record. |
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There is one official Guinness World Record holder at Pro Circuit New York. There are also various Guinness holders within the Metagame.com team, but apparently being able to hold your Irish stout is less of a feat than dancing on Dance Dance Revolution for thirteen hours straight. |
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It’s Sentinels versus EMS, and we’re giving a Vs. Feature Match baptism to VSRealms Administrator Shane Wendel, in his first feature match ever! |
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Both players here are happily on eight wins with radically different decks. Jason is playing Curve Sentinels, while Oldaker has the new take on Evil Medical School that has been the talk of the tournament. It’s placing a greater proportion of its players in Day 2 than any other deck thus far. |
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Gabe Walls and Ryan Jones are two of the Vs. System’s most respected pro-level players. Both were 8-2 for the day and were thus already Q’d for Day 2—this match was for personal pride. |
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In a day and age when innovation in Curve Sentinels means being the first person in line at the booth to pick up two or three copies of Mojoverse, PC mainstay John Rich is breaking the mold—the Master Mold! |
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Tim and I once again made use of our Wonder Twin-esque powers to unite forces and plow through 309 decklists, identifying and categorizing every one for your stat-loving pleasure. The results? Nothing short of shocking. |
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Okay, I have a confession to make. Doing Metagame coverage is not as easy as it looks. |
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Tim Willoughby calls him the best Sentinels player in the world, and he’s certainly had a heckuva a lot of success playing them. Hans Höh looks like a cross between an 80s German guitarist and that guy you see in the back of the cool cafés reading Bukowski. |
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It had to happen eventually. The TOGIT player who is expected to rock New York facing off against arguably the best Sentinels player in the world. |
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Jason Hager’s “New School” redux of his masterpiece, Evil Medical School, isn’t the only cool deck making waves at PC New York. |
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Two of the big personalities of trading card games faced off this round, each on four wins so far. |
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Gary Wise and Zvi Mowshowitz are two big names in the world of trading card games— big names who are still learning to play Vs. System. |
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Several insiders highly familiar with the game believed that PC New York would see the metagame go full-circle from Evil Medical School and Fantastic Fun back to Teen Titans. What nobody saw coming was an even deeper level of regression. |
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Gabe Walls is a world-renowned professional TCG player and the $10K Columbus champion. He is running an innovative Teen Titans deck teched out for the current metagame—sort of an “old-becomes-new” deal. |
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Both players come to the table at a 3-2 record and need a win here to stay above mediocrity. Eugene is playing a Gamma Doom deck and Flores is playing Curve Sentinels. |
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You’re still playing EMS? That’s so Old School! Jason Hager and the boys from West Virginia brought out New School—the newest and zaniest deck his twisted mind has come up with yet. |
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Anthony showed himself to be the high roller in the matchup, winning the option on initiative and electing to take the odd initiative. |
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Dave Humphreys swung by at the beginning of the match to inform the competitors of their two-minute time extension. “Aw, I won’t be able to stall out my TNB opponent.” Dawson grinned, shaking his fist in the air. “Damn you!” |
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Matthew Tatar used to be an unknown factor. He wasn’t on a big team, he didn’t make Top 8 in the opening PC, and he wasn’t a top-ranked TCG player from another game. |
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With unimpressive 1-2 records, these players seemed surprised to be invited into the feature match area. |
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Nick Little has done well at all three of the past PC events. He's piloting a well-teched Common Enemy build. His opponent is Toronto's Jeff Gerstl, who is running the mono-GK deck that the city loves so much. |
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Both of these players have had somewhat inauspicious starts. Sitting at 1-2 records, both of them had to mulligan. |
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Kim Caton knows this game and knows how to play it very well. She was playing Curve Sentinels, and Kim playing Curve equals colossal! |
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Tim Batow won $10K Las Vegas and has two other $10K Top 8 finishes to his name. His acrobatic celebration is now legendary, as is his penchant for doing well with decks that aren't necessarily well known. |
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Fabiano is a member of the prestigious Team TOGIT. He’s a relatively inexperienced player, but when you’re at the pro level and a member of one of the most feared teams in the game, “inexperienced” is a very relative term. |
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Meaghan brought the Common Enemy/Cosmic Radiation/Team Tactics deck that has brought her and her husband quite a bit of success over the last year. I know as well as any what it's like to be on the other side of the table against her, as I think she's gotten that combo off against me every time we've played each other. |
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After Round 1 victories, these two competitors squared off in search of a 2-0 start to PC NY. |
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Ryan Jones won Pro Circuit So Cal and is now looking to reclaim his title and earn a whole bunch of money in the process. |
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Check out the breakdown of where the PC NY competitors hail from! |
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Dave looked gorgeous in the craziest grey mullet wig you've ever seen, along with a red shirt that said ‘Wearing a mullet in Alabama—Keeping it Real!” |
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“I guarantee this whole match will be decided by a roll,” mentioned Little matter-of-factly. He and Leander both shuffled up and then rolled off. “Roll to see who wins?” |
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A card-for-card mirror against one of your teammates is not exactly ideal, but each player still seemed in pretty good humor at the start of the day. |
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For 309 of the greatest Vs. players in the world, this is the day. |
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For the rest of the weekend, it is my mission to find plausible storylines for all the major decks in the format. |
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Check out the Top 4 decklists from each of the Last Chance Qualifiers! |
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Rob Leander is back! Your heard me correctly. |
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As a feature match writer, these are not the words you want to hear while you are looking for something funny to write about in a Control mirror match. |
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Imshan Poolar is one of Toronto’s most recognized players, and someone who I personally have had the pleasure of repeatedly playing against. |
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There are players on the Pro Circuit that qualified using Pro Circuit Credits accumulated at other Pro Circuits. There are those that won Pro Circuit Qualifiers. For some, though, this sort of qualification is just too easy. |
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Here are the decklists that made the Top 4 in the fourth Last Chance Qualifier of the day! |
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Check out the Top 4 decklists from the Sealed Pack Last Chance Qualifier! |
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Those at the Evil Medical School raised a pinky to their smirks at the insurgence of purple robots, ignoring the “lasers” of their opposition and creating dominant board position with the scheming of Dr Doom. |
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One of these two would qualify for the PC on Friday, and the other would be forced to watch from the bleachers. |
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If you’re a mutant, I have a warning for you. Stay out of the Javits Center. There was a Last Chance Qualifier there earlier today and the results made it clear that you aren’t welcome. |
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The main event begins tomorrow, but today, hundreds of players showed up to duke it out for the last few chances to qualify. |
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