Pro Circuit: Amsterdam is officially underway, and the first round finds Antonino De Rosa matched up with Adam Fears.

“Antonino, why are you here? Didn’t you quit TCGs?”
“He quit like, two years ago . . .”
“Well, I didn’t quit as such. I mean, I quit. But yeah, I’m a gamer, man! Next year though, you won’t see me ever again!”

That’s Antonino in a nutshell. A pure gamer who can’t stay away from high-profile events no matter how hard he tries. He’s mainly there to have fun, but don’t let his smile and his goofiness fool you—the man knows how to play cards. He’s just coming off a Top 4 at PC: LA, and his finishes include a $10K Top 8 as well. He’s playing a Sinister Syndicate–Crime Lords hybrid that tries to soup up the straight Sinister Syndicate beatdown deck by making it a little less consistent.

Adam is a TCG pro who hasn’t really broken through in Vs. yet, but he has all the makings of the next superstar, and if he puts in the effort, he could well be next year’s Ryan Jones.

Adam won the die roll and chose the odd initiative.

Antonino obviously started this game as the aggressor, running Mendel Stromm and Stilt-Man out there and backing them up with Doc Ock’s Lab. Adam’s 2-drop Vivisector stopped the bleeding a little, but he was already down to 37 endurance on turn 2.

The beatdown deck kept curving out, with Owl against a no-drop turn for Adam’s control deck. Vivisector took one for the team to take out Mendel, and Antonino started muttering about Spin Doctoring and how his brain was too tiny to actually play this game—which, considering the size of his head, is an odd thing to say. Adam’s play was Pleasant Distraction, though, convincing Owl to go dance on someone else’s head instead and saving Adam some endurance.

On his initiative, Antonino recruited Mysterio and boosted it to get another one, and after a considerable pause, he finally settled on the very powerful and often misunderstood inverse horseshoe formation, with Stilt-Man, Owl and an unprotected Mendel in the middle of the front row and the ranged Mysterios in the back.

A U-Go-Girl, Tragic Teleporter for Adam got rid of the Stilt-Man temporarily while bouncing his own Vivisector, setting up X-Statix Café if he had one. Antonino tried to play around the Café, team attacking with with double Mysterio and Mendel. Adam did indeed have the Café, but his U-Go-Girl still got stunned, taking out one of the Mysterios. Owl tried to get in there, too, but a Spin Doctoring readied U-Go-Girl and made her available for another round of defensive duty. A little Crime and Punishment can go a long way, though, as Owl took U-Go-Girl down again and caused some more endurance loss.

Turn 5 was easy for both players, as they didn’t have much to think about. An Anarchist, Tike Alicar hit the board for X-Statix, and a Carnage came down for the Syndicate. Adam had the initiative here and kicked things off by charging into a Mysterio with his flying U-Go-Girl. Antonino just reinforced and took the stun endurance loss. A Mind over Matter sent U-Go-Girl back to Adam’s hand and Anarchist into the air to get to the other Mysterio. Mysterio had had enough of the abuse at this point, though, and evaded the hit by the monstrous flier. The next target on Anarchist’s hit list is Mendel, who promptly KO’d himself to put a counter on Carnage. Anarchist then finally settled on Carnage himself, dealing a massive 13 endurance loss and making the endurance totals 19–16 in Adam’s favor.

“And here’s why I really need the odd initiative in this matchup. If I can’t win the die roll, I’m in trouble,” Antonino lamented.

Zeitgeist is why—it’s almost always impossible to successfully attack into Zeitgeist on turn 6. Antonino made a valiant effort anyway, team attacking him with Mysterio and a newly recruited Stilt-Man, who had a combined 14 ATK after he flipped Honor Among Thieves. A Dead Weight got the tiresome Anarchist out of the way, and Zeitgeist suddenly turned into an enormous monster with the ability to bolt one of Antonino’s characters into oblivion. Carnage was on the wrong end of that deal, and Antonino figured he just had to hope, using Doc Ock’s Lab and powering-up Stilt-Man to make his team just deadly enough to take down the giant Zeitgeist. A power-up from Adam broke his heart, though, and Antonino had to settle for a whole lot of nothing. The Lab activation and all the stunning put Antonino in a very precarious position as turn 7 rolled around, as he knew Adam still had a Vivisector somewhere in his hand (where it was sent when U-Go-Girl came down on turn 4).
 
Five endurance wasn’t really going to cut it, and after Antonino verified that Adam hadn’t played Vivisector as a resource, it was time to extend the hand.

Adam Fears 1 – Antonino De Rosa 0