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Ed Colleran is a true grinder. Working together with the mostly Florida team called the Sinister Six, Ed has played in several Pro Circuits to unremarkable finishes. Calling himself a “professional slacker,” this twenty-year-old hasn’t made any money on the Pro Circuit to date.

He is playing a unique Checkmate / Shadowpact deck that was designed by fellow Floridian William Postlethwait, or as his friend’s know him, BillyP. Billy designed the deck in conjunction with team members Donnie Noland, Julius Haywood, Joey Carey, and David De Michelle but became a little frustrated with it, preferring a more controlling deck type.

But Ed stuck with it, and it’s certainly paid off. He posted a fantastic 8-2 result on Day 1 and only needed six wins from the Infinite Crisis drafts to secure his place in the Top 8.

Ed’s quarterfinal opponent needs no introduction, as he is the undisputed best player in the world, Vidi Wijaya. He concedes that while Vidi is a great player, the match is fairly draw dependant. His plan to avoid playing Ahmed Samsarra and let the important Transmutation dominate the match. Ed seems to have a game plan ready, and he’ll need it. But if he’s able to power through the best player in the world, he could likely become the next Pro Circuit Champion—every other match should feel easy in comparison.

Heath Baker is a “born and bred” West Virginian who hails from Huntington. A self-proclaimed socialite, Heath is part of The Donkey Club, and more specifically, the West Virginian think-tank that contains Matt Oldaker, Jason Hager, and fellow Top 8 competitor Anthony Justice.

Heath usually plays the standard decks of the team, and so in preliminary testing for this event, he was generally the player that ran Good Guys and Villains/Checkmate against his teammates’ more esoteric creations. He decided on his version of the Villains/Checkmate Fate deck when he just kept winning against everything that was thrown at it, including Good Guys and the team’s other deck, Shadowpact “Magic Tricks.” He posted a solid 7-3 record on Day 1 with his deck but was even more impressive on Day 2, winning seven out of a possible nine matches to give him the seventh seed going into the final day.

Heath mostly plays at his local store, Under Siege games in Huntington. Prior to this event, Heath has only had moderate success at the Pro Circuit, with a 48th at PC: Atlanta being the previous highlight. That finish will definitely be eclipsed by his finish this weekend, as he goes up against Anthony Calabrese’s Secret Society Fate deck. Heath likes his chances, despite not having played the matchup to date. “As long as I get Ahmed out with a Cloak, I think I’m fine. They have Deadshot, Dead Aim, so I’ll have to be careful.”

Anthony Justice

Anthony Justice is part of what is probably the most powerful deck think-tank in the Vs. world. The West Virginian contingent of The Donkey Club, is comprised of Justice, Jason Hager, Heath Baker, and Matt Oldaker. Until now, Jason Hager has been the most distinguished of these players, but that trend is ending here, with both Anthony and Heath reaching Sunday.

The 26 year old Math student at Marshall University is playing the unique Shadowpact Trick deck, which basically uses Manitou Dawn and Zatanna, Magical Manipulator to draw dozens of Magic plot twists, usually winning the game with a very large and angry Blackbriar Thorn. He posted a 9-1 performance with the deck on Day 1, only losing once to Good Guys. The deck was the brainchild of Jason Hager (who was absent due to a friend’s wedding) and Justice. Gabe Walls and Neil Reeves played a similar version that had Secret Six characters, but Justice decided to go with the build with exclusively Shadowpact characters.

“I like Nightmaster, Jim Rook in the deck a lot,” Anthony remarked, “But the real breakthrough we had was realizing that we didn’t need to have big drops (5-drops and higher). I like consistency of the mono build of the deck.”

This Top 8 marks the pinnacle of the Ashland, Kentucky native’s Vs. career so far. The best finish he’s had is fourteenth at Pro Circuit: Atlanta, but he’s had much more success on the $10K circuit, with three Top 8, including a second place at the last $10K at Origins. His matchup tomorrow pits him against teammate Michael Jacob, who is piloting the team’s other deck, a Villains United/Checkmate build that attempts to get a fast Fate set. Anthony thinks his chances are a little tough, especially since the two have played the matchup in playtesting several times. But who knows? Maybe Justice will prevail this Sunday.

Michael Jacob

Michael Jacob’s name is synonymous with Vs. System success. The mild-mannered 22- year-old member of The Donkey Club from Farmington Hills, MI has an unprecedented four $10K championships to his name, complemented by more $10K Top 8 finishes. Michael also recently finished in the Top 8 of Pro Circuit San Francisco, and he has definitely earned a place towards the top of the list of the best Vs. System players in the world.

Michael spent a month playtesting for this Pro Circuit, including two meetings with the other members of his team—one meeting for Draft, and the other meeting for Constructed testing, each lasting a week. Of course, his team continued to playtest online, proving that a team that is sparse around the country can still playtest online and perform well in large events.

Sponsored by RIW Hobbies, Michael says he wouldn’t have any of his success if it wasn’t for that store in Detroit, MI. Michael decided to deviate from The Donkey Club’s deck of Shadowpact this weekend when he continually defeated the deck in playtesting with his build of Checkmate/Villains United. Now Michael finds himself in yet another Pro Circuit Top 8, and he’s hoping to make the best of this one.

Anthony Calabrese

Anthony is a 21-one-year old gamer from Cincinnati, OH who always seems to do well here in Indianapolis. Anthony placed in the Top 16 at the two previous Pro Circuits held here at Gen Con Indy, with an 11^th place finish in 2004 and a 15^th place finish in 2005. Now, he’s finally broken through that proverbial glass ceiling, making his first ever Pro Circuit Top 8 this weekend.

Anthony decided to run one of the most unique decks in the format: a curve Secret Society deck that he and his team knew would definitely bring a surprise factor. He commented that most of the players he played against during Day 1 of the Pro Circuit had no idea what some of the characters he played did (Crystal Frost ◊ Killer Frost and Gorilla Grodd, for instance), causing them to misplay against them. Anthony and his team playtested for two months at their local store, Acme Games in Cincinnati, and it seems as if all that hard work paid off.

Anthony has the best finishes of his team by far, but since it placed two members into this weekend’s Top 8 (Josh Hensley will also play tomorrow), they must be doing something right. New players always have the opportunity to make it big in the game we all have grown to love; Anthony and his team prove to us that those things can happen with hard work.

Josh Hensley

Josh Hensley is a 22-year-old gamer from Edwardsville, IL, which is located just outside of St. Louis. He regularly travels out to the Cincinnati area, where he playtests with the rest of his team at Acme Games. Josh is the creator of the curve Secret Society deck that both he and Anthony Calabrese are playing in the Top 8. Of course, Josh was quick to mention that Anthony’s build is the teched-out version. Josh has no previous Vs. System accomplishments besides “maybe a dozen or so PCQ wins.”

Josh has high hopes for himself and his teammate as they enter into tomorrow’s Top 8 matches. Since he’s facing off against last year’s Pro Circuit Indy champion, those hopes do seem lofty indeed at the moment. Still, Josh is confident in his deck and its ability to steamroll through the Top 8.

Before letting Metagame.com go, Josh wanted to give a shout-out to those that he playtested with including Augi Garber and Mack, plus Tim for “not knowing how to play the game,” but still playing as much as they did anyway. Of course, he couldn’t forget about his fellow Top 8 participant Anthony, whom he says wouldn’t be where he is if it wasn’t for his deck!

David Leader

When David Leader earned the handshake from then-teammate Jason Dawson in the finals of Pro Circuit Indianapolis one year ago, it was the culmination of more than a year of hard work for the Atlanta native. Dave came to Vs. System after playing other games professionally without much success and decided that, come hell or high water, he was going to do well at this new game. He formed a team—the short lived “$40 Hippos”—which saw moderate success before disbanding after only two Pro Circuits.

Dave was not to be defeated in his quest for success, however, and with the
assistance of Gabe Alonso, he collected a ragtag bunch of guys (and a girl) and
formed the team that was to become Team FTN. The team was named in between rounds at Pro Circuit Amsterdam when a passerby asked what the team's name was. “The name? **** the name,” came the reply. And a legend was born. Amsterdam, however, did not yield the success Dave desired. He was so depressed with failing to make Day 2 that he skipped the $10K and told teammate Peter Sundholm he was going to quit the game. Fortunately Peter talked him out of it, and buoyed by the team's success—as Mike Dalton came within 1 endurance point of winning the Pro Circuit—Dave redoubled his efforts.

Two Pro Circuits later, he held the PC Champion's trophy aloft while brandishing a $40,000 check and extended art Savage Beatdown—the holy grail of Vs. System, the pinnacle of individual success. But it was more than an individual success for Dave; he brought two of his teammates into the Top 8 with him and saw all his efforts come to fruition. He is FTN's Leader in more than just name, and the prospect of setting up yet another all-team final with Vidi Wijaya is as exciting to him as the opportunity to win a second Pro Circuit. He’s not really sure of their chances to be winners again tomorrow; he says that the trophy will probably go to one of the “very original” Secret Society decks. However, he did add, “I do hope to win out, hope we repeat last year—an all FTN final.” With his energy for VS undiminished and his team behind him, it probably won’t be another year before David Leader returns to Day 3 at the Pro Circuit.

Vidianto Wijaya

I sat down to chat with Vidi about his historic accomplishment today and found him busy goldfishing his Draft deck from the last pod like a veritable Vs. System addict. Amused, I reminded him that Day 2 was over, that he has succeeded in proving himself the undisputed king of Vs. System with his fifth Pro Circuit Top 8, and that maybe he should be less interested in thirty cards that had no use to him anymore. It didn’t seem to register.

Vidi’s story has been told four times on these pages before, so you may already be aware that the twenty-two-year-old Indonesian and Team FTN stalwart is the most successful professional player in Vs. System history. Even if his record tomorrow is 0-2 and an early trip to the rail (and with his record, you would be a fool to bet on that), he will walk away with more than $100,000 in lifetime earnings after the game. None of his seven fellow Top 8 qualifiers can come close to matching that, even if they win tomorrow.

You might expect any other player to be jumping for joy. Vidi, however, doesn’t jump, and I have rarely seen him register joy on any occasion . . . though there was a flicker of it when he took home the big trophy at Pro Circuit Atlanta, despite his attempts at suppression.

Was he prepared for this PC? Not really. “For the next PC, we should prepare more. I woke up at 6:59 AM on Friday and didn’t know what we were playing.” It hasn’t seemed to damage his prospects too much this weekend, though he protests that his deck is the worst deck in the format and auto-loses to the best deck. “My plan tomorrow is just to blow myself out as many times as possible.” He flashes a Mr. Mxyzptlk from the Draft deck he is shuffling intermittently. “Look, I got this tenth pick. I already won six bucks.”

It is difficult to ascertain, even as Vidi’s teammate, how much of his nonchalance is genuine. He says he genuinely does not enjoy pickup games, but does enjoy having to think about the game seriously during competition—something that many professional players might empathize with. Does he even need the money? Not really, he says. “It will just sit in my bank account. Nothing changes except the numbers.”

He maintains that he does not have a good chance to win tomorrow, repeating the same excuse of “worst deck in the format,” but it is significant that at no point does he deprecate his own play skill. In terms of his opponents’ decks, he likes the Blackbriar Thorn Shadowpact deck, characterizing having a 2-drop with the stats of an 8-drop as “ridiculous.” Realizing that we have not really gleaned much new personal information about Vs. System’s best player so far, I asked if there was anything, anything at all, he would like to say to the Vs. System players worldwide. Characteristically, nothing was offered. Vidi, it seems, just wants to talk about anyone but Vidi.