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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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| Round 10: Michael Jacob vs. Vidanto “Viddy” Wijaya |
| Geordie Tait |
| May 14, 2005 |
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Win and you’re in. Lose and you go home. Wijaya is coming off a win against Ryan Jones that put him in good position for Top 8. Jacob has been hovering around the top of the standings all day, piloting a version of the Force deck that won him $10K Chicago.
MJ: Not one of my opponents has had a bad draw yet. I don’t like that.
Wijaya: You’ve already won one $10K. I’ve Top 8’d three, and one PC, so maybe it’s my turn.
 MJ won initiative and chose odds. Both players kept their opening hands and Michael, shaking his head in dismay, opened with Longshot, the card that has been a source of frustration and elation for him in equal measure on this day.
Viddy: I don’t know why you’re shaking your head.
MJ: I have a really bad draw.
Viddy’s first play on turn 2 was Hank Hall, and he bashed into Michael’s Pyro. The defending player took the opportunity to flip up Mutant Nation and burn Viddy for 3. Meanwhile, Longshot, always slow to get going this afternoon, whiffed again.
On the initiative on turn 3, Longshot hit nothing again before Wolverine added some size to Michael Jacob’s board, revealing Jean Grey. Viddy countered with Roy Harper, and Wolverine attacked into the smaller character, who exhausted to pump himself up to 6 ATK/3 DEF. Then came the first Battle of Wills of the game. Michael powered up, and Viddy also did, evening things again. Michael powered up a second time, and Viddy pumped the attack of his Roy using Hank, foregoing any reinforcement and stunning Wolverine, but taking a chunk of damage as a result. Endurance totals ended at 43–36 in favor of Michael.
Viddy had the initiative on turn 4 and ran into a bit of inconvenience when his U.S.S Argus effect was countered by Global Domination. Red Star came down against Jean Grey for Michael, and Roy Harper attacked into Jean without hesitation, bolstering his offense with Savage Beatdown. Michael activated Jean, KO’ing a useless character in his row, but he found no help and the two characters were both flipped. Then Red Star charged into Longshot, and Longshot missed again. As in Michael’s last match, the “Most Dangerous 1-Drop in the Game” had yet to draw its controller so much as a single card.
Michael was content to trade his Wolverine for Red Star on the counterattack, since he would be playing a new Logan on the coming turn, but after the trade, Viddy made a great play by Foiling Michael’s Global Domination, denying him the drop. Michael bounced back anyway by recruiting Rogue, Power Absorption.
Then things started to get really interesting. Viddy used Optitron during his recruit, but Michael actually stopped him for several seconds to bluff a Global Domination before letting the effect resolve. Viddy got Hawk and Dove into play, forming a solid defense against Michael’s two attacks and leaving the totals at 28–23 in favor of Michael Jacob as the turn came to a close.
 Viddy reached five resources on his initiative and hit his Garth, while Michael responded with the resilient 5-drop Wolverine. Did Viddy have Tamaran to make Red Star into a monster? And if so, would he make the Tamaran play into Michael’s clever bluff? Viddy went into the think tank, and in the end, he did decide to attack. Michael had no Global Domination, but he activated Rogue (who had stolen Jean Grey’s ability), and in a stunning display of gamesmanship, he ripped the Global Domination off the top to take the sting out of Viddy’s offensive.
Viddy: That was very fortunate.
MJ: It was very fortunate.
By now, the crowd was starting to buzz—this was turning into a game for the ages. Viddy, who had suffered a big-time life swing as a result of the Global D’s sabotage of his Red Star plans, was on the ropes.
Keeping the pressure on, Viddy sent Garth at Wolverine and they traded, and Michael discarded to keep Wolverine alive. The endurance totals ended at 24–11 in favor of Michael and things are looking up for him as he recruited Rogue. Wijaya pondered his next move for a long while—his back was against the wall—and eventually went down to 8 endurance to bring back Hank Hall. Before recruiting, he used his existing Hank to pump Roy Harper to 6 ATK/3 DEF, making sure to squeeze every drop of utility out of his cards. The former PC Top 8 competitor had four ready characters remaining, and this turn was shaping up to be a great one for him—the sort that might put him over the top and take him to the win. Using Hank and Dawn, Viddy pumped his Roy Harper to 10 ATK/3 DEF and went after Logan, KO’ing his Argus in the process and casting it a withering eye.
Viddy: “I should never have flipped that thing in the first place. I got greedy.”
Viddy then played Press the Attack and killed Jean Grey with the same Roy Harper (knocking Michael to 15 endurance), then passed with all characters exhausted against Rogue. He had no cards in hand, one card face down, all characters exhausted, and was sitting on 8 endurance against a 12 ATK/11 DEF with flight.
 MJ: Let’s see if the last card is Heroic Sacrifice.
Viddy: It is.
Yes, it was true—Wijaya had the Heroic Sacrifice to stay alive, and the air was sucked out of the room as the game arrived at a turn 8 that no one thought they would see. What a contest! Michael was on the initiative, and with the Argus gone, Viddy could draw again.
Viddy: You have a guy? Don’t slow roll me.
Michael did, and if it had been anyone but the massive Wolverine, Berserker Rage, he would have been in great shape. Jacob pushed his men forward, and Viddy started calculating his offensive options. The endurance totals? Michael Jacob 15, Viddy Wijaya 6.
The respective boards? Michael with Rogue, 4-drop Jean Grey, and Wolverine, Berserker Rage; and Viddy with Garth, Roy, Hawk, and Dove.
And one card in hand.
Viddy: This is going to take a while. It’s the final turn anyways, so . . .
And he continued.
Jacob, meanwhile, seemed upset with his own play. “I messed up so bad. I deserve to lose this game.”
All the while, Wijaya’s feverish pen and paper calculations continued. Michael kept pace with the pen scratching by continuing to berate himself. As Viddy got increasingly frustrated with the unsatisfactory results of his own math (presumably, all results were losses), Michael began to suspect that he might have won regardless of his error, but that didn’t stop him from offering a final “It may not matter, but I [expletive]’d it up so bad.”
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. The calculations, which involved Roy Harper pumping, Garth endurance payments, stun damage, breakthrough damage (or not, depending on how Titans Go was used), and possible Rogue/Wolverine/Jean Grey counterattacks, were complex. Michael had been doing some calculations of his own and eventually told Wijaya earnestly, “You’re 3 off. You can get me to -2, but you’ll be at -5.”
Then Aaron Brieder, a fine player in his own right and one of Michael Jacob’s team members, patted Michael on the shoulder, said “Congratulations, Mike,” and walked away. The audience thought it was over, Michael Jacob thought it was over . . . even this reporter thought it was over.
And Viddy, as much as he’d have liked to, couldn’t seem to refute that. The audience started to look at one other uneasily and there was an unspoken feeling in the air—a silent communication that this was one of those cases where it would be better to be a bad player who is ignorant of the fact that you can’t win than it would be to be poor Viddy Wijaya, who is a brilliant enough player to know just how close he came.
 We all expected Viddy to just extend The Hand, rather than go through a fruitless combat. A few others, more sure in their math, may have known that there were a few cards in his deck that could save him. At last, combat started.
Wijaya attacked Rogue with all his characters, returned his Teen Titans Go! with Garth (moving his endurance total to 3), cast his Teen Titans Go!, and pumped Roy Harper up to 10 ATK and then 15 ATK using Savage Beatdown (the card in his hand!). He killed Rogue with Roy Harper (dropping Michael to 9 endurance), which readied all of his men because the target of the attack had been removed. He then attacked Jean Grey with Garth, dealing 4 more endurance loss to Michael to bring his total to 5. Then, a massive 10 ATK/3 DEF Roy Harper teamed up with Hawk and Dove to attack Wolverine, causing 7 endurance loss to bring Michael to -2, and with the endurance loss from Roy’s demise, bringing Viddy to 0.
Winner of the greatest Vs. match I have ever seen: Viddy Wijaya.
Post-Match Reaction
Michael Jacob
MJ: I screwed up big time. I laid the wrong resource. If I play Xavier’s School when I’m supposed to, I Pyro him out of that game.
Vidanto Wijaya
GT: The match was under your control until he used Jean Grey and pulled the Global Domination off the top of his deck. What were you thinking at that time?
VW: I was thinking, “Oh my god, this guy is so lucky . . . ” but whatever. If he just starts to win, you’re dead. He’s got it.
GT: That was followed by a heated turn where you fought him off with Roy Harper and started to get back into it.
VW: Yes. And the last card is obviously Heroic Sacrifice, otherwise I don’t even play it out. I did get greedy on turn 4—I shouldn’t have Argus’d; he has Global Domination and all that.
GT: Take me through the final turn, the fifteen-minute turn.
VW: Was it really fifteen minutes?
GT: It was close.
VW: Well, I was doing all these calculations. Like, I attack Jean Grey with everything and kill Jean Grey, and then attack with Roy into Rogue, different variations, and I’d always come up just short.
GT: Eventually, we started to think there was just no way you could win. In fact, Aaron Brieder was watching Michael and he thought Michael had it for sure—he congratulated him and walked off.
VW: Yeah, what was with that? I was like “What? It’s not done!” But the thing is, they don’t know what’s in my hand. That turn I drew a Beatdown and a Finishing Move. If I’d drawn a character, I actually could have Optitron’d and ended up stunning his whole board. And he got unlucky, too—he had his Longshot and every turn he hit nothing.
GT: Yeah.
VW: On the last turn, I kept doing the math. The best I could come up with was him at -5, me at -5. And if that happens, I lose; we go to the next turn, he has initiative, and I can’t use Garth.
GT: And time was running out. As Michael said, “It’s been ten minutes,” it just came to you?
VW: Well, no. I did the final math. I knew he didn’t have Lost City because he milled three Lost City—I kept track of what cards he put on the bottom of his deck. If he has it, that’s it. But he didn’t have it.
GT: And that was it.
VW: Yeah, that was it.
And so ends the story of one of the best matches in Vs. System history.
Vidanto Wijaya wins 1-0 over Michael Jacob. |
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