It doesn’t get any better than this. We have the two winners of the last European $10K Championships playing the two most popular decks in the room. We shouldn’t expect anything else from the last two undefeated players in the tournament.

Playing at “home,” we have the Italian Matteo Paolucci, winner of $10K Vienna and his trusty Teen Titans. Across the table is Hans Joachim Hoeh from Germany, winner of the $10K Hannover, and his unforgiving Curve Sentinel deck.

They used their shuffling time to trade stories about the last Pro Circuit tournament, where they both made Day 2 but didn’t exactly ace their drafts. They also discussed the bombshell Jeff Donais dropped with the format announcement, and the consequences on Pro Circuit preparation and on the metagames.

“I still don’t have a single Marvel Knights card. It will be tough to prepare,” Matteo joked.

Paolucci opened with Optitron to smooth out his draw and played a turn two Tim Drake ◊ Robin before the German dropped a character—Sentinel Mark II. Matteo answered with a turn 3 Hank Hall ◊ Hawk with boost.

“I’ve seen that before,” Hans said. He sat back and pondered for a minute. Finally, he came up with a cunning plan. The Sentinel veered towards Hank, but it was just a trick. Hans used Nasty Surprise and Overload to stun the helpless defender. The Titans struck back to avenge their friend and the turn ended with Paolucci losing Dawn Granger ◊ Dove during his recovery phase.

Hitting the curve, the Italian came back with Terra. It was Hoeh’s turn to play a character (Sentinel Mark V) and sit back waiting for the attack. Matteo Paolucci ignored the noise on the next table, and focused on figuring out exactly how to destroy Hans’s formation.

Hawk and Terra teamed up to attack the Mark V, Hoeh answered with a shrug and his Sentinel went down. Tim Drake ◊ Robin got a little boost from Savage Beatdown taking out the Mark II and bringing Hoeh down to 37 endurance.

The German played Nimrod to go along with his lone Mark V and let Paolucci set up his defensive formation. Matteo again hit his curve and dropped Garth ◊ Tempest.

The Mark V dove straight at Terra and Paolucci had no way to help his character. Nimrod attacked Garth ◊ Tempest and Matteo used the character’s ability, but changed his mind while resolving the effect.

Hans tried to resolve things with a smile, but Matteo Paolucci stuck to his story. Eventually a few judges gathered around and Paolucci was forced to stick to his first choice, which was Savage Beatdown instead of Hank Hall ◊ Hawk.

USS Argus gave him some extra gas, and on his sixth turn he played Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal and fetched the controversial Hawk to play with boost. That gave him five characters to work with.

Suddenly the game was a lot slower. Hans Joachim Hoeh tried to play Bastion, and Paolucci exhausted three characters to make Roy Harper big enough to hit Nimrod in response.

He then tried to Press The Attack to do it again but Hoeh had Overload for Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal. Finally Bastion joined the fray, as a clearly unhappy Matteo shook his head.

With only Garth to work with, Paolucci sent it at Bastion and used Savage Beatdown to make it bigger. The German discarded enough cards to save it. Paolucci mistakenly tried to reuse his Garth ◊ Tempest on the same turn.

Corrected by Hans, he apologized and revealed Titans Tower, discarding Red Star to further increase Garth’s ATK. When the dust cleared both characters got stunned, leaving Hoeh at 28 and Paolucci at 17. Mark V struck back taking Hank Hall ◊ Hawk.

Time was called, and down by 16 endurance and without the initiative, Matteo Paolucci extended his hand.

Match Win: Hans Joachim Hoeh