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Three days of intense competition have boiled down to this single match. |
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Anthony Justice has brought his Shadowpact deck to his first ever Pro Circuit Top 8, but now he must face the best Vs. has to offer. |
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Anthony and Dave shuffled up opposite Anthony Justice and Vidi Wijaya, a top four featuring two Top 8 novices and two battle-hardened PC champions. |
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Our quarterfinal match features two of the more well-known players from The Donkey Club. |
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Both of these players are participating in their first ever Pro Circuit Top 8. |
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This match pitted a player who is undisputedly the best player of Vs. System in the world against a player who, until this event, had never made money at a Pro Circuit. |
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David and Josh were an instantly chatty pair as they sat down to play, perhaps a reflection of differing emotions on the part of each player. |
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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. |
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The anticipation was thick in the air as several members of FTN crowded the rail to see if their man Vidi Wijaya would make his third straight PC Top 8 appearance, and fifth overall. |
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Matt Boccio has lost two rounds in a row after starting out the day with a 6-0 record, and now he finds himself facing off against Tim Batow for a possible spot in the Top 8 of this year’s GenCon Indy Pro Circuit. |
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With multiple Pro Circuit Top 8 finishes, including a second place finish and a win, there is no way you haven’t heard of Vidi. |
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Adam Prosak is a respected Vs. System player and a force to be reckoned with in any event in which he participates. |
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Matt Boccio has found himself in a very good position to make the Top 8 after going 6-0 in his first two draft pods. |
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Both these players have six losses, so they must 3-0 this pod to be in contention for Top 8. |
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Both players were characteristically chatty as they shuffled up, before Walls threw a die onto the table and rolled a high number. |
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Friends, teammates, and Tennessee natives Tillman Bragg and Doug Tice have the misfortune of facing one another in Round 16. |
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Kyle Dembinski has several impressive $10K finishes, but the Sunday stage has eluded him thus far at the PC level. |
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Perennial high-finishing pro player Sammy Gilly faces off this round against The Donkey Club’s Adam Fears. |
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I am going to come right out and say FTN’s Vidi Wijaya is the best Vs. System player on the planet. |
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Do you hear that? It’s the sound of about 350 Vs. System players breathing a heavy sigh of relief. |
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Michael and Ryan sat next to each other in the draft pod, so they agree that this match should be interesting. |
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Anthony gave us some comments on the draft and what he thought he did wrong and could have done better. |
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A regular player on the Pro Circuit, Mike has until now lacked a big finish to put his name to. |
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How fitting that we bring these two together for a match in the place where they’ve both found their greatest Vs. System successes. |
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There are plenty of different opinions on the Infinite Crisis set as a whole and on what would be the best Draft strategy. |
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David Leader’s been to the big dance and won, while Heath Baker is trying to topple last year’s Pro Circuit Indy champion on his way to the top. |
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Quang Nguyen is no stranger to these sorts of high-pressure situations. The winner of his very own $10K Championship, Quang has been able to continue his success with several good money finishes. |
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In honor of his Top 8 appearance at the very first Pro Circuit two years ago, I decided to cover FTN’s Steve Horowitz for the first draft. |
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After a 9-1 record with a deck that is just different enough to surpass all the other contenders, Michael is aiming for a Pro Circuit Top 8 finish. |
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These FTN teammates each sat at a healthy 7-2 going into this round and knew they both had a great shot at Day 3 with a win here. |
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The players sat down and started talking about their lifetime record against each other in various games, bringing up the fact that Eugene had a definite lead. |
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After nine rounds, Rian Fike finds himself right on the bubble for making Day 2 at 5-4. |
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Going into round 9, both TDC’s Heath Baker and TAWC’s John Hall are sitting pretty at 7-1. |
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Both players looked ready to go as the end of Day 1 edges closer and closer. |
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Though the utter dominance that many had predicted today for Good Guys and Checkmate/Villains decks has not quite come to pass, this match nevertheless sees them square off at the top table in the hands of two of Vs. System’s best players. |
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Both players were new to the feature match area and didn’t like the sound of having to use the electronic score pad during the match. |
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I’ve heard that Eric Hunter is playing something interesting so I’ve been placed on this match to find out what all the commotion is about. |
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Who would have the audacity and ingenuity to create an effective JLI team attack build? |
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In round 6, we have two of the most innovative deckbuilders in the game, Anthony Calabrese and $10K champ Patrick Yapjoco, facing off. |
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The expected field of nothing but Good Guys has yielded to something far more interesting. |
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Eager to quiet their mocking teammates by outshining them on the Pro Circuit stage, both players sat on impressive 4-0 records entering round 5. |
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Dylan “docx” Northrup took a little poll to see how the top tables changed from Round 1 to Round 5. |
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Both Anthony Justice and Michael Sewell enter round 5 undefeated. |
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A very diverse metagame has emerged today from a pretty tough format. |
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Not only have both Adam Horvath and Karl Horn been here before—both have won the big dance before! Both of these guys are hoping to be the first person to ever repeat as a Pro Circuit champ. |
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Shadowpact may not be the most popular deck in DC Modern Age, but the first four rounds have seen several Shadowpact variants posting impressive records. One of the most unique variants, of course, belongs to The Donkey Club. |
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For DC Modern, Tim Batow once again broke the mold with his creative deck building skills. |
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Craig Edwards isn’t new to the Pro Circuit environment, and neither is his third round opponent Alex Gellerman. |
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Popular VSRealms stalwart Gabe “profparm” Schmidt showed no outward signs of nerves as he ambled into the feature match area for the first time in his life. |
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Most of the players at Indy, however, remain blissfully unaware of the card that heralds the arrival of a powerful new force in Vs. System. I took a printed copy around the gaming hall to get their first impressions. |
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Several players in the pit were looking to be featured this round, but few people can beat the combination of Niles and TJ in the entertainment department. |
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We all knew it’d eventually happen — ever since we laid eyes on it — but is it too good to be true? You be the judge. |
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Graham Van Leeuwen turned the Vs. System world upside down when he took 50th place in Pro Circuit: Atlanta. It might not seem like that big an accomplishment to many, but it’s definitely big for someone who’s only thirteen years old. |
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Both men play regularly at RIW Hobbies in Livonia, MI, so it should be interesting to see who comes out on top in this battle of store-mates. |
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