I had some time here between rounds to sit and have a little chat with one of my favorite people in the entire world¾Anthony Justice. I’ve known Anthony for a few years now, mostly through some of those Other GamesÔ, and it’s no surprise to me that he’s found himself on the top of the Vs. System world.
Anthony has always been one of the most cautious players I’ve ever watched. Every move is calculated, recalculated, scrapped, rethought, and then finally settled on. It’s really fun to watch him walk through the paces in his mind. Thanks to his cautious play and careful analysis, he rarely makes a poor decision. As fate would have it, he’s managed to stumble his way into a group of tremendous players from West Virginia, including Jason Hager and Matt Oldaker, and they’ve quickly proven themselves to be one of the best deckbuilding forces on the Pro Circuit.
Anthony himself is a quite soft-spoken guy. He rarely speaks when it’s inappropriate, and the words that come out of his mouth in that nice little Southern drawl of his are usually words you don’t want to forget. And it’s really hard to—the man is hysterical. Hiding under his 70’s cop show exterior lies a quick wit and an even quicker tongue.
I asked Anthony about his thoughts on the format now that he’s had a few rounds to play it out. He said, “It’s actually not as degenerate as many people would lead you to believe. There are a lot of people playing GLEE, but they’re all different versions of it. Everyone has their own little wrinkle. Those wrinkles lead to small changes in win percentages, but over twelve rounds, those percentages really add up.”
As I mentioned, the West Virginia guys are one of the best groups of deckbuilders in the game. For every tournament they attend, they bring a most innovative, original, and pretty darn good deck. First there was Evil Medical School. Then there was New School. Now there is GLEE. And it’s pretty safe to say that most of the other decks his team has come up with have been very good metagame decks. His team is able to piece together the metagame with tremendous accuracy and then determine how to maximize their deck’s strength.
Coming into this format, everyone knew that the deck to beat was GLEE. The question was how to beat it. The WV boys came up with a solution that reminds me of an old proverb: If the rats keep getting better, build a better mousetrap. That’s what they did. They decided that the best deck in the format to beat a GLEE deck was a better GLEE deck. “Dr. Ub’x really shines in the mirror. Most of the mirror really revolves around Emerald Dawn and KO effects. Whoever loses their Dr. Light, Master of Holograms first seems to take control of the game, so we built our deck to maximize that advantage.”
Their GLEE deck might not have been the rogue pile of ridiculousness that I have come to expect from these guys, but you can’t argue with results. Players everywhere will learn to fear the Hong Kong Cavaliers.