There’s also $250,000 to play for.

In case you forgot about Part 1, here is the list I decided to play on Day 1 of Pro Circuit Los Angeles.

Characters

4 Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth

1 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster

1 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom

1 Roy Harper ◊ Speedy

4 Haywire, Suicidal Lover

4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

2 Deadshot, Floyd Lawton

1 Mikado and Mosha

4 Dr. Light, Master of Holograms

2 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius

1 Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival

1 Robot Destroyer

1 Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff

1 Mephisto, Soulstealer

1 Asmodeus

4 The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero

Plot Twists

4 Devil’s Due

4 Reign of Terror

4 Straight to the Grave

4 Enemy of My Enemy

3 The Ring Has Chosen

1 Flame Trap

1 Mutant of the Year

1 Political Pressure

Locations

2 Slaughter Swamp

1 Avalon Space Station

1 Soul World

1 Secret Sanctuary

Before the tournament began, Team MxyBack decided that whoever was able to make the biggest Dr. Doom (measured by total ATK value) would win a free dinner courtesy of the rest of the team. I had no idea how many counters would be required, but it definitely added something more interesting to check on between rounds than the boring old “Did you win?”

Round 1: Ryan “WalterKovacs” Alarie

Those who frequent the forums on VsRealms.com will almost certainly recognize the champion of insanely long posts. I love reading his thoughts on the game, and based on his online personality I guessed that he was going to play something complicated. He didn’t disappoint, bringing a stall deck that truly keyed off of Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose. While it contained many similar elements to the six stall decks that ended up in the Top 8, Ryan’s deck contained The Rock of Eternity in conjunction with The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero and a variety of exhaust effects. To give all of his characters the JSA affiliation, he played Wesley Dodds ◊ The Sandman and the Battleworld / UN Building combination. But he allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do, which meant that I was able to use Reign of Terror and Deadshot, Floyd Lawton to whittle his board down while growing a Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff was the final nail in the coffin.

1-0

Round 2: Donnie Noland

I cannot tell a lie; I was really jealous of Donnie’s deck, a Shadowpact curve build. I played a Modern Age version of Shadowpact curve at Pro Circuit Indy, and it remains one of my favorite teams. Unfortunately for me, Political Pressure and Total Anarchy both made their way into Donnie’s Golden Age version of the team. This, combined with a June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch accelerated by Conjuration, put Donnie in quite a favorable position. As is often the case with Shadowpact, his endurance total was rapidly dwindling, and Donnie had no way to gain endurance in play. The nature of my deck forced him to keep paying 4 endurance to flip his Political Pressure face down, which meant that my Robot Destroyer was able to deal 4 guaranteed endurance loss—enough to finish him off. Strangely, I never flipped Devil’s Due, removed any of his characters, or did anything that my deck was built to do. A very strange win, but I wasn’t complaining.

2-0

Round 3: Jeremy Blair

Time to go to the Kingpin’s school of hard knocks. Soon after the start of any Pro Circuit, it’s fairly easy to know what all the major teams are playing. Because of this, I knew that Jeremy was playing Team Alternate Win Condition’s Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage deck. When my team found out about this deck, we quickly noticed that if you were able to stun Quicksilver on turn 3, then the rest of the game was usually elementary. This is exactly what happened. I played Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose on turn 2, used The Ring Has Chosen to fetch Haywire, Suicidal Lover (who was KO’d to Ivy to get Secret Sanctuary), and this provided me with enough counters on my Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival to allow him to dominate the board (especially after he fetched Flame Trap). Interestingly enough, I didn’t draw a Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth until the game was decided in my favor. I was able to use Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom to find a Mutant of the Year that I could put in my resource row immediately using Haywire’s reservist text. This forced Jeremy to attack my Doom to deal damage, which was too much for him to handle.

3-0

Round 4: Rob Dougherty

While the feature match coverage explains most of what happened, I definitely made quite a few mistakes that led to my demise. The first was on turn 3; I didn’t set up well enough for turn 4, so my recruits on turn 4 were definitely inadequate. Because of this, Rob was able to stun my Doom on turn 5 because he wasn’t big enough. While I certainly wasn’t expecting Rob to be able to reach 18 ATK (Moon Knight + Fate Artifacts + Mega-Blast), it was certainly no excuse for me to relax my play. The second mistake was not playing quickly enough (and perhaps prodding Rob a bit) to reach turn 7, which I definitely needed to make up an endurance gap. Given infinite time, I could’ve easily gotten Mutant of the Year with my Boris on turn 5, and then continued to grow my Doom. Unfortunately, I didn’t have infinite time.

3-1

Round 5: Milton Figueroa

Before now, I hadn’t really talked about an unfortunate occurrence that happened before the PC. While I won’t go into specifics, FTN gained access to the decklist Team MxyBack was playing and decided to add a Supermanhunter to their deck. Yup, that’s foreshadowing.

This game was a complete blowout. On turn 4, I had a completely full board about six characters strong that included an 11 ATK / 10 DEF Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius, a Dr. Light, Master of Holograms, and even a Boris to turn on my 4-drop’s plot twist–locking text. I cleared the rest of Milton’s board with Reign of Terror and he simply had a normal-sized 4-drop Doom of his own. Turn 5 wasn’t much better for him, as he was forced to attack one of my unimportant characters and then use Mystical Paralysis to ensure the survival of his board. I played Robot Destroyer on turn 6, hoping to put some counters on my Doom via Devil’s Due, but that plan was blown out of the water by his . . . yep, you got it—Supermanhunter. I don’t know what I was thinking here, as Mephisto, Soulstealer would have been enormous and certainly would have required a Mystical Paralysis. As it was, I was able to put a few counters on my characters at a time to force Milton to use Supermanhunter’s payment power about four times over the course of the turn, but Milton survived with about 6 endurance and crushed me on turn 7.

3-2

At this point I was on full tilt, partially because of the leak and partially because I should’ve played better to make it not matter. Instead of blowing up at someone, I decided to take a stroll through the entire hall. I took a good ten-minute walk through the dealer booths, every gaming area, basically the entire giant room we were in. When I came back, Jerry Whaley tried to keep my spirits up by telling me that I would finish 8-2. When I told him he was a liar, he promised to give me a piggyback ride around the hall if I won out and finished 8-2. I had my motivation.

Round 6: Travis Frazier

Friends don’t let friends play AGL.

I’ll say that to anyone who listens, and I’m saying it to you now. No matter how tempting it may be, simply do not shuffle up lots of Anti-Green Lanterns if you plan on winning. Travis played fairly well, actually putting some pressure on me to have certain cards. Fortunately for me, I was able to use Mikado and Mosha multiple times without sacrificing much of my own development. I won comfortably.

4-2

Round 7: Kim Caton

Like the rest of her FTN teammates, Kim was playing the Crisis of Infinite Dooms deck, complete with Supermanhunter. The early game started like it always does, with me playing a ton of characters and drawing a ton of cards before Political Pressure came online. Kim under-dropped Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival on turn 4 after her first one was KO’d by Deadshot, Floyd Lawton on turn 3, but with the even initiatives, she was able to use Reign of Terror to stop my Dr. Light, Master of Holograms before I could use his power. In addition, the second 3-drop Doom found Kim the all-important Political Pressure. When I played my own copy of Reign of Terror on turn 4, Kim let it resolve. This meant that Political Pressure was on top of her deck rather than in her resource row. She also had no characters in play. I won easily after that.

5-2

Right about now, Jerry Whaley informed me that he was dropping and leaving to spend time with his family. I told him that he was going to owe me a piggy back ride.

Round 8: Kyle Krueger

In every tournament, it seems that there is at least one round where I cannot remember what happened for the life of me. For this PC, this was that round. Because I have no idea what to write in this space, I am deferring to the master penman, Tommy Ashton. Tommy had this to say:

“It was really easy, especially since you definitely played Dr. Doom and Reign of Terror, made a huge Doom, and drew infinite cards. All while alluding to Freddy Kruger. You knew what he was playing because you saw his brother fight Jason the round before.”

Thanks, Tommy. I won that game.

6-2

Round 9: Andre Muller

Andre was playing one of the coolest decks in the entire tournament. It was based around Lust for Power to enable a Team Tactics combo. For the first few turns, Andre’s deck functioned as a Doom-based control deck, using Reign of Terror and Mystical Paralysis to delay the game while KO’ing his Dooms to Lust for Power before recruiting a new one. In any event, he cannot beat my deck; If everything goes right for him and he is able to combo, I can simply KO my defender to Devil’s Due. I won this game by default because his deck couldn’t beat mine.

7-2

Round 10: Amir Banadelli

I’m not sure who had the more innovative deck—Andre from last round, or Amir. I was jealous of the things Amir did during my match.

Amir played the following characters:

Turn 1: Mirage, naming JSA

Turn 2: Black Thorn

Turn 3: Ahmed Samsarra, finding UN Building

Turn 4: Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal and Terry Sloane ◊ Mr. Terrific, flipping UN Building naming JSA, Teen Titans, and Checkmate

On my turn 3, I had played Roy Harper ◊ Speedy and KO’d his Mirage so that he couldn’t team-up. I was tempted to play Deadshot, Floyd Lawton, but I felt that the Ahmed he revealed to Black Thorn’s loyalty would definitely fetch a Dr. Fate’s Tower and Cloak of Nabu if I played Deadshot on turn 3. Not entirely knowing what to do against his board on turn 4, I simply did my thing. I played Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius, then started to draw cards with Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth, playing each Reign of Terror as I drew it so I could “ready” my Haywire, Suicidal Lover. Unfortunately for me, Amir was prepared for this with an Ahmed activation to find Brother I Satellite for Huntress, Reluctant Queen, and then Slaughter Swamp

8-2 and a Jerry Whaley piggyback ride.

As for the Dr. Doom bet? Brian Gates was ahead in the bet with a 36 ATK Dr. Doom. He had played against a Curve Sentinel deck that played Sentinel Mark V, cutting off breakthrough opportunities. Brian still won the game, though it took him eight turns. I was far behind with only a 21 ATK Doom in ten games. Many members of the team were in a great position to make the Top 8, though, where the lack of timed rounds meant potentially enormous Dr. Dooms.

I was pleased with my performance. Going 8-2 on Day 1 is what everyone aims for and it puts you in great position to make the Top 8. In addition, I felt like I was playing very well. Not perfectly, mind you, but very well. Normally, pressure mounts and nerves begin to set in, but this time was different. I was at peace.

At this point, I did not know who was in my first Draft pod.

Until next week,

Adam Prosak