Ryan Jones holds a special place in my memory. I was a member of Team Realmworx the day he won Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2004. We were the first organized Vs. System team to claim the crown. Ryan Jones taught me to draft. He gave me the decklist that became War Paint. At the time of this writing, he is the second highest money-winning Vs. System player of all time. Now we get a window into his soul. Enjoy!

Where do you live and what do you do for a living?

I live in Long Beach, California in a small, overpriced condo. I work for Kaiser Permanente. They are the largest HMO in the country (and the only non-profit one, I believe). I take the hundreds of terabytes of 1s and 0s that represent people and what they do, and turn that into web applications and reports. It can be fun and it can be tedious. When it’s not busywork, it’s all problem solving and critical thinking. Oh, and I’m routinely 30-60 minutes late to a job that starts at 10 in the morning. I like my job.

How did you get started playing cards in the first place? Do you have childhood memories of little pieces of cardboard?

I have a brother who is five years older than me. When I was younger, I didn’t care for him too much, but I thought his friends were really cool. They were gamers and would play board games like Talisman, Heroes’ Quest, Aliens vs. Predator, and even Dungeons & Dragons. At some point when I was in junior high, they started playing Magic. I thought the game looked pretty cool, so when a friend of mine called me at around the same time and asked if I’d heard of the game, we started playing too.

Although quite a few people started playing the game at my junior high and high school, none of us played competitively. We just played amongst ourselves or with random gatherings of people at card shops. I went to a small convention near the LAX airport once and played in a couple tournaments, although I have no recollection of any specifics. Soon after that two things happened concurrently to get me to stop playing Magic. First, someone stole my Timetwister, a card I’d spent $50 on (which was a good-sized chunk of money to me at the time). Second, the Star Wars card game came out. My history of cards could go on for a while so I’ll end there.

What did you think of super heroes and villains before you began playing Vs. System?

Well I certainly knew a lot less about them before Vs. System! Perhaps UDE could develop a game to teach history in high school. My familiarity with super heroes and villains was mostly from movies and cartoons. I did collect comic books for a short while as a kid, but I had more Ewok and Indiana Jones comic books than Superman and JLA. I remember my dad had (well, still has) a large trunk in his bedroom. When you open it there’s a large tray sort of thing, like a serving tray (only much larger) that sits on the top edge and is only a couple of inches deep. It had all sorts of random stuff in it that I never paid attention to because what I was interested in was below it. The bottom of the trunk always smelled of mothballs and there were hundreds of old, sleeved comic books in perfect condition. I always associate that smell with comic books and childhood now. I used to love reading those books with my dad. Of course I had to read them with him because he wouldn’t let me in there by myself. I don’t think any of them were worth much, but I was a little kid and prone to destroy things.

Please give us a bird’s-eye view of what it takes to win a match of Vs. System.

Enough preparation to bring a solid deck, and the clarity of mind to not screw up while playing it.

What are some things that make Vs. System different from other trading card games?

[UDE does] great work and is really plugged into the community.

Care to share any bad beats, on either side of the table?

I remember in a PCQ long ago when I was playing Solitaire, a stall deck. The strategy was created, championed, and never deserted by the inexorable Billy Zonos. It Puppet Master’d, Cardiac’d, and Sunfire’d its way to Jean Grey, Phoenix Force on turn 8. I ended up paired against someone who teched his deck specifically to beat Billy, who ended up not even playing the deck that day. Lucky me! After battling through a Common Enemy deck that dropped Mr. Fantastic, Stretch and Power Compressor on turn 5, we came to the following situation. I’m a couple of endurance behind, and this is the last turn due to time. I have Dagger, Tandy Bowen and he has nothing. I can either attack for the breakthrough or activate to burn him for each card in his hand, for the win. Worried he’ll Flame Trap to ditch cards, I attack . . . right into Savage Beatdown/Overload. I lose on time. Ouch.

What is your favorite travel memory from the first three years of Pro Circuit competition?

I always spend too much time playing cards to do anything interesting!

If you could be one of the super heroes or villains that we already have printed on a card, which one and why?

I don’t know, too many options. Being Wolverine and never having to die would be pretty cool. However, that’d be nowhere near as much fun as having Jean Grey’s powers and being able to pretty much do anything.

If you were given the chance to design your own card, what would it be like?

It would probably be some seemingly innocuous card to facilitate whatever combo that I wanted to make work at the time. I don’t care to be a designer; I just want to play with whatever they make.

What existing plot twist would you like to be able to use on real people at work?

BWA HA HA HA HA! It would be nice to laugh in the face of (and turn around and ignore) stupid people asking me stupid questions.

If you could create the perfect Draft set, what would it be like?

Hidden characters. Off-curve support. Stall potential. All four main teams viable. At least one smaller team that’s also viable. Playable non-combat oriented plot twists. Failing all that, it would be designed in such a way that only I could successfully draft it.

What is the key to your competitive success?

I don’t know, I’ve lost it.

Remembering the time you won the whole thing, what was different in all the other tournaments that kept you from the Championship?

Everyone else has gotten better and I’ve just stayed the same? Heh.

Any final words for your adoring fans?

I hate open-ended questions, and since I’ve got nothing to plug . . . Nope.

Rian Fike is also known as stubarnes, and he wants to interview all the top players like this. If you have a Pro Circuit favorite who you would like to examine from the inside out, send them an email and ask them to answer the questions. Then tell them to send their responses to: rianfike@hattch.com.