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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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| Semifinals: Kristian Kockott vs. Alexandre Grabowski and Dean Sohnle vs. Guillaume Matignon |
| Stan van der Velden |
| May 02, 2005 |
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 Here we are, then, at the semifinals of $10K Paris. Two Sentinels decks and two Fantastic Four decks have made it to the round of four, and they’ll be playing two mirror matches to determine which players get to pit the two most successful decks of the tournament against each other in the finals.
In the one semifinals it’s Canada’s Dean Sohnle against France’s Guillaume Matignon with the burn decks, and the other match is another Frenchman, Alexandre Grabowski, facing the one German that chose to show up, Kristian Kockott.
The Fantastic Four match got underway while the Sentinels players were still shuffling. Frankie Raye equipped with an Unstable Molecules got in the first attack of the game against Guillaume’s Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl and Dean recruited Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards. It fetched him The Pogo Plane. Guillaume got his Pogo Plane on Ant Man the hard way after flipping Antarctic Research Base. A Baxter Building also provided him with a Fantasticar for his Invisible Woman. To top it off, he played his own Mr. Fantastic before passing it to Dean. The Canadian came up with a Pier 4, and equipped Advanced Hardware to his Frankie and The Pogo Plane and another Unstable Molecules to Mr. Fantastic before recruiting Ant Man.
Guillaume got to attack this turn, and his Fantasticar-powered team stunned Ant Man and Frankie Raye, forcing Dean to KO his Ant Man. Guillaume took 3 from the Advanced Hardware and they moved on to their next build.
Dean found his own Research Base on a trip in The Pogo Plane, but he missed on Mr. Fantastic and had to settle for a Thing, Ben Grimm with a War Wagon. Guillaume continued to get more impressive turns with a Pogo Plane for Pier 4, equipping his Ant Man with a Flamethrower and Mr. Fantastic with another Fantasticar. Dean had only one attack, stunning Invisible Woman with his Frankie. On Guillaume’s attack, he tried to swing Ant Man into Thing, but Dean made the most out of his War Wagoned Thing. He used the War Wagon ability to KO the stunned Invisible Woman and then stun Ant Man, who got KO’d because of the Flamethrower. That pretty much ended Guillaume’s attack, and his board suddenly looked a lot less impressive.
He rebuilt with Mr. Fantastic, Stretch, equipping him with Unstable Molecules and The Pogo Plane. He then returned The Pogo Plane to get Personal Force Field, and equipped that to Mr. Fantastic as well. Meanwhile, Dean got Thing’s partner into play, and equipped her with an Advanced Hardware he got off Mr. Fantastic.
 At the other table, Kristian came out swinging with a Boliver Trask to make sure he’d hit his turn 2 drop of Hounds of Ahab. Alexandre had kept a slower hand and was able to match neither Kristian’s turn 1 nor turn 2 play. Turn 3 featured two Sentinel Mark IIs, but Alexandre was on the ropes, facing a Hounds lock as early as turn 3. His Mark II got team attacked and eaten by the Hounds, leaving him to find a way out of the lock before he lost control of the game. His plan was to Boliver for another Mark II, giving him enough defenders to hopefully keep the Hounds from getting through. Kristian had another Sentinel Mark II as well. Alexandre didn’t have much of a choice here, and stunned both his and Kristian’s Mark on his attack. Then he did the same with the Bolivers. Kristian then got in with his other Sentinel unopposed, and the Hounds continued their feeding with another Mark II. To add insult to injury, Kristian flipped Micro-Sentinels to leave Alexandre characterless and almost without options. Both players had Nimrod, but Alexandre’s didn’t get a counter, and the Hounds ate the poor robot.
Meanwhile, on the other table, the two players were still locked in game 1—although Dean seemed to have established a slightly dominant position, with four characters to Guillaume’s three. He also had a Cosmic Radiation that allowed him to deal 20 to Guillaume directly, putting the Frenchman in the single digits with the Canadian at 28. In the last build of the game, the Canadian went off, ending the phase with all five of his characters equipped with some sort of shooting device. A Cosmic Radiation provided more than enough damage to finish Guillaume off.
In the Sentinels match, Total Anarchy made a game out of it after both players played their Bastion, as it allowed Alexandre to Overload the Hounds and get rid of the Mark II when Kristian team attacked. The resulting exchange left him at only 20 to Kristian’s 32, though, with his Bastion facing his twin brother and Nimrod for the German. Double Magneto, Master of Magnetism got recruited and Kristian got the opportunity to finish things off on his initiative. His Magneto flew into Bastion and stunned it after Alexandre played Reconstruction Program and used his Bastion to give Kristian’s Bastion +3 ATK/+3 DEF. The big Bastion then tried to eliminate Magneto, as Kristian used his own Reconstruction Program to pump it to a 16 ATK. Double Savage Beatdown then put it in Overload range, and that’s exactly what happened, making Kristian pause. He would now have to get Nimrod big enough to handle Magneto in a fight, which he managed with two more Reconstruction Programs and a Savage Beatdown. He also made sure to pump his Magneto before Bastion got stunned, so if worse came to worse, he would be able to handle the opposing Magneto, finally letting his 6-drop go. Nimrod came after Magneto, Alexandre didn’t have another Overload and, despite all his efforts, he lost a surprisingly tense game.
 In a weird game 2, both players missed their 3-drop before they both made a Mark V on turn 4. The even initiative actually favored Kristian here, as his Mark V took out Alexandre’s and his Hounds got to eat it. To make matters worse, Kristian then used Micro-Sentinels in combination with the one he flipped earlier to get rid of Boliver and kill Alexandre’s Hounds, once again leaving the Frenchman characterless going into turn 4. Both decks then coughed up nothing but a boosted Mark V for the fifth turn, and Alexandre once again had some work to claw back. His 9 ATK/9 DEF Mark tried to kill Kristian’s, but an Acrobatic Dodge saved it. The Frenchman had no effects and he could feel the game slipping away from him. The Mark Vs still stunned each other on Kristian’s attack step and the Hounds did their thing, eating Alexandre’s.
Bastions faced off again, but now they faced on Kristian’s initiative, which made it even harder for Alexandre to recover. He tried to make a game out of it, boosting both Kristian’s Hounds and boosted Mark V to Overload range, after the German team attacked Alexandre’s Bastion with his own and the unboosted Mark V. The Hounds then bit the dust to Overload and Kristian left his boosted Mark V back to make sure Alexandre couldn’t kill it with Savage Beatdown and another Overload.
Aelxandre didn’t take long to plop down Magneto, but Kristian clearly didn’t have it as he thought and thought. He checked and double-checked his hand but Magneto didn’t come, and he burned a Genosha to try and find one. That didn’t work either, and he had to settle with a Nimrod and a Boliver Trask fetching another Mark V to use as a power-up. He then set up his formation with Nimrod and Bastion in the front protecting Boliver and the unboosted Mark V, and the big Sentinel in the support row as well.
Time for Alexandre’s attacks! He only had Bastion and Magneto to work with, but if he played it right, those could definitely prove to be enough. After some thinking, he went after Boliver with his Bastion, and passed once it was legal. It resolved without effects and Kristian took 12, bringing him down to 19. Magneto then chose Bastion as his target of choice, and Alexandre passed the first time. Cover Fire provided Bastion with a lot DEF to work with but Alexandre simply powered up twice. Another Cover Fire took Bastion out of range again, but a Savage Beatdown gave Magneto 25 ATK to match Bastion’s 25 DEF. The ball was in Kristian’s court again. All he could manage was another Bastion boost and Alexandre had another Magneto to finish the Bastion off. It left Kristian with two Mark Vs and a Nimrod to Alexandre’s Magneto and Bastion.
Kristian Genosha’d again, but missed out on Magneto for the second time, and simply recruited another Bastion. Alexandre had Nimrod and signaled he was ready for Kristian to attack. The German’s first move was to team attack Bastion with Nimrod and the unboosted Mark V, countering two opposing Cover Fires with a Savage Beatdown. Alexandre’s Magneto-fueled Genoshas made this a losing battle for Kristian, though. Sure enough, Bastion easily survived the encounter, stunning Mark V. When Kristian’s Bastion then ran into Nimrod, only to be stunned by a Nasty Surprise, Kristian accepted defeat and moved on to the next game with eighteen minutes left on the clock.
 In the battle of the equipment decks, game 2 seemed to be going a lot better for Guillaume. He had used a Cosmic Radiation and A Child Named Valeria to create a devastating turn, giving him an endurance lead of over 20 points. He’d also had a Research Base out for most of the game, whereas Dean had only found it the last turn—and it showed. All of Guillaume’s characters were equipped, while Dean could only show a Personal Force Field for his efforts. Unfortunately for Guillaume, he then hit a character glut, which got him in trouble as he couldn’t add anything to the board. Dean, meanwhile, was once again going crazy with a Pier 4 and the Research Base that provided him with all the gas he could want and more. It didn’t take long before a Cosmic Radiation finished the poor Frenchman off.
I rejoined the deciding game on turn 6 in time to see both players recruit a Bastion. Kristian had a Nimrod and both Sentinel variants to go with it, and double Micro-Sentinels flipped with three counters on Nimrod. The Frenchman’s Mark V also had four micro counters on him, and was bound for the KO’d pile on the next turn. A Nimrod with a repair counter rounded out the French team. That same Nimrod initiated the hostilities, taking out Mark V uncontested. The Micro-Sentinels-infested Mark V attacked the small Sentinel, and that fight was also resolved without any effects. Bastion then eliminated Nimrod, leaving Kristian with just his own Bastion. That Bastion took out Mark V for some easy endurance loss, and the German had another Micro-Sentinels, targeting Bastion. The third copy meant that both Nimrod and Mark V hit the bin on the next turn, and Bastion was poised for destruction if there would be a turn 8.
Mirror Magneto, Master of Magnetisms once again made their appearance on the all-important turn 7 with Kristian on the initiative. A Genosha gave the German some cards to work with, and it seemed Alexandre didn’t have one, putting him at a significant disadvantage. Kristian led with a Magneto attack on the French Bastion and powered up twice to counter a Nasty Surprise. A flurry of power-ups later, Magneto was 20 ATK/20 DEF versus the 19 ATK/14 DEF Bastion, with Alexandre out of characters. He tried to use Cover Fire to minimize the damage, but that only prompted Kristian to Nasty Surprise and Overload the Bastion. The still 19 ATK/19 DEF Magneto then attacked the smaller French one, and no effects ended the game in favor of the German.
Dean and Kristian move on to face each other in the finals! |
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