Niles Rowland 

 

Life in Las Vegas hasn’t been that exciting of late for Niles Rowland.

“They built a new Wal-Mart down the street—that’s a big deal. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” he says. “I basically do school and Vs—it’s not horribly exciting. I’m pretty close to being a professional student.”

This weekend, his life has gotten a lot more interesting. He’s now in fifth place going into Day 3.

The Las Vegas–based radiology student stunned spectators on Day 1 with his rogue deck and has come through the Draft day with his eye on the extended art Savage Beatdown. He’s had moderate success at Vs. in the past, but he has never sat at the top table.

“I’ve had a couple of $10K Top 8s, and I’ve made a good amount of money,” he says. “People aren’t blown away by tenth and thirteenth place at numerous $10Ks, but it adds up. I guess my biggest accomplishments before this have been solid finishes at every previous Pro Circuit.”

His Constructed deck, which gave him an 8-2 record on Friday, combines the strength of X-Men’s stall with the Hellfire Club’s hidden gimmicks. “I try to stonewall attacks as much as possible,” he explains. “It’s got a lot of good matchups, so I think I’ll do OK tomorrow.”

He says the Squadron Supreme matchup is no worry for him, and he rates Avengers as in his favor, but he says that the new X-Faces builds will probably be up to the coin flip. “My deck was a solid call for the format,” he said. “Dave Frayer and I tested together; he’s come up with some interesting decks in the past.”

He picked up the game at an early local $10K, while living in southern California. “I was able to finish in the Top 8 and make a reasonable amount of money,” he said. With an invite to the first Pro Circuit under his belt, Rowland said it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up—and he hasn’t missed one since. Now, seven Pro Circuits later, Rowland’s in the running for the big prize, and he’s got a good feeling about it.

This is Brian Gates’s first Pro Circuit Top 8. He arrived via roller coaster, going 9–1 on Day 1, and starting Day 2 off 4-and-0 before losing the next four to make round 19 a must-win match. In Brian’s words, “I was happy and then really happy, then, you know, uh-oh . . . and then some despair started to creep in.” His fears were for naught, however. Brian escaped the last round of the Suisse with that crucial fifteenth win and now finds himself in sixth place after two days of grueling competition.

Brian, twenty-one, lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he attends UNLV. A double major in Finance and Economics, Brian plans to graduate in December, 2006. In the meantime, Brian spends his time taking advantage of everything Sin City has to offer, including a remarkably successful group of Vs. players—including Josh Wiitanen and Niles Rowland.

Brian went with XFaces for the constructed portion of the PC. Brian has nothing but good things to say about the deck, created by his friends Josh Wiitanen and Adam Prosak, and tuned by The Donkey Club. He feels very good about his matchup against Squadron. For Brian, the matchup comes down to “hitting Shocker” and hoping his opponent “doesn’t hit the nuts and Other-Earth.” Of course, when you 5–0 Squad on Day 1 like Brian did, it must be hard to feel anything less than confident.

Patrick Richardson

Patrick Richardson turns eighteen on Monday and couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present. Currently a senior in high school, Patrick plans to attend Mizzou University this fall in Columbia, Missouri. Patrick, a St. Louis native, worked with a newly formed team, GG, featuring players from Missouri and Illinois. Patrick got the final version of his constructed deck from the team—a teched-out version of Squadron—a few days before the tournament and proceeded to steamroll the competition on his way to a near perfect 9-and-1 record.

Patrick was slightly less dominant during Day 2’s draft portion, going 5 and 4, but he still feels great about his performance on Saturday, saying, “I hit my goal.” He credits his teammates with teaching him a lot about JLA and “giving [him] as much information as they could” about a draft format—one he had little experience with before today.

Patrick’s parents at home are understandably excited about their son’s success. Patrick admits, “My mom’s freaking out . . .. After Day 1, she was like, ‘You’re 9 and 1 and you’re not in a feature match!’” Well, Mrs. Richardson, your son’s profile got a whole lot larger this weekend, and I’m sure we can all expect a lot more feature matches down the road, starting with one, two, or even three tomorrow.

Anand is a 23 year-old journalist from the heart of New Jersey who spends more time covering Vs. than playing it, when he’s not playing poker or writing for other venues. He’s a valued member of the vaunted TOGIT team and has the great fortune of being roommates with Adam Horvath and Eugene Harvey, whose career winnings in TCGs are probably double what I’ve made in my entire life. How can you go wrong when your close friends and fellow testers live in the same apartment?

It’s obviously paid off for Anand. A natural talent at cards combined with what he’s learned as a TOGIT member and Metagame cover man have launched him and his X-Faces deck handily into the number two slot. This is his second Top 8, the first being in $10K New Jersey 2005, and he’s hoping to build on that tomorrow. His history with the game began with an 0-2 drop performance in the first PCQ ever, and he’s certainly come a long way since then.

Shane is a 26 year-old defense attorney from Stillwater, Oklahoma, and his handle is inkedlawyer. Why? Because he has a tribal tattoo running up the length of his left arm, all the way to the shoulder. “I used to read Valiant’s Eternal Warrior—started all the way in the beginning. The character always had this big tattoo running down the length of his arm, changing throughout history, from Ancient Rome through the Middle Ages to now. The stories were so great and I thought that was so cool that I wanted to get one like it.”

And he did; though with his profession, he always wears a suit and jacket to make sure the tats are covered up. It didn’t help one time when he went to visit a client after-hours in a prison without his suit and was almost booked! But fortunately for Team Alternate Win Condition, he had his pass and remains free to play in the PC!

Shane is playing Squadron, but a build with Genis-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel! He didn’t lose a single mirror match on Day 1, and his only real concern is the Mental deck, which he heard matched up well against Squadron. He wants to give a shout-out to Metagamer Michael Barnes, whose help was invaluable, and to all of his fellow TAWCers. He said that his Top 8 result is due to Barnes’s unbelievable testing and that it was unfortunate that Barnes couldn’t make the trip as well. Somehow I think Shane had something to do with his finish as well, with a $10K Top 8 under his belt already from Chicago last year and obviously much more to come!

Matt Oldaker

 

Matt Oldaker, the Original London Gentleman. Matt is a self-described socialite from Huntington, West Virginia. He is a member of two of the biggest teams in Vs. System. The first is Team Donkey Club, the superteam made up of some of the biggest names in the game, who got together in an attempt to crack this PC wide open. The second team has been around for a little bit longer. Apparently, Matt belongs to the Hellfire Club. “I’m not sure where this came from, but it’s been said that I bear a striking resemblance to Friedrich Von Roehm. In fact, you should see my feature match photo and his card side-by-side. We have the exact same facial hair. His fangs are a little more pronounced, though.” Whether laboring for months with teammates and hometown friends Jason Hager and Anthony Justice, or trying to take over the world through an underground club of sophisticate mutants, Matt Oldaker is sure to leave his mark on the world.

He is playing the X-Mental deck that Donkey Club designed. “About Thursday night, everyone but Nick [Little] and I had audibled to the X-Faces deck. We didn’t feel it and decided to go old school with the X-Men curve deck. Me and Nick ended up with the best records on the team.” His first-round opponent tomorrow is Vidi Wijaya, who is playing the FTN build of Squadron Supreme. When asked his opinion on the matchup, Matt was optimistic. “This format’s all about the combat pumps. The defense pumps aren’t as good as the offense pumps, but a character with an Acolyte Body Armor on it is still good. It makes them blow their plot twists just to get through, which prevents them from doing it later on . . . One of my only losses in yesterday’s play was to Alex Tennet playing the FTN Squad deck. Their deck is more consistent than the normal Squad deck. They play more non–Squadron guys, so they hiccup less. But we’ll see.”

By order of “Big T” Willoughby, I asked Matt Oldaker the most important question he would be asked all weekend. If you could have one food that wasn’t already available in a can canned, what would you choose? As any intelligent member of society would, Matt immediately went deep into thought. I could tell that this question was tearing at his very soul. Eventually he looked at me with a resigned look in his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, that’s an impossible question to answer. I feel it’s a life-defining question and it would be unfair not to give it more thought.” An insightful answer from a delightful and well-groomed West Virginian socialite. Cheers!

Vidi is a professional slacker. He’s 22, and he moved to Los Angeles from Indonesia four years ago simply because he was bored. He never got around to going to college, though he claims he will “one of these days.”

Fast forward a year and a bit. Vidi has added a second PC Top 8 in New York, the members of Realmworx have gone their separate ways, and Ryan Jones all but told Vidi that he was joining FTN. Vidi hasn’t regretted that decision, claiming that FTN is a really good team and that he should have been joined by at least a couple more members.

This is Vidi’s third PC Top 8, to go with his five $10K Top 8s. He’s hoping that his Squadron deck causes some headaches for his opponents, as others have already underestimated it. It actually contains five teams, and he laughed as he recalled hitting Joystick, Melissa Gold, Speed Demon, and Hawkeye on turns 1 through 4, and sat and stared at his Panacea Potion with regret. He also plays the Hellfire Club Firestar and Electric Eve of the Morlocks. He feels his chances are pretty good as long as he gets a decent draw and that the card that he fears the most is Shocker (“he’s pretty bad for me!”).