Rob Dougherty is the owner of New England gaming mecca Your Move Games and heads 
the team of the same name. His company has recently moved into developing its own games as well as selling games from other companies, and Rob's here both to try to repeat his twelfth-place finish at Gen Con Indy and promote his new line of card and board games.
Gen Con Indy Top 8 competitor Steve Horowitz started off the festivities by discussing how he could have defeated Brian Kibler in August if he had just made the right series of plays, throwing away an extra ten thousand dollars in the process. Rob tried to console him by pointing out how much of that ten thousand would have gone to taxes, but Horowitz would have none of it.
Horowitz won the die roll and chose to take initiative on the odd turns. Steve paused a long time on turn 3 before playing Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, while Dougherty quickly bashed with Thing, Heavy Hitter, henceforth known as Der Ting. Turn 4 brought Wolverine, New Fantastic Four from Dougherty, while Horowitz answered with a substandard Ricochet.
"Will o' the Wisp? This guy is good," came the observation from Dougherty. "It's a lot better when you play him on turn 4, and then you play a 5-drop on turn 5," quipped Horowitz.
"The trick when you way underdrop is to have two guys to play, like me," remarked Dougherty, as he threw down both Luke Cage and She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters for his turn 5 play. "Looks like we're in the same boat."
Both players left all their characters in the front row.
Ricochet and Spidey teamed up to stun Wolverine with no losses (oh how those little Spider-Friends love to team attack), and Will O' the Wisp roughed up Thing, but not before Nasty Surprise created some problems for Horowitz, as the players traded stuns.
"Do you have counters or anything?" asked Horowitz, needing some way of tracking Will O's boost. Ever the salesman, Rob said, "Sure," pulling out a bag of stylish black and red dice. "You know you can get a whole bag of these if you stop by the Your Move Games booth."
During Rob's attack step, Luke Cage went after Ricochet with a little boost from a discarded Silver Surfer. Flying Kick plus Overload from Steve made sure the attack never happened. She-Hulk tried to Clobber Ricochet into submission, but was stymied when Horowitz's Acrobatic Dodge forced Rob to play Savage Beatdown, running right into a second Overload and costing Rob three men during his recovery step to Horowitz's none. Overload had suddenly turned a tense game into a super-hero slaughter.
Dougherty attempted to get back on track with Hulk, but Horowitz had an answer in Mattie Franklin ◊ Spider-Woman. Steve's formation was Spider-Man and Woman in front, Will O’ behind Spidey, and Ricochet behind Spider-Woman. Spider-Woman attacked Wolverine, KO’ing four Spider-Friends with her ability, making the endurance totals Horowitz 22 - Dougherty 23.
Dougherty put his draw on the chain and searched out Advanced Hardware with Tech Upgrade, exhausting Wolvie in the process.
Horowitz played Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man for his 7-drop, while all Dougherty could do was play a Personal Force Field on Wolverine and an Advanced Hardware on Hulk, putting Wolvie in front with Hulk behind to reinforce, while all Horowitz's men lined up, raring to smash.
A two-counter Will stunned Wolverine without much of a fight before Ricochet and Spider-Woman teamed up to batter Hulk into submission, KO’ing two more of Horowitz's resources in the process and dealing 6 breakthrough endurance to both players. Then Steve swung for 14 with Spidey, taking the first match of the day in fine comeback style.
Horowitz 1 - Dougherty 0
Horowitz: "This deck goes against that about 50-50."
Dougherty: "It was you having the two Overloads and me being put in a situation where you could use them in combination with some bad drops for me that made that one painful. Good luck today."