After a long day of competition, friends Luke Bartter and Ben “TBS” Seck squared off in the final match of the tournament. “TBS” is an Australian gaming stalwart and reminds everyone of the fact often, which means losing to him in such an arena is worse than death. Luke, however, knew from the outset that Ben’s combo-oriented Gotham Knights/Fantastic Four build was a tough match up.
The two Sydney gamers tied at Rock, Paper, Scissors four times before Ben figured out the metagame and won the contest. Ben choose the odd initiatives (odd as he is) and led off with a GCPD Officer. Luke had nothing and was attacked for the trouble. Luke had nothing on turn two and Ben played Bat-Signal for an Alfred Pennyworth and recruited him along with Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl, who attacked for 1 endurance loss.
On turn 3, Ben flipped a team-up, activated Alfred to get a Signal Flare, played it and fetched Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, who was recruited along with Alfred once again. Ben then activated Mr. Fantastic, which scored him a Utility Belt. Luke managed a Rogue, Anna Raven this turn, and was able to attack due to Ben’s largely exhausted board. She went after Reed and Ben forgot to reinforce, taking the breakthrough endurance loss.
On turn 4, Luke landed Sabretooth, Feral Rage. Ben used Alfred to get A Child Named Valeria and replayed Alfred, along with two cops, Harvey Bullock and a Utility Belt on an officer. He then played the acquired plot twist, and ended up taking no endurance loss that turn.
Ben used Alfred to find a Signal Flare at the start of turn 5, and found a Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle. He recruited her, played a resource point to draw a card, replayed Alfred, and brought out another cop. Finally, he played another Child. Luke, meanwhile, got a Quicksilver, Speed Demon, but the plot twist once again made combat worthless. At the end of the turn Ben drew another card by activating Babs.
Luke used Avalon Space Station to get a Pyro that had found its way into his KO'd pile, and that was his sole recruit. Pyro attempted to burn Ben, but he extinguished the flames with something useful from the Utility Belt. Ben drew a card with Barbara, activated Alfred for a Crowd Control, replayed Alfred, played Cosmic Radiation, activated Alfred again to get Valeria, replayed Batman’s butler once more, and passed. During recovery, he got another card with Oracle.
Turn 7 saw a very, very fat Batman, The Dark Knight wade into the match, made all the bigger from a full exhaustion of his little men, followed by Cosmic Radiation, rinsed and repeated. Luke played Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr and used a Genosha, but conceded when Ben showed his multiple copies of Press The Attack.
After about 12 hours of playing, on the back of a PCQ the day before and a massive bus trip, Luke found himself too exhausted (perhaps from Harvey Bullock’s effect) to try and play two more long, drawn out games against a deck like Ben’s. He conceded the final match and accepted the exceptionally bitter taste of defeat that comes with a loss to Ben when you’re surrounded by rowdy Australian Vs. players.
Ben wins the match, and is crowned the $10K Melbourne Champion.