Almost halfway through the tournament, there are eight undefeated players remaining—perhaps a foreshadowing of tomorrow's Top 8. The variety of these dominant decks is evidence of the innovation and diversity present in today's new format.
Table 1 featured a matchup between Idiocy from the 30th Century, piloted by Craig Edwards, and New School, played by Kevin Michael. Craig Edwards's Dr. Light combo triumphed over Michael's deck, which was designed to curtail aggressive combat strategies rather than a completely non combat-oriented deck. In this case, it seems, the smaller Dr. Light prevails against the larger version.
Table 2 was more of a classic battle, pitting Rich Brady's Teen Titans against Philip Smith's Curve Sentinels. Rich got an extremely aggressive draw and prevailed against the big purple robots.
At table 3, we ran across a mirror match as friends and teammates Dan Bridy and Ryan Lockard played each other with near-identical copies of
The New Brotherhood. Dan got the better draws and defeated his friend to advance to the 5-0 bracket.
Finally, at table 4, we found another Dr. Light deck—this one helmed by Stephen Silverman—attempting to dispatch yet another unique deck, a Green Lantern willpower build played by Dave Fashbender. Sadly for Dave, his deck didn't pack nearly enough disruption to stop Stephen from gaining several billion endurance.
So, going into round 6 we have four undefeated players: Two Dr. Light decks, one New Brotherhood deck, and one copy of the old standby, Teen Titans. This begs the question . . . what's the population at large playing? There were 129 people at the beginning of the day, and this is how the decks being played break down:
Curve Sentinels - 24
Idiocy from the 30th Century - 10
Brave and the Bold - 7
Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies - 7
Gamma Doom - 6
Fantastic Fun - 6
Teen Titans - 6
Doom/League of Assassins - 5
Big Brotherhood - 4
Marvel Knights/Spider Friends - 4
Cop Vomit - 4
X-Stall - 3
New Brotherhood - 3
Spider-Friends - 3
Curve Lantern - 3
Doom/Gotham Knights - 3
There were also two copies each of Gotham Sentinels, Doom Sentinels, Wild Vomit,
Xavier's Dream, and Phantom Phone Booth. There was one copy each of Doom/Spider-Friends/MK, Doom/Teen Titans/Marvel Knights, Arkham/Syndicate, Crime Lords/Underworld, X-Men Beatdown, New Gods, New Gods/Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights/Crime Lords, New School, and Gotham/New Gods.
While Curve Sentinels remains the most popular deck, it's nowhere near as dominant as it has been for most tournaments in recent memory. After Curve, though, the tournament gives way to what looks like an extremely healthy metagame. Of all the decks present, the decks that are performing the best (proportionally) are New School, with the lone player running this powerful deck at the top of the standings, and
The New Brotherhood, with none of its players sporting more than a single loss. And let's not forget the Dr. Light deck—representing two of four undefeated players after half the tournament is done is quite an accomplishment.
An unusual feature of this tournament, besides the newer decks, is the odd under-representation of what one might think would be two of the most-played decks. New School, which made the finals in the most recent PC, has only made one appearance. Also, there are only two
Xavier's Dream decks here, which is quite surprising given that it also made Top 8 in New York. Only time will tell which of these decks will come through and make the Top 8 of this tournament, but I for one am glad that the field is no longer 40 percent Sentinels.