This round’s featured game is a mirror match between Christian Orellana and Daniella Grijalva. Christian is a player from Winnepeg, Manitoba who has been playing Vs. System for only about four months. This is his first $10K event, and really the first event he’s played out of Hobby League. He is new to the feature match area, and as he sat down, he made me promise to let him say hi to his friend Paul. “Hi, Paul.” Crisis averted. Daniella is one of the players from Southern California who have been making a real splash at the major events over the last year. She’s played in both PC New York and PC Los Angeles, but has yet to break the Day 2 barrier, or the feature match curse. “I hate being featured. I lost the last time, and I’m probably going to lose this one too.”

The match started out with a math lesson as Daniella taught us after the die roll that “three does not beat five.” Christian chose evens and let Daniella start off. She revealed Two-Face, Split Personality and kept only him. The game started out about as uneventfully as I’ve ever seen a match begin. Neither player played anything until turn 3. Then, in true mirror match fashion, both players had a Sentinel Mark II. When Daniella attacked in, Christian had a double power-up which stunned Daniella’s Mark II. It appeared that the curse of the feature match had begun to make its presence felt.

Turn 4 brought a matching pair of Sentinel Mark Vs for both players. Christian decided that picking on the little guy was the way to go and he sent his Mark V into Daniella’s Mark II. While he pondered his next attack, Daniella asked, “Do you have another power up and a Reconstruction Program?” Christian paused for a second and said quite meekly, “Yes.” “I’d like to see that,” Daniella shot back sarcastically. After Christian passed, Daniella attacked her Mark V into Christian’s Mark II, but it was Nasty Surprised and a mutual stun occurred.

Next turn, both players kept up the literal mirror match with twin Nimrods. Danielle’s Nimrod decided that there could be only one and, with some help from a power up, forced Christian to play Nasty Surprise to force the mutual stun. Continuing with the Highlander theme, their Mark Vs stunned one another. Mark II, the least violent of the Sentinel brothers, decided that he should probably just stay home, and they went to the next turn.

Take one guess at what the turn 6 play was for both players—that’s right, it was Bastion. Christian immediately went into the tank. Nimrod and Mark V decided that now was the time to take Bastion down. “You’ve got a Finishing Move, I just know it,” said Daniella before powering up her Nimrod three times and letting Bastion die. After the attack, Christian had a sly little smile on his face as he said, “You’re right, you know.” He flashed the Finishing Move and Bastion was quickly removed from the table. Bastion then made his move on Christian’s side and went into the freshly pumped-up Nimrod. All it took was a single pump to allow him to get over Nimrod’s larger frame. That was all Christian could do and he passed it to Daniella. She wanted revenge and decided to send her Mark V into Christian’s Mark II. A few Bastion pumps later, and they both went down.

Turn 7 meant Daniella could play the Two-Face, Split Personality she kept from her initial hand, which she promptly did. Christian agonized for a few moments before deciding to Reconstruction Program for two Mark II's and a Mark V. He opted not to play anything, however, seemingly afraid of giving Two-Face more things to exhaust with his ability. Daniella chose evens with Two-Face’s ability, which left Bastion and Mark V turned on their sides. Nimrod went into Nimrod for mutual stuns, and Face went into Mark V to deal a massive amount of damage to Christian. At the end of this turn, the players were tied with 10 endurance each.

Both players played a Magneto, Master of Magnetism on the following turn, and the ever-important initiative went to Christian. Daniella turns to me and asks, “Are you actually writing down all these quotes?” When I only smiled in response all she could say was, “Oh, crap.” Back into the tank went Christian, as he had a difficult attack ahead of him. Magneto went into Magneto and, through a bit of help from Bastion, he lived through the attack while his counterpart did not. Bastion then went into Two-Face and was more that happy to lend himself a hand. He ended up trading with the man so cool, one face was not enough. After Christian passed with Daniella at –5 and himself at 10, Daniella added up the amount of damage she could do and packed it in.

Christian wins!