Anthony Justice is better known as a Constructed player than as a drafter, and his performance yesterday put him in the top draft pod today. As a member of Team Donkey Club, he gets to test with some of the greatest players in the world, including Neil Reeves, who was sitting just two seats down from him in the top pod.

Going in, Anthony had a clear plan of an archetype that is powerful and relatively straightforward to draft—JLI/Injustice Gang. The archetype focuses on going off curve and team attacking and never gets up to more than four resources. Injustice Gang provides small Army characters and extra cards, while JLI gets a little silly with such winners such as Kimiyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light if you can keep under four resources.

The first picks from Anthony were all about JLI. Sue Dibny, Maxwell Lord, and JLI Embassy were each fairly easy picks, given that Justice was effectively running a gambit rather than considering every angle. For picks four and five, it is fair to suggest that Anthony received both a gift and a strong signal of the preferences of the players to his right. Back-to-back copies of All Too Easy quickly made their way into his pile, and while Justice’s poker face did not slip, I think it’s safe to say that he was pretty pleased. The plot twist, which Nate Price tends to refer to as Savage Beatdown (and in this case, the Price is pretty much right), is a regular first pick amongst The Donkey Club, and any situation where you get three first picks in pack one has to be a good thing.

Anthony aggressively took an Insectoid Troopers over Criminal Mastermind, more concerned with his aggressive low curve than getting those pumps up to truly ridonkulus levels, and windmill-slammed a Catherine Cobert eighth pick. The pack got rounded out with a Circe, a couple of copies of Chomin, a Die For Darkseid (the ultimate answer to Gorilla Grodd), and an Infestation.

Pack two again saw Justice lucking out with a fifth pick first pick in the form of Kimiyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light. It had been preceded by the combo of Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle and Booster Gold from picks one and two, the latter over a second Embassy. A second Maxwell Lord and a copy of Glass Jaw soon followed, and Justice spent most of the rest of the pack filling out his fairly low curve.

There were two things that Justice was still missing at the end of pack two. The first was Batman, Hidden Crusader; the 4-drop does everything in the deck, which will likely have fewer resources from turn 5 onward. Teamed-up with Injustice Gang, there is even potential to curve out with Zazzala, Queen Bee and Shadow-Thief in order to get both of his abilities kicking in.

More of a concern, though, was a lack of Team-Ups. With two copies of Maxwell Lord, it would have been nice to have something to fetch.

In pack three, he started out with another All Too Easy and Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death, but he was still desperately looking for that Team-Up. Picks six and seven were Justice League of Arkham and UN Building (which ultimately did not make the cut), while much of the rest of the draft was just curve filling.

The hidden Batman remained hidden.

Ultimately, Justice felt that his deck would have to work for a 2-1. The pumps were there, and there was a strong team attacking element to his build, but without better quality Team-Ups and a few key cards, his deck was a little short of what he might have liked.