Not ten minutes into the first round, Nick Little stopped by the feature match table to report on his progress with Common Enemy. “I mulliganed into a hand of two 5-drops and two 6-drops. My opponent killed me on turn 5 with Captain America, Destiny, and Hunger Dogs, among other things . . . I don’t want to talk about this any more.” Well, them’s the breaks. Perhaps Nick’s opponent has stumbled onto an interesting new archetype!

Dave Spears was doubly happy after round 1. He stopped by the feature match table even earlier than Nick did—his opponent didn’t show up. How lucky! He was sporting a grin even before his victory, though, because his lovely girlfriend Hope made the trip down to Dragon Con with him. Here’s a picture of the happy couple. “Dave’s playing a bad deck on purpose,” joked one of the players here, “because he has alternate plans for Day 2.”

I caught up with Wess Victory, last year’s winner, right after round 2. Had he come across anything interesting today? “Hunger Dogs! Did you hear . . . ?” Yeah man, I heard. “. . . Oh. Well, in that case, there’s not much going on except for the Kang/New Brotherhood deck. That, and everyone’s saying that Titans is dead. Although that’s the only deck I’ve played today, so I’m not sure that I believe it.” Wess is 1-1 against Titans, the deck that catapulted him to victory last year. And yes, folks, the speculation was correct—he is playing X-Men beatdown. We’ll try to feature this hot little number a little later in the day.

In case you missed it in the feature, Joe Carey earned a turn 3 victory in round 3. He’s playing the hottest new combo deck that’s the talk of the tournament. By hot new combo, of course, I am referring to a New Brotherhood deck that was old a year ago. Joe has always liked his Brotherhood, and it treated him well for the first three rounds of this event. This just goes to show that no matter how the metagame changes, powerful strategies from bygone days can remain true competitors.

I just had a conversation with someone in the know about some of the rules of Dragon Con this year. Among them? “Body paint alone is no longer considered to be an appropriate form of costume.” Yes, folks, this has actually come up as an issue in past conventions. “Weapons must remain sheathed at all times.” Sensible!

In addition to the myriad of players and judges here, people who play a different sort of role in the Vs. community have made the trip as well. There are a total of nine Vs. artists here offering both prints and original art. You can find a partial list in this thread on VsReams. Among the artists is Arthur Suydam, who drew the art for Thor, God of Thunder. You can buy the original painting of this card for the low, low price of . . . $16,000. That’s a lot of $10K wins.