Table One: Patrick Yapjoco vs. Matt Hilderman

Patrick Yapjoco kept his streak alive in what was possibly the closest game of the day! “I should’ve lost that one,” he confessed. “He (Hilderman) dropped 8-drop Doom instead of Silver Surfer. I had the Tim Drake/Red Star combo.”

“I had good intentions!” smiled Hilderman. “I thought I saw an angle I could work, but I was just totally wrong.”

Yapjoco used Finishing Move a whopping three times over the course of the match, KO’ing Hilderman’s 3-, 5-, and 6-drops. “He had Flame Traps and Reign of Terror going off all over the place. I basically had no board for the first half of the game.”

The score was 19 to 20 in Hilderman’s favor going into turn 8, but Yapjoco overwhelmed him with a complete set of TeenTitans characters and there was nothing Hilderman could do. A series of attacks dropped him down to exactly 0 endurance, and Yapjoco took the win.

Both men seemed to have a lot of freshly found respect for each other. “That was definitely the best game of the day so far,” remarked Hilderman.

Match Win: Patrick Yapjoco


Table Two: Mike Bodey vs. Jeremy Hardwick

A series of Overloads cut down Hardwick’s innovative F4 Burn deck. Turn 2 saw Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl hit the dirt via the Flamethrower she was packing, while on the next turn he lost Mark Moonrider for the same reason.

“I got greedy . . . I got greedy. If I’d just activated my characters and stuck to burn, things would’ve gone better. But I tried to attack instead, and that really cost me.”

Bodey didn’t curve particularly well, but he didn’t have to—the Overloads were enough to doom Hardwick for the round and he was toast by turn 6.

Match Win: Mike Bodey


Table Three: Olav Rokne vs. Joel “Eekamouse” Eddy

Rokne, playing Evil Medical School, was a horrid matchup for Eddy. “It was a matter of ‘Psimon locks down New Brotherhood.’ I was actually worried about that matchup simply because I haven’t tested against a really good TNB, and I was concerned I’d lose from the endurance trades,” mentioned Rokne. “But I was reinforced pretty early and everything was fine.”

Rokne managed to start his infinite attack loop with Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria on turn 8. It was the fourth game in a row where he’d won with the combo.

 “And yes . . . infinite? My favorite number.” Rokne grinned.

Match Win: Olav Rokne


Table Four: Jaime Tachiyama vs. Kyle Krueger
 
Vs. System’s most prominent blind player, Jaime Tachiyama, threw his Curve Sentinels deck against Kyle Krueger’s TNB build. The game was exceedingly tight, with both players getting off to quite good starts and curving from turn 2 onward. The finisher?

“He got me down to 3 endurance on turn 6,” said Tachiyama. We double-stunned Feral Rage on Mark V, and though Bastion got saved from a team-attack, that double-stun took me down.” Ouch—tight way to go.

“I had a Magneto if it’d gone to turn 7.” Tachiyama shrugged, knowing that sometimes things just don’t go your way.

Match Win: Kyle Krueger