We just watched Niles crash and burn in a first feature match, but his deck was quite intriguing nonetheless. I sat down with Niles to talk about his weapon of choice.

Why did you play the deck that you did?

I wanted to play something different, and it seemed solid. I wanted to play something Common Enemy-ish, but Common Enemy is pretty horrible in terms of consistency. I thought that adding a Marvel Knights early game might shore it up.

Is your deck closer to Common Enemy, or New School?

It’s closer to Common Enemy, I’d have to say. It plays more like New School in the early game, and then it turns into an aggressive build of Common Enemy in the late game—I mean, as aggressive as a deck like Common Enemy can get. I think the deck is solid.

I noticed you had a few unorthodox cards in your deck, including Savage Beatdown and Betrayal. What motivated their inclusion?

I took out as much of the bad Common Enemy cards as I could to fit those cards in. This deck has a better matchup against some of the Green Lantern stall decks than both New School and Common Enemy. I think Betrayal is a card that’s pretty much off the radar now. But, then again, the deck’s not everything—winning is as much about the deck as the player. For example, I think I will be pretty confident against Teen Titans for the rest of the day. Incidentally, this deck really wants even initiatives in that matchup, for Spider-Man on turn 6 and Apocalypse on turn 8.

Who do you think will win the tournament today?

I have no idea. Probably Vidi; he’s due. Titans is a good deck, if he can navigate his way through all the mirror matches (it looks like there are a lot of Titans decks out there today). I definitely think he’s good enough to do it, so he’ll probably have an easy route to the top.