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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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| Round 7: Radames “Rod” Baldwin vs. Matt Boccio |
| Brian-David Marshall |
| January 15, 2005 |
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 Rod Baldwin was the talk of the tournament with his 5-0 run to kick off the day. He was playing an aggro X-Men deck and took his first loss in the last round when he ran afoul of Texas $10K winner Robert Leander playing Teen Titans. This round, he has to contend with another $10K winner playing his signature build—Matt Boccio with a New Brotherhood deck.
Rod is a thirty-something elementary school teacher from School #1 in Linden, NJ, who is here with his son Corey. The two got into card gaming when Corey caught the inevitable Yu-Gi-Oh! bug a few years back. From there, they moved onto Vs. System and when they bought the original two-player starter deck Rod began playing with the characters he has loved since childhood—the Uncanny X-Men.
This is Baldwin's first major tournament, although he is an avid reader of all the major Vs. sites. The constant bashing of the X-Men team on those various sites wore on the teacher, and he vowed to play them in a tournament to prove people wrong. His 5-0 start on the day has silenced some of the team’s critics, although one round after taking his first loss, the prospect of playing against Matt Boccio presented a daunting challenge to getting back on the winning track.
Boccio skipped Pro Circuit Los Angeles after winning the first $10K in Philadelphia with Brotherhood Burn and making the Top 8 of the first PC playing Russell Pippen’s FF Cars deck at the suggestion of Ryan Lockheart. When Matt decided to get back in the swing of tournament play, he turned to Ryan for a decklist once again. Ryan handed him a New Brotherhood deck that included Ka-Boom!
Matt Boccio opened with Mastermind and Savage Land while Rod had no turn 1 play. Rod came back with Cyclops, Slim on turn 2 and flipped up Cerebro. Pyro came down for Boccio and he got in 3 endurance loss when it traded stuns with Slim. At the end of the turn, Boccio flipped a Ka-Boom! to take out Cerebro.
Rod was unfazed and played Bishop on turn 3, setting him behind Slim. Boccio sent a Savage Land-enhanced Mastermind after Slim, and Avalanche knocked boots with Bishop. Pyro did his thing, and the endurance totals were 45 to 36 in Boccio’s favor.
Baldwin revealed Longshot to play Wolverine, Logan—several spectators were shocked to learn that Longshot is actually affiliated with the X-Men—and he stood in front of Bishop. Boccio had Destiny and Mastermind. He set Destiny behind Mastermind and Avalanche in front of Pyro. He used Destiny’s ability on Wolverine. Rod flipped a Flying Kick and went after Pyro with Bishop. Boccio lost 8 endurance, while Rod lost 3 from Pyro’s ability. Wolverine came after Avalanche and Boccio took some more endurance loss with no reasonable counterattack.
Boccio had Sabretooth, Feral Rage for turn 4 while Rod had Gambit. Wolverine stayed up front ahead of Bishop while Gambit hung out in the support row. Destiny saw bad things in Gambit’s future. Matt sent Sabretooth in and Gambit stunned Mastermind with his ability. Bishop reinforced. Pyro came over for Wolverine and Boccio flipped up two copies of The New Brotherhood, then Ka-Boom!ed Cerebro for good measure. The endurance totals were 24 to 15 in Boccio's favor.
Rod led off turn 6 with John Proudstar ◊ Thunderbird—Boccio leaned over to read the card—and put him in front of Bishop. Gambit joined him in the front row. Boccio’s Rogue, Anna Raven joined Sabretooth up front and Destiny hung back to make dire predictions about John Proudstar’s future.
Rod launched a Flying Kick from his hand to trade Gambit with Sabretooth. John Proudstar came over for Anna Raven and he had the power-up to avoid trading. Bishop went after Destiny and the score was nine-all when the turn ended.
 Boccio left Sabretooth up front and Rod used a Surprise Attack to drop Boccio to 4 endurance, but Rod had no other play. Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr showed up to exhaust John Proudstar at the start of combat, and Sabretooth pounced on Gambit. Rod adjusted his endurance total to -4 and then attempted to Nasty Surprise Gambit, but the players had already passed the point where Nasty Surprise was legal. With Magneto still waiting in the wings to attack, and with no counterattack possible on Rod’s side of the board, it hardly mattered.
Matt Boccio continued his march toward another solid performance with a 6-1 record while Rod's record fell to 5-2, although Rod was still undefeated against players who have never won a $10K tournament.
“I knew that once I hit 5-0 the competition would get stiffer. I lost to Robert Leander and Matt Boccio, two of the best Vs. players in the world. What can you say? My son Corey started out 0-3 playing [Teen] Titans and has fought back to 4-3. I am much prouder of that than anything I have done. Special thanks to my wife for letting us both be here today.” |
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