“My deck is a spicy one,” said Shawn Linkous, a North Carolina Vs. System player and judge.

“Yeah, I saw him shuffling Roy Harper in there earlier . . . God, spicy? My deck is more of a tangy one—spicy burns my mouth.” This second set of comments is from walking sound byte and coverage reporter’s best friend Nick Little.

Nick Little is Gary Wise’s pick for the unofficial Vs. System player of the year, which is one reason why we did a deck tech with him earlier. His deck is solid, but it features no real bombs and will take some strong play from him to do well today. Linkous’s deck, on the other hand, is insane. It features Oa and Two-Face, Split Personality, as well as a myriad of good to great drops all the way up the curve.

Turns 1, 2, and 3 were muy caliente for Linkous, giving him Sonar, Black Hand, and Dr. Light, Master of Holograms. This earned a, “Well, it could be worse . . . I guess,” from Little. Nick’s side of the board was a G’Nort that showed up a turn late to the party and a Space Bears. Turn 4 gave Little Myrwhydden (“Why two D’s?” asked Little. “Because one wasn’t bad enough.”) to Linkous’s Fiero. Little mashed well that turn but could only make the endurance totals 40–36 in favor of Shawn. Dr. Light made it very difficult to keep Linkous’s men off the board, and Black Hand complicated the endurance race.

Turn 5 brought forth Solomon Grundy for Linkous and Guy Gardner, Strong Arm of the Corps for Little. Grundy’s lack of flight and range hindered Linkous greatly on this turn because the Space Bears walled off Guy from an attack. This allowed the dumbest member of the Green Lantern Corps to smash Black Hand back for 12 with neither player losing any characters. Book of Oa found Kilowog for Little, discarding Arisia and Jade, while Shawn added Grayven to his army. Maulings ensued, but Little could only get Linkous to 6 endurance. Black Hand added 6 more endurance to his total, making it 13–12 in favor of Little, but he failed in what he’d hoped to do—kill Shawn on turn 6.

“Wow . . . just wow,” was the grim lament from the Indiana boy as Linkous recruited Two-Face, Split Personality to the cause and stacked a Chopping Block on top of Black Hand. Nick brought Alan Scott to the forefront to help out, but then simply extended the hand when Linkous chose to exhaust all the odd characters. He was clearly dejected about a mistake on turn 6 that I didn’t see. I talked to Nick after the match, and he said that Linkous had gone to play an equipment after he started formation on turn 6, and though Nick pointed out that it was illegal, he didn’t see what the equipment was. This lead him to play around Catcher’s Mitt for the whole turn, when it was actually Chopping Block in Linkous’s hand. If Nick hadn’t been playing around the Mitt, Linkous would have been at -18 or so at the end of the turn, and Black Hand wouldn’t have helped him out of that hole.

Linkous 1 – Little 0