This feature match pitted well-known New Zealand TCG player and coordinator James White against Anthony Macall from Melbourne. James lamented that he was only here for the Tournament Organisers’ conference the next day, so he should be blamed for any mistakes he might make, and Macall was secretly pleased that he got a relatively new player to the game. Anthony is more casually known as “Migga” to his friends, and gets special props for lending his deck to me for the Pro Circuit event.

Anthony began with the initiative, with no mulligans from either player. He started off with an unanswered Pantha. James didn’t get too far behind, recruiting Toad on his turn, and now it was Migga’s turn to miss a drop. A flipped Tamaran surprised Toad when he tried to attack Pantha, causing them both to be stunned.

The third turn had the terrific Beast Boy for Anthony, and James missed yet another drop. With Beast Boy attacking Toad, James attempted to evade the attack with an Acrobatic Dodge, but Anthony put an end to that idea by powering-up Beast Boy with Tamaran.

For the third time in the game, James missed his drop. The situation became even direr with the massive Russian Red Star coming to work for Anthony. James futilely attacked Pantha, and after they both were stunned (after a Tamaran on Pantha), Beast Boy and Red Star laid into the New Zealander, bring his endurance total to 21 with Macall at a healthy 46.

Garth ◊ Tempest added to White’s woes, but he finally was able to recruit a character in the form of Magneto, Eric Lensherr. Without the initiative, James was still in deep trouble. With Toad in front of Magneto, Pantha was forced to attack him first, and James responded with an Acrobatic Dodge. Anthony played Not So Fast on the Acrobatic Dodge, but had no answer to White revealing Lost City and powering Toad up to a 6 ATK/5 DEF. Pantha became stunned. Beast Boy stepped up to avenge his fallen comrade, and now being 6 ATK/6 DEF meant that Toad was no match for the green man. Migga now attempted to take down Magneto with Red Star, powering him up with Tamaran and playing a Beatdown that had been returned to his hand via Garth. Two power-ups rendered the attack useless. Finally, Garth tried his hand at taking down Magneto, but he was also unsuccessful, after James showed what was in his hand the whole time—yet another Magneto! After Garth went down, it looked like he was mounting some sort of comeback with the endurance totals at 37 (Macall) and 19 (White).

James continued the comeback by playing Quicksilver, Speed Demon on turn 6. Anthony was able to recruit only Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, but most players will agree that he is often more than enough in this situation. At the beginning of James’ attack, Migga exhausted everyone except Garth to pump up Roy Harper’s ATK to 10, which allowed him to KO a resource and stun Quicksilver before he had a chance to take down anyone. James still attempted to push through his initiative by attacking Garth with Magneto, but all he was successful in doing was to force a Heroic Sacrifice from Anthony, stunning Pantha. The final attack of the turn had Toad trying to pick up where Magneto left off, and James powered him up twice in a final effort to stun the Atlantean Sorcerer. Macall had the answer yet again in the form of Overload, to which James returned him to hand.

With the last two initiatives favouring the defender, it was only a matter of time before the attacker had the best of it. Anthony gave himself the best chance by recruiting a boosted Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detective. James didn’t help himself very much with no recruits. The first attack of the turn had Garth attacking the Speed Demon, to which James responded with a power-up. With Lost City in play, Anthony was forced to play Savage Beatdown to stun him, but James had other ideas. He revealed an Avalon Space Station, returned two Quicksilvers to his hand and powered up another two more times to bring his stats to an impressive 17 ATK/17 DEF. As an unfortunate side effect of that, he now had more than twice his printed ATK, and we all know what that means! With Quicksilver stunned and his enduran