Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

2005 is at a close, and somehow or other, I drew the Metagame.com short straw to do yearly review. Sounds like fun, right? With thirty-nine $10K events, four Pro Circuits, four new sets, one deck so good it was banned, and plenty of decks so good that various players suggested they should be, it’s going to be a whole bushel of the stuff. Buckle in and get ready for a quite the ride. There is plenty to see, and believe me, I have no intention of missing anything.

At the start of the year, Vs. was in fine fetter. With two Pro Circuits down, players were just starting to feel like “pros.” In its first year, Vs. had seen Marvel and DC Origins, Web of Spiderman, and Man of Steel released. The metagame had trembled in the face of Brotherhood big and small, Common Enemy, Teen Titans, X-Stall, and a new deck featuring (of all things!) Sentinels, who had been much maligned initially as the “filler” team in Origins. More on that to come.

With PC Indianapolis winner Brian Kibler working for UDE, Ryan Jones was the only PC winner out “in the wild,” but he was merely part of a larger pack of players looking to make names for themselves in 2005 in this game of battling superheroes. In 2004, Vs. System had conquered the USA.

I have cousins who live in Fiji, revelling in the fact that they sit right on the international date line and see the new year come in first out of anywhere on the planet. Vs. System wasn’t in Fiji in 2005 (possible thought for the future, UDE?), but it did manage to kick off the year pretty close to the date line with the very first $10K event.

$10K Melbourne saw one Ben “The Ben Seck” Seck holding the shiny trophy of a $10K winner. He wasn’t even holding it for somebody else while they ordered dinner, either. TBS took down the field with Cosmic Cops, bringing a new deck type to Vs. System that utilized the power of Cosmic Radiation and A Child Named Valeria. Players across the globe rejoiced as the value of their PC1 Batman, The Dark Knight rose, while various members of R&D shook their heads and considered offering TBS a job at UDE. In the background, Alex Brown made his second $10K Top 8 and again missed out on the grand prize. His time was yet to come.

Back in the states, the ripples of the win in Melbourne did not take long to spread. The New Jersey $10K saw a great turnout of players with huge amounts of TCG experience. Team TOGIT’s stomping ground was defended by many of the super-team who had done so well at PC LA 2004, including Osyp Lebedowicz with those Cosmic Cops. But he, like many others, fell to Rob Leander in the Swiss. And in a tense final, Rob took his Teen Titans to victory against more big Batmen, this time in the hands of Roy St Clair. Rob was the very first person to win two $10K events, and he’d used Teen Titans in each. After the PC where his Realmworx teammate Ryan Jones had also rocked with the Titans, the cries again went up about cards being broken.

Throughout the year, the main thing that appeared to be broken was the stuck record crying that various cards were overpowered. Clearly, players hadn’t noticed that Overpowered was in Marvel Origins and that most of the cards they were comparing it with were nothing like it. People, eh? They love their little jokes.

The other interesting developments from New Jersey were some nifty bits of tech shown off by Matthew Meyer in the form of his Team Superman deck (dubbed Phantom Phone Booth) and the first high profile inclusion of Genosha in Sentinels by John Rich.

In many respects, January was a pretty slow start to the year. After all the stresses and strains of the holiday season, $10K events were a little sluggish to kick off compared with the five that ran over the four weekends of February.

Germany had its first $10K in Hannover at the same time that a whole new set of “Vegas Stories” were being written on the other side of the Atlantic. That Hans Joachim Höh won his first $10K with Sentinels wasn’t at the time particularly big news. Back then, Hans was just another German player, albeit with more hair than most. The year was still young. The big story in Vegas, from a Vs. perspective at least, managed not to stay in Vegas. Tim Batow took it down with a My Beloved deck that hadn’t seen huge amounts of love before and has barely touched on the fringes of Vs. consciousness since. In a Top 8 featuring four Sentinels builds, he triumphed in the finals against Adam Prosak’s Teen Titans. He celebrated afterward with some gymnastic displays previously considered to be beyond the realm of gamers.

The following week, the Titans were again in the finals, this time in Columbus. At the command of Pro Circuit Indianapolis Top 8’er Gabe Walls, they again came away with the brass ring. Big GWalls got to have the last laugh with the Titans having one more deck in the field than Sentinels, and one more winner, also. The Top 8 as a whole was very powerful, featuring John Rich, Alex Tennet, Rob Leander, Aaron Brieder, and an artist by the name of Jason Hager who had something very creative to show the Vs. community as a whole. His Evil Medical School deck featured both Dr. Light and Dr. Doom for some vicious control of the board. There was even a set of specially modified GCPD Officers in the deck, which met with a lot of interest after it got all the way to the finals against Walls. Hager got a taste for that bridesmaid position in February. He would be back.

Clearly, Titans doing so well rather irked a certain impressively quaffed Teuton, and Hans Joachim Höh fought back for the robots, winning $10K Bologna and becoming the second ever double $10K winner; he took down powerhouse European players Matteo Paolucci (winner of $10K Vienna) and Raffaele Lo Moro in consecutive Top 8 rounds for his second trophy in as many weeks.

The robots took it down again in Orlando, Florida in the hands of Jacob Hershberger. Despite having never played in a Constructed tournament before, Hershberger took down David Bauer’s Sentinels in a pretty busy mirror match. Much like in the world of angry dance-offs, as spring rolled around in Vs. System it appeared to be all about being good at doing the robot.

March

As March rolled around, the Titans and Sentinels continued to battle on in a fashion quite un-catered to by modern comic book writing. Worlds apart, they clashed again in the finals of $10K Los Angeles, held at the Wizard World convention. There, Jack Garrett and Josh Wiitanen (on his fourth $10K Top 8) battled in a Las Vegas–only final, each looking for satisfaction after having missed out at their “local” $10K. Jack Garrett’s Sentinels took it down even without Bastion showing up in the final game, and we had another $10K champion.

At the same time in London, it looked not unlikely that there would be more robots at the top of the standings. $10K winners Hans Joachim Höh, Richard Edbury, and Tim Willoughby (yes, that’s right, I won a $10K once . . . in 2006 I might even make it a New Year’s resolution to shut up about the fact) each showed up to the event with Sentinels. All three made the money, and Edbury and Höh faced off in the semifinals (indeed, Mr. Edbury would like to point out that he has a lifetime record of 2-0 against Herr Höh in $10K Top 8). However, this was not the story of the tournament. Dean Sohnle, a Canadian with a cheery demeanour and a crazily complicated deck full of equipment, took down all comers to win from nowhere with a brand new deck archetype—Fantastic Fun!

Marvel Knights becoming legal didn’t appear to have made any drastic changes to the face of the metagame, with the exception of the fact that Hounds of Ahab had given Sentinels a whole new way to dominate the game—one that could be fetched as necessary by Boliver Trask. With Overload just making the deck even more powerful, R&D must have been glad to see Dean’s deck show up and smash face.

The next week in Madrid, there was another nifty creation in the top spot. Jose Maria Aramburu won with a highly innovative “Brotherhood of Mephisto” deck that extensively utilized Marvel Knights cards, including the Midnight Sons engine alongside Brotherhood and Underworld cards, to win. He beat Evil Medical School in the finals. In Europe, the metagame appeared to be a little more open—obviously a good thing with Pro Circuit Amsterdam looming.

Before assorted card players could all bundle into assorted flying cans without enough legroom for the first leg of their world tour, there was the little matter of $10K Chicago. The Windy City’s Golden Age $10K was running at odds to the Marvel Modern Age testing that players needed for Amsterdam, but there was still a busty turnout that culminated in Top 8 full of impressive names. Josh Wiitanen and Dave Spears maintained their perennial assault on Top 8, along with Tim Batow and Michael Jacob. It was Jacob who got the trophy, though, with the third consecutive “new” deck. Of course, in the case of MJ’s “Force” deck (a Mutant Nation build majoring in Longshot shenanigans), the deck was far from new. It was what he had been playing since Pro Circuit Indianapolis and before. Michael demonstrated in prime fashion that knowing your deck and its matchups better than an opponent can be a powerful tool when grinding out one’s victories.

Pro Circuit Amsterdam was, for most of its competitors, the very most foreign Pro Circuit ever conceived. As the debut of the Marvel Modern Age format, it would have been something a little bit different even if it had been in the USA. As things stood, though, it was Schipol Airport in Amsterdam that hosted the first Pro Circuit of 2005—something a little bit different to kick off the year’s Pro Circuit run. It doesn’t take much effort to find a good time in Amsterdam, and UDE went all out to ensure that players never had to leave the airport to do so if they wished. With X-Statix battling Sinister Syndicate battling Marvel Knights, the format was open and interesting and provided a great platform for the then-maligned Web of Spiderman set to show off its moves alongside Marvel Knights. When the dust settled, it was New Jersey native Adam Horvath who was working out how to transport his big pointy trophy back to the United States. His Honor Among Thieves deck won the battle of the beatdown against Team FTN’s Mike Dalton in the finals.

Horvath would go on to play the winner of the first DC Modern Age Pro Circuit at the end of the year, looking to win himself and various PCQ winners more money. In April, it looked like he had a fair shot. Things didn’t stay that way, of course, but for the whole while that things were in Amsterdam, the party never stopped.

Alongside the Pro Circuit there was a $10K, of course, which was utilizing the rather more familiar Golden Age format. Some chose to play decks similar to those in the big show; indeed this was the first place that a Marvel Knights concealed deck did anything much in Golden Age. There were still many decrying the choice of playing anything but Sentinels. Hans Höh made yet another Top 8 with the deck and looked likely to be on his way to an unrivalled third $10K win. He had a bit of a challenge from the contingent that came out of England, though.

After $10K London, Dean Sohnle (then residing in London) made quite a splash with his Fantastic Fun deck. Enough that his opponent from the finals of that $10K, Richard Edbury, elected to pick up the deck and play it too. For the second straight $10K in which they played, Richard beat Hans in the semifinals, only to have to face Dean’s Fantastic Fun for the trophy. In a battle of Jedi and Padawan, Dean again won with his creation in a feature match so complicated that it took two writers to report on (and indeed took enough out of Edbury that he hasn’t been seen much on the Vs. System scene since). The mild mannered Sohnle had done it again, and players that had written off the London win as a fluke were forced to reappraise their explanation of events.

Indeed, it seemed that there were a few who did take to heart the power of Fantastic Fun. $10K Seattle was the first event after Amsterdam and it saw two copies of the deck in the Top 8 in the more-than-capable hands of Eric Cabanero and Vidianto Wijaya. Other players had been paying attention to the deck and had some reasonable answers, though; Olav Rokne did very well with Evil Medical School and Peter Sundholm ultimately won the whole show with a teched-out build of Sentinels.

For the other $10K in April, players had been keeping track of the events in Amsterdam, but in this instance it was all about the Sealed Pack portion. After two Top 4 finishes at Australian $10K events, Alex Brown ultimately had to travel to Auckland, New Zealand and play in the first Sealed Pack $10K to win a trophy of his very own. With their strong reputation as mad keen drafters, it seemed pretty appropriate that an Australasian got the first Sealed Pack event. Scott Hunstad, Paul van der Werk, and James Kong were all also battling at the final Draft table, only to have Brown take it down (to town without a frown) with an “insane” Underworld/X-Statix deck.

If April was busy, then May could only be described as, well, busier. Dean Sohnle continued his assault on the Golden Age metagame and came just one position short of winning an unprecedented three $10K events in a row with exactly the same deck at $10K Paris. His nemesis on that day? It was a Sentinels deck played by the German Kristian Kockott, who was running the new hot tech of the day—the previously rubbished Origins rare, Micro-Sentinels.

Mexico also saw its very first $10K, during which Jason Grabher-Meyer tried to par-boil himself in his own big long leather trench coat. From within his own personal sauna, Jason bore witness to a redoubling of EMS players led by Kyoshi Padilla, who won a mirror-matched final with Jason Hager’s creation. Hot stuff.

The southern hemisphere fun continued with The Revenge of the Kiwi. At Golden Age $10K Brisbane, Auckland native Shaun Hayward had the opportunity to strike back at that dastardly Alex Brown, who had all too recently come across to New Zealand and taken their only $10K trophy. The two met in the final (Alex’s fourth $10K Top 8), and Shaun’s Sentinels beat out the Brown Teen Titans. Revenge is, according to four out of five blind taste testers, sweet.

About twelve hours behind at $10K Detroit, the Sentinels were doing it again. This time the winner was Loren Nolen, fuelling the theory that to be the best at playing Sentinels, it’s a virtual requirement to have a huge mane of hair. Between Nolen, Peter Sundholm, and Hans Höh, the theory was gaining strength, volume, and a beautiful shine. Also in the Top 8 were regulars Adam Prosak, Sammy Gilly, and Vidianto Wijaya. Vidi continued to make a name for himself as one of the best players never to have won a big event but always to make the Top 8 (and indeed to confuse many spellcheckers along the way).

Pro Circuit New York, the first east coast PC, took place in a balmy May. The Mets had just beaten the Yankees and all was right with the world . . . except for the fact that Sentinels and Overload seemed to have something of a stranglehold on Golden Age. After an entertaining excursion where one English reporter (who for the purposes of this story shall remain nameless) tried to get to the Josh Ravitz Center rather than the Jacob Javitz Center, the Pro Circuit proved to be as robotic as expected—that is to say, very.

Players around the room were packing slightly different collections of technology, including Mojoverse, Apocalypse and Latverian Embassy, but one way or another, Pro Circuit New York was all about the continued ascendancy of the machines. Le plus ça change . . .

There were some glimmers of hope, though. Both Michael Barnes and Jason Hager found their way to the Top 8 with combo and control decks respectively that were designed specifically to give the mutant hunters fits. The Xavier’s Dream deck in Barnes’s hands got him as far as the semifinals, where Adam Bernstein showed us that if you throw enough robots at a problem, it will eventually go away. In the finals, Hager with his New School deck (an updated version of his Evil Medical School deck) came very close to causing an upset. Bernstein’s choice to include Apocalypse proved the doom of Hager’s innovative control deck, and the robots secured themselves another trophy.

At the same time that Adam Bernstein was winning the Pro Circuit, Adam Horvath, winner of Pro Circuit Amsterdam, was doing his best in the face of the Pro Circuit Curse. As is tradition, after having won one PC he couldn’t possibly make Day 2 of the very next one. Instead, Horvath had to content himself with being in the finals of the Green Lantern Corps Sealed Pack $10K. There he met Doug Tice in the finals and had a rough matchup against two Qwardian Council Halls in the early game and Hal Jordan ◊ Spectre in the late game. Tice walked away with the trophy, and the fact remained that nobody who has won a $10K has won a PC or vice versa.

Players took some small solace in the fact that as soon as the Pro Circuit was out of the way, the new Green Lantern Corps set would become legal for Golden Age; perhaps with it would come an answer to the dual threat of Sentinels and Overload.

Cue the canned laughter, followed by any number of bad puns about a Dr. Light at the end of the tunnel.

June’s first $10K was in Philadelphia, and while there were the usual suspects of Titans and Sentinels, only one deck really ever looked likely to walk away with the grand prize.

The Dr. Light Deck, sometimes known as ‘That Damned Dr. Light Deck,” made the most of the very powerful synergy between Dr. Light, Master of Holograms, Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century, Cosmic Radiation, and Devil’s Due. Its apparently convoluted combination could be relatively straightforwardly assembled by turn 3 or 4 for the win and was really quite tough to disrupt . . . assuming you even knew what was coming.

Unfortunately for most in Philadelphia, the deck was an overload of nasty surprises, and few were surprised to see Stephen Silverman facing Craig Edwards in a virtual mirror match in the finals. Craig continued the trend he’d started at PC Indianapolis of coming in second with his very clever combo deck when Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius hit play. He succumbed to Silverman in a final match whose three games totalled eleven turns. Eep.

In $10K Manila, the format was, safely enough, Marvel Modern Age. Dominic Ortega won using an innovative Marvel Knights/Underworld build in the Philippines’s only $10K to date. From the photo on the front page of the coverage for this $10K, Dominic appears to be rather smaller than most Vs. players. I have been assured that the picture of him next to Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern is actually a cunning piece of perspective-warping photography. If not, I am very impressed that Mr. Ortega can shuffle a Vs. deck, let alone win a $10K with one.

In Sydney, Dr. Light was back in the top spot, this time in the hands of Chris Kwan. While the Australians did have a rather nifty Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies deck to bring to the fore, it ultimately couldn’t stop another $10K from going to the silly combo deck.

$10K Charlotte went in a similar way, with Jason Hager finally breaking his second place curse with a win over Doug Tice in a mirror match final. With four of the Top 8 decks being “The Light Show” and all of the decks in the finals having the potential to win on turn 3, something had to be done.

And indeed, done something was. (Apologies for the last somewhat Yoda-esque sentence. It will be followed by more Yoda speak for the remainder of the paragraph.) Much speculation was there over the dark side of the combo deck. Winning too quickly was it. Too hard to disrupt it was deemed. Too powerful was both The Light Show and Overload. Changes to be made had there to be. Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century some errata earned, stopping Dr. Light combos. Banned was Overload.

The month of July could realistically never be as full of drama as those that had preceded it. Instead, it was diverse and entertaining. Nick Little and Orry Suen won themselves $10K Origins 2005 and $10K Singapore respectively in the Green Lantern Sealed Pack format. Nick had long been a mainstay on the Pro Circuit, consistently finishing in the high money without a Top 8. As one of the consensus best players on the circuit, he was well due his win.

Indeed, July seemed like a month of deserving victories, as Adam Prosak won in San Diego with Teen Titans in the first major Golden Age event following the banning of Overload. It was felt by many that the banning represented a slight shift in the relatively close match between Titans and Sentinels for “best deck” status that made the tiny terrors a good bet. Of course, play skill ultimately trumps everything, including deck choices, and it would be just as easy to suggest that Adam Prosak is always a good bet. For San Diego, this was definitely true.

To round out the month, there was $10K Munich. Germany has had a good uptake of Vs. at every level and was looking to push into Pro Circuit contention in the second rotation of the Pro Circuit. With the innovative field in Munich, this seemed very possible. Hans Höh distinguished himself by playing something other than Sentinels (a Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies, or GLEE deck) into the Top 8. He was joined by some robots, a League of Assassins deck, Titans, and a massively aggressive concealed Marvel Knights deck played by Karl-Heinz Bergt. In the absence of Overload, it seemed that attacking for lots was all of a sudden right back in style, and it was Bergt who took home the trophy and gave the rest of the world a whole new archetype to consider.

Another Pro Circuit month, August featured much speculation regarding what would be the best deck to play at the big show. The format was DC Modern Age and featured the Green Lantern set, which was powerful enough to have already produced decks that could compete within Golden Age. Without the benefit of $10K events to pin down the metagame, it was an interesting tournament.

Before the Pro Circuit could kick off, there was the small matter of $10K Wizard World Chicago. A Golden Age $10K, it was another event in which Sentinels proved their worth, this time for David Bauer. With each passing $10K, Sentinels showed themselves to be versatile and powerful. While there were decks that could give the robots a run for their money at many events, it often took only a tweaking of the Sentinels deck to put the robots back on top.

At the Pro Circuit, it appeared that the majority of the field had reached the same conclusion regarding the best deck for the day—GLEE. The potent Green Lantern/Emerald Enemy deck had a lot of power and versatility, using The Ring Has Chosen to find the right drops, Birthing Chamber to draw more cards, and Dr. Light, Master of Holograms to ensure more characters on the board. Pro Circuit Indianapolis proved to be a format of many mirror matches. Where possible in the Draft portion, many chose to force GLEE as well with similarly effective results. The PC saw some of the first Drafts of the Avengers set, also, which was hailed as a great addition to Vs. System . . . even by the people losing to the deadly Faces of Evil archetype.

The Top 8 in Indianapolis was all about GLEE, but with some interesting stories. It featured two German players and two other players, Michael Jacob and Dave Spears, who managed to crack into the Top 8 with other decklists. After busy seasons from both without a PC Top 8, it was a real achievement for each. Of course, all of this quickly became overshadowed by GLEE, and in particular, the build of one online team known as FTN. The FTN GLEE build put three players in the Top 8 (including Mike Dalton for the second time), and two of them reached the finals. This resulted in one of the most jovial finals seen thus far in Vs. System history, as teammates battled for who would have to carry the bigger trophy and the PC Winner’s Curse.

Meanwhile, at the same time that FTN’s David Leader was ultimately beating Jason Dawson in the finals of the Pro Circuit, Chuck Bell, another member of Team FTN, was winning the DC Modern Age $10K. One way or another, the force was strong with this collection of Vs. Players.

$10K Toronto, featuring the Avengers Sealed Pack format, was Canada’s very first $10K, and it was decimated by a raiding party from their southern neighbours. Three players sporting Team RIW Hobbies shirts made the Top 8 and then finished in the top three. Dave Spears and Michael Jacob, fresh off their Top 8s in Indianapolis, met in the finals. Jacob won the whole thing and took his second $10K title.

This month kicked off with $10K Atlanta, which was the first $10K to feature decks from the Avengers expansion. While Teen Titans and Sentinels did very well (as did an updated version of the Marvel Knights concealed deck from Munich), they were joined in the Top 8 by the very first of a string of decks using cards from the Avengers set. Kang City was a Lost City/Avalon Space Station–based Kang deck that proved to be quite the efficient beatdown machine, but with enough control elements to keep other decks honest. It wasn’t the ultimate winner; that was Adam Prosak, whose Titans just kept on paying him (in spite of Null Time Zone–fuelled rumors that they were on the wane), winning Adam his second $10K. The race for who could get to turn 3 first had a new runner.

Australia had another Sealed Pack $10K, and again Alex Brown was in the finals, this time with the Avengers set in Sealed Pack and Booster Draft. This time he lost out to Scott Smith. One way or another, though, Alex Brown made a name for himself as one of the most dangerous Vs. players south of the equator.

October was a quiet month for Vs. when one simply runs the numbers, but very important from a wider perspective of the game. The Japanese have a gaming culture that has fostered champions in all sorts of games, from TCGs to video games and beyond. It was only a matter of time before Vs. System and its largely American superheroes turned its eyes on the land of the rising sun. The Avengers set was released in Japanese and it quickly became time for the first $10K in Tokyo—a Sealed Pack Avengers affair. This inaugural event saw Kunnihiko Kishishita winning out and sending a message to the world: Japan was coming.

The other $10K in October was in Orlando, Florida. This event was important for a number of reasons. Firstly, Michael Jacob distinguished himself as the first player to win three $10Ks. As one was Sealed Pack and two were Golden Age with new decks, this was quite the feat. His deck in Orlando was an Avengers reservist build that took advantage of the new mechanic to the fullest, turning most resource replacement effects into card drawing and getting massive power out of Wonder Man and Avengers Mansion. Also in the Top 8 were decks representing the Squadron Supreme and Spider-Friends—quite the Top 8. Of course Adam Prosak and Josh Wiitanen were in there too, representing with Teen Titans “until they start losing.” And apparently, losing in the Top 8 isn’t enough.

$10K Gen Con UK holds a few special memories for me. Any time that one is at an event for one’s birthday, it’s pretty special, and for that event to be held in a full gaming convention is just gravy. With a rubber cricket bat in hand and a format looking wide open, it was a great precursor to Pro Circuit LA, the sunniest event I would ever cover in November.

The Top 8 was a spicy one, too. There were two Squadron Supreme decks in German hands topping the Swiss, representative of the Avengers and Thunderbolts, and very innovative decks that abused Cosmic Radiation (in the forms of the seven-team special “Both Guns Blazing” from Sam Roads and a full-on lockdown deck based on A Child Named Valeria by Pablo Molina). Ultimately, it was Karl Bown with his simplified Avengers build who walked away with the trophy, beating out Andre Müller in the finals. An Englishman? Winning a $10K? That hadn’t happened since Richard Edbury at Gen Con the year before. An exclusive club, yes, but one that’s worth getting into.

The stage was almost set for Pro Circuit Los Angeles, the final hurrah of the Vs. calendar. There was simply $10K Wizard World Texas to go. A Sealed Pack $10K, it featured one of the strongest Top 8 Draft pods in $10K history. With Adam Bernstein, Ryan Jones, Vidianto Wijaya, Nick Little, and Neil Reeves in the mix, whoever won out would prove themselves quite skilled with a thirty card deck. On this day, it was Bernstein who took it down, and in the process he became the first player ever to win both a Pro Circuit and a $10K event.

Pro Circuit Los Angeles in southern California was something of a dream to a simple English boy who understands such facts as “in November, it is cold” to be irrefutable. So standing on a beach, waves washing over my feet, was, to put it plainly, rather queer.

In Vs. terms, the event was pretty exciting. The Avengers set showed its worth with Squadron Supreme, Avengers, and even Faces of Evil in the hands of the Australians showing up in good numbers. Aaron Weil made Pro Circuit history by finishing Day 1 undefeated with his Avengers deck and then going an equally spectacular (though probably rather less fun) 0-9 in the Draft (he was faced with some of the toughest Draft pods around for much of the day). For the foreseeable future, it seems that “pulling a Weil” will be actively avoided by many Vs. players.

The final Top 8 in LA was full of top players. Mike Dalton distinguished himself with a third Top 8 finish, which for the second time found him going in as first seed. Neil Reeves was back with strong crowd support, as was Dave Spears. With Dean Sohnle, Andre Müller, Hans Höh, and Matthew Tatar in there too, it was easy to overlook a name like Karl Horn.

To do so would have been a mistake, though. Advancing through to a finals match against Dean Sohnle’s Fantastic Fun deck, Karl and his New School deck eked out a win in a truly epic finals match that netted the stay-at-home dad $40,000 for a very nice Christmas.

The $10K in LA was all about JLA, with so great a Top 8 that it was well worth a replay. David Leader and Aaron Breider battled with Bulk, but Lao had the answers to put them in a sulk. There were playas, there were haters, but the cream of the crop was Lao, who now has a cup to drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrop.

I promise never to do that to you again. I just had to get it out of my and your Vs. system.

Rap battles aside, a rather larger confrontation took place at Pro Circuit LA. Near the start of the year, Jeff Donais had decreed that the winners of the two Modern Age Pro Circuits would play each other for an additional cash prize for themselves, and to double the PCQ winnings of each and every constructed PCQ winner in the crowd watching them.

By the time that the match rolled around, there were many players rubbing their hands, quite literally with GLEE. Dave Leader's Pro Circuit winning deck seemed to do much of what Adam Horvath's liked to do, only quite a lot better. Going into the best-of-one match, the feature match area was awash with many green and orange t-shirts, showcasing much support for the DC side of the board. At dinner the night before, Horvath had been sardonically realistic about his chances. With the right initiative, he felt he had as much as a 15% chance of walking away with the win, and was adamant that he would do so, just to spite everyone wearing the wrong T-Shirt on Sunday. Should he have won, there was the potential for a quite spectacular ceremonious handshake from Horvath. Unfortunately, for those watching just for entertainment value (rather than $250), it went the way of the crowd favorite. Dave Leader ultimately won the most valuable Pro Circuit of all, and showed that for this year of the Pro Circuit, DC beat out Marvel.

And the crowd rejoiced.

After so busy a year, December was a pretty quiet affair. With the holidays looming, there were just two $10K events before the end of the year. The first was distinguished by the introduction of the JLA set to Golden Age.

In Bremen, Germany, the set was important for its additions to legacy more than for any new decks. Hans Höh managed a last hurrah for the year, winning a third $10K of his own with Squadron Supreme in a Top 8 dominated by the deck. But there was also some promise in the form of an intriguing MOE-GLEE build by Maik Stich.

In Kuala Lumpur, it was a Sealed Pack $10K that took place and Vincent Chan who took it down, winning for the second consecutive year.

Phew! That was quite the year. I’m sure the various high points and low points will be much debated, but the following are my calls for the winners of the year:

It just wrecked people all year long and was never far from the Top 8, even though it did have a pretty rough landing for the final month or two.

While Mikey D didn’t travel to $10K events, he had a habit of showing up at Pro Circuits and making the Top 8 for basically the entire season. A great guy to have around, he is also my vote for player of the calendar year.

This one was pretty tight. The UDE dinner in Indianapolis was definitely very swanky, and the Vietnamese food at What the PHO? in California was very good, but for me it was the classic cheeseburger and incredible beer of Brian David Marshall’s favorite bar in New York that won the prize. Honorable mention goes to Steak ‘n’ Sheak in Indianapolis.

I won’t go into too much detail, but infinite legroom, infinite free drinks, pleasant company, and good films made for a very enjoyable bit of travel. It was significantly better than for Indianapolis, where travel took upwards of twenty-four hours, and for Amsterdam, where attempting to play Vs. through turbulence almost made me a casualty before arriving at the venue.

If you have any great memories from 2005 or if there’s anything I missed, please feel free to email me and I’ll make amends in the new year. Until then, happy holidays everyone!