Michael Dalton is a great man. He has accomplished great things. He has previously made Top 8 in both PC Amsterdam and PC Indianapolis. Pro Circuit Los Angeles marks his third PC Top 8. Like Michael Jordan, you can always expect Michael Dalton to be around when it comes time for single elimination. He is, in a word, great.

I got to sit down with him for a little chat about life, the universe, and everything. One of the biggest things we talked about was the field. The top of the standings throughout the day today was a laundry list of the best players in Vs. System. In order to wade through the Booster Draft portion of the event on his way to assuring himself a Top 8 berth, Michael had to play against Dean Sohnle twice, Alex Brown twice, and Hans Joachim Höh, as well. “I played a who’s-who today,” he said with a smile and a little laugh. It’s a hard road to the top.

He hasn’t done it alone, though. Michael is a member of Team FTN. FTN is a well-known group of players that includes the likes of David Leader, Jason Dawson, and Dave Spears. They’ve been doing incredibly well on the Pro Circuit as of late, including an all-FTN final at PC Indianapolis, which included Michael. He acknowledges his support crew and their importance to his success here. “We did a lot of drafting to prepare,” Michael admits, “though we scrapped our Constructed deck a few weeks ago before we switched to Common Enemy. It’s the oldest of old school.”

It’s great to see that a player can have so much success on a global scale and as much consistency as Michael has shown. It’s always a good thing for a game when players consistently do well. It shows that a player can work hard and prosper. Players like Michael Dalton can inspire those players who need an extra push to try to accomplish greater things. With the resume he’s concocted, he’s not only assured himself of seeing the Sunday stage again in the future, but he’s also captured many players’ votes for the best Vs. System player on Earth.

I really enjoyed speaking to Andre about making Top 8 here at Pro Circuit Los Angeles. First off, he’s a very animated person when he speaks. I love never knowing where a conversation is going to go, or what the person is going to do. He’s also one of the few people I can really see eye to eye with. For those of you that don’t know, I’m about 6′ 6″ tall, and Andre has to be close to that. It’s kind of nice having a conversation with someone on an even level.

Andre lives in Essen, which is one of the largest cities in western Germany. He is a member of the powerhouse Team Hans, as he would have me refer to them. The team is obviously named after its mascot and most recognizable member, Hans Joachim Höh. This team boasts some of the best players Europe has to offer, including Marcus Kolb, Reinhardt Blech, and Kristian Kockott. These players have more Top 8s to their names than I can count, and, seeing as how they all finished in the Top 35 here in LA, they don’t appear to be slowing down.

Andre is another old school gamer who has been around the block a few times and knows how to get the job done. “We do most of our testing online but, occasionally, we all get together in Bochun (another German city) to practice in person,” Andre informed me. These guys must have worked out a winning combination, because they put two members in this PC, as well as in the last. Whatever the case may be, these Germans know how to battle. Watch out.

Karl Horn is a rising star on the Vs. System circuit. He splashed onto the scene at Pro Circuit Indianapolis with a Top 25 finish. It’s safe to say that he’s done himself one better this time, and he doesn’t appear to be looking back.

Karl lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and spends most of his time at home with his four-year-old son, Kenneth. When he gets the itch to prepare for the PC, though, he has a little more grown-up help. He practices with a Pro Circuit mainstay—Adam Prosak, who is living in Cincinnati while he goes to school. Karl, like many of the other top-level Vs. System players, is not to be bound by one game. He has used his experience in the gaming world to make the transition to Vs. System with what appears to be much success.

He is coming into the Top 8 off a stellar 8–2 record in the Golden Age portion of the event. He is piloting the often-overlooked New School. “I wanted to play it because it was fun,” Karl admits with a sly grin. It may be fun, but make no mistake—it takes a lot of skill to play the deck well. Karl will need all the skill he can bring to the table, too, if he wants to capture his first Sunday crown.

Neil Reeves. JT Money. Foghorn Leghorn. Neil goes by many names, but perhaps his favorite is simply “Peytons.”

“I am so Peytons,” Neil hoots. Peyton Manning is the quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, and he is widely regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. He has also snuck into Neil’s vocabulary as an adjective denoting greatness.

In his constant struggle to encompass all things Peytons, Neil has done many great things. In his lifetime, he has been all-state in two different sports in his home state of Arkansas. He has been recognized as one of the best consummate gamers in the world. He has accumulated innumerable good finishes since the dawn of Vs. System. In short, he’s at the top of his game, whatever that game might be.

Neil is taking Common Enemy into the Top 8 tomorrow. To say that Neil Reeves has experience playing Common Enemy is like saying that water is slightly damp. He owes his first PC Top 8 to Dr. Doom and friends, and it seems that the format has come full circle. The deck has gone through a few changes since the first PC, but one thing remains the same—Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius is a very mean man.

Neil is impossible to miss in the feature match area; his larger-than-life persona can be seen, heard, and felt across the room. Tomorrow, he takes his chances in the Top 8 as he tries his hardest to achieve perfection—in other words, to be Peytons.

Hans hails from Bochum, Germany, and is well known in the Vs. world for being the second player to win two $10Ks and also for being arguably the most accomplished player with Curve Sentinels. He has one previous Top 8 at the Sentinel-laden Pro Circuit: New York, but he fell to Michael Barnes's Xavier's Dream deck in the quarterfinals. Along with Andre Muller, he made the Top 8 of the recent metagame-shaking $10K London playing the same deck he has chosen today, Squadron Supreme.

I asked him if he was worried that people might have changed their testing patterns because of his finish in London, but he dismissed it, saying, "American players don't take European Vs. players seriously. They think that I can play pretty much any deck and still win. Even if they did, we didn't play our best version of our deck. We had some added tweaks."

Hoh's journey through Pro Circuit: Los Angeles started off rocky, going only 2-3 in his first five rounds. "I thought it was going to be a bad PC for me again. But I didn't lose anymore on that day." He finished 7-3 in the Golden Age portion, and that, coupled with another solid 7-2 day, gave him a berth on Sunday in fifth place.

Owning a store in Alabama means that Dave Spears can indulge himself in gaming as much as he wants to. Dave is a pillar of the Vs. Internet community, often writing provocative pieces on the state of the game on VsRealms.com. After a string of mediocre performances, he finally converted hype into results with a Top 8 berth at the last Pro Circuit, and with this Top 8, he gains (simultaneously with Michael Dalton) the honor of being the first back-to-back Sunday participant at a PC.

Dave has recently married Hope Spears, who has come to this event with him. She has certainly given him a lot of support during the tournament, and Dave has never been happier. Happiness seems to agree with him.

There was big news in the Vs. community when Dave decided to leave Team Realmworx for FTN after PC: Indianapolis. But FTN's regimented testing system and canny metagame instincts meant that they were able to abandon their first choice (a Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies/Masters of Evil hybrid deck) in favor of the very stable Common Enemy build they all came with this weekend. Dave went 8-2 with the FTN Common Enemy build and was able to back up this impressive performance with a solid 6-3 on the Avengers draft day.

Matthew Tatar is a 29 year-old software engineer who lives just outside Washington, D.C. He has previously put up many impressive Pro Circuit finishes, having finished 10th, 19th, and 16th in consecutive Pro Circuits. Two of those finishes are with the deck he is playing today, Common Enemy. "I'm just really experienced with the deck, and there are no real terrible matchups now that Sentinels is off the radar. I'm not playing Flame Trap—I hate that card. Discarding two is so much! But I guess if I had to choose to play it knowing the metagame, I would have it in my deck."

Tatar tests with a small local group, but he said they haven't decided on a team name. Some of the players include Cory Eisenhard and Tommy Ashton, the latter of which only barely missed Top 8 after losing to Josh Wiitanen in the final round of the Swiss.

His Common Enemy deck only barely got him to Day 2, but he was able to pull off an insane 9-0 Draft record on Day 2, a feat that hasn't been achieved for nearly a year. "I had to go 9-0 . . . I couldn't let Antonino [De Rosa] be the only one."

Soft-spoken Dean Sohnle has made a habit of doing well in Vs. events. He was the first person to win back-to-back $10K's with his patented "Fantastic Fun" deck and was a single game away from having a third win in a row at $10K Paris. After studying accounting, business mananagement, and psychology for nearly seven years at university, he has decided to roam the world. He has made a bit of a base in London, but has been traveling as far afield as Eastern Europe.

"I needed to spread my wings a bit. I'm originally from Edmonton, Canada. I'm probably going to go to Taiwan next year, maybe New Zealand, maybe Australia!" This world traveler somehow tests for these events theoretically rather than playing. "I just look at the card lists and think about the deck. I have a friend who I play with, but really I don't get to play much at all! I have an advantage—no-one ever tests Fantastic Fun, and I seem to be very good with it."

And good with it he was, posting an 8-2 record on Day 1. His 6-3 Day 2 record was good enough for a berth in the Top 8, and he's paired up with Neil Reeves and his Common Enemy deck. "I think the matchup is about 60-40 usually, but with these good players I think its probably more like 50-50. But I'm still hopeful."

He hasn't changed his version much recently, only adding a Dr. Light, Master of Holograms and two Catcher's Mitts. The added reinforcement and recursion possibilities have made this deck even more resilient than before. Only time will tell whether it can get him the championship.