I only tested a few games of my quarterfinals match, and the only game anyone on our side lost was the one where we stacked Loren's deck. Needless to say, I felt confident. Our plan for the rest of the Top 8 was to build the decks and test them against our deck on-site the next day. Sleep is good.

Quarterfinals: Loren Nolen

I’d like to go on the record and say that Loren is one of the most underrated players in the game today. Most people with consistent success in this game have a group of people with whom they can test and travel to tournaments. Loren has none of this. Everything that Loren does in this game is a result of his talent and dedication.

Before the match, various Metagame.com reporters asked me if they could cover my match, hoping to avoid one of the intense stall on stall matches that can make a reporter go insane. Mark Slack won the sweepstakes with a well-timed “Shotgun!” 

You can find the match details here, so I'll comment on what I was thinking throughout the match.

On turn 3 of the first game, I had nightmares about the game where we stacked Loren's deck just to see the worst case scenario. His first resource was Political Pressure, and turn 2 saw Black Cat, Master Thief. On turn 3, when Loren played Enemy of my Enemy, I instantly thought he was going for Sage, Xavier's Secret Weapon. With only one character a turn, I would have a hard time stunning both Black Cat and Sage to enable my plot twists. I think Loren made his biggest mistake of the match by getting Dr. Light, Master of Holograms with his Enemy. My Slaughter Swamp stopped his Dr. Light activation, and I was able to play a Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival and get a huge lead in the endurance battle. Between the need to flip Political Pressure face down every turn—and with Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff looming—reducing Loren to 27 after three turns was definitely a good sign.

On turn 4, during combat, I asked Paul Ross if I could play Devil's Due from my hand in order to get the required ten cards in the KO'd pile for Deadshot, Floyd Lawton. Sick indeed. I was able to win game 1 on the back of the huge endurance gap, as Loren's deck was fairly incapable of KO'ing my larger characters. Characters make my opponent lose endurance. Simple.

In game 2, when Loren revealed a Political Pressure to his Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter, he didn't seem that fazed. This meant he had another copy ready to go. I decided to do as much as I could on turn 2, as it would likely be my last chance to play multiple characters. Luckily, I was able to gain enough card advantage during turn 2 to give me enough gas for the rest of the game. Under most circumstances, there isn't much point to playing lots of characters on turn 2, as you lose a bit of opportunity to “go nuts” later. There wasn't going to be a later with Political Pressure looming, however, so turn 2 it was.

In case you were wondering why a stall deck was forced to play Political Pressure every turn, simply read the match report from turn 5 of the second game, when Loren forgot to flip his Pressure.

“Adam led off turn 5 with a Straight to the Grave for Robot Destroyer and returned a previously discarded Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster to his hand. He played the Robot Destroyer . . . then realized with glee that Loren had forgotten to flip up Political Pressure during the draw phase. He KO’d Frankie to Devil’s Due for a counter on Dr. Doom; Swamped with Mxyzptlk to return Frankie; discarded Reign to play Frankie for free; discarded Stranger to draw two cards; played Enemy discarding Mikado and Mosha for Haywire; played Haywire; exhausted Haywire and Frankie to return Stranger; KO’d Haywire to Poison Ivy to find a Secret Sanctuary; returned Haywire to hand with the Sanctuary and replayed him; KO’d Frankie Raye to Devil’s Due for a counter on Robot Destroyer; returned Frankie to hand with Soul World; played Frankie discarding Scarlet Witch; discarded Phantom Stranger to draw two; exhausted Haywire and Frankie to return Stranger; KO’d Frankie to Devil’s Due for another counter on Dr. Doom; played a different Frankie for free from his hand discarding Stranger and another card for two draws; and activated Dr. Light to return Mikado and Mosha to play.”

Loren was fairly far behind after an impressive turn 4 for me, but this was certainly the nail in the coffin. At this point there was almost no chance for Loren to stun any of my characters, and he was essentially forced to extend the hand.

16-4

As I waited for the other matches to finish, I found the good news: either one of my semifinals was looking to be very favorable. Jonas Skali didn't have anything in the way of problem cards for my powerful mid-game. His Red Shift definitely wasn’t as good as advertised, and my Reign of Terror would go unchecked. If Anthony Justice won, I was definitely ahead. Anthony simply did not have enough resource points available to generate all of the effects he needed to win, while I was capable of undoing those precious resource points. As it turns out, Anthony ended up winning 2-0, despite being the last match to finish.

Semifinals: Anthony Justice

Metagame.com coverage can be found here.

Game 1 was fairly textbook for the first few turns. I was able to get my preferred even initiative, which meant that my Dr. Light would attack, which he’s not used to doing. Most of the time, Anthony would play Sage, Xavier's Secret Weapon on turn 3 and Professor X, Headmaster on turn 4, using his 4-drop to protect his Sage. I didn't have a Devil's Due or ways to power-up, so my Doom was going to be unable to attack his Professor X. I did have a power-up for my Dr. Light, Master of Holograms, though. Therefore, I decided not to activate my Dr. Light. This probably won me the game, as I was able to attack Sage with Dr. Light, power-up twice, and then use Reign of Terror to eliminate the Sage threat.

There were two other important moments in this game. The first was when I used Flame Trap to take away Anthony's ability to use Press the Attack with his Professor X on turn 5. The second involved Mephisto. Throughout the course of the game, Anthony had been liberally discarding his higher drops to X-Corporation and Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth. By the time I played my Mephisto, Soulstealer, all of Anthony's high drops were in his KO'd pile. When Mephisto eliminated any semblance of a late game Anthony had, the game was over.

The second game was very representative of why the matchup was so far in my favor. Anthony had only 1 Political Pressure in his deck, and the only way for him to search for it cost 3 resource points in the form of Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival. When he played Doom on turn 3, this meant he was not playing Dr. Light or Sage on that turn. On turn 4, Anthony was not able to offer any resistance to my Deadshot, Floyd Lawton or Reign of Terror, so his board was reduced to a single Professor X, Headmaster on turn 4 despite him having the initiative. This meant the only way for him to get back in the game was with multiple Puppet Master activations after first using Mikado and Mosha to stun my smaller drops. Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff foiled this plan, and Anthony was out of options.

17-4

I think that some amount of good fortune plays a role in how any given Top 8 plays out. On Day 1, with decklists unknown, matchups are not that important because players are usually not intimately familiar with their opponents’ decks. In the Top 8, however, because decklists are known and time is given to prepare for each match, matchups play a much bigger role. Because of the search-heavy nature of the game, most games are played out assuming that most players will hit close to their optimal curve each game. At worst, most high-level decks will have redundancy at important parts of the curve. When you know what your opponent’s deck is capable of doing, it becomes much easier to formulate a plan. Hence, the importance of matchups. If my plan is better than any plan you can come up with, I'm going to have an easy match. Against both Loren and Anthony, the matchup by deck was so favorable that I just had to focus on implementing my plan. My finals match was a different story.

FTN's Crisis of Infinite Dooms deck was a nightmare matchup, provided their deck was running on all cylinders. First, the FTN deck did not care as much about its early drops, using them primarily to set up the middle and later turns; all of its drops from 1 to 3 search for something. Since much of the strength in my deck centers on removing these drops, I didn't get as much mileage as I normally do. Secondly, Supermanhunter effectively negates Devil's Due given any amount of endurance, which can normally be secured with a Mystical Paralysis on a key attacker. Finally, the presence of an actual late curve in the FTN deck—as well as the full compliment of Savage Beatdown—gave their deck a huge edge as the game wore on. If Ryan was able to simply play Savage Beatdown on initiative and Mystical Paralysis off initiative, I would be in huge trouble.

Finals - Ryan Jones

Unlike my previous matches, I was extremely nervous. I was playing for a PC trophy, and I was one match away from accomplishing the very thing I wanted to accomplish. I offered Ryan an even split, which he declined; he also likely knew how good the matchup was for him. In my first two Top 8 matches today, I knew that if I was able to implement my plan there was no way I could lose. This time Ryan was in the position of power, merely having to implement his plan to win.

You can read the coverage here, and I'll add what I have to say.

In the first game Ryan took odds, which was terrible for him and very good news for me—on multiple fronts. First, Ryan maybe didn’t know what he needed to do to win the match (namely, that Mystical Paralysis was as good as gold). Second, I’d get three games with even initiative if I needed them. Evens was crucial because of turn 4, where I needed to make a ton of progress. Ryan's lack of Mikado and Mosha meant that if I could get Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom into play, then I could lock him out of his Reign of Terror on turn 4. Also, having evens gave me two initiatives on critical turns (turns 4 through 6), in which there was considerable pressure for Ryan to have Mystical Paralysis.

Game 1 was basically a textbook example of what had to happen for me to win the game, except that for some reason, Ryan didn't reuse his Political Pressure on turns 5 and 6. The key play was on turn 6, when I used my Robot Destroyer on his Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius prior to playing any characters. This meant that he couldn't play Supermanhunter because he couldn't Mystical Paralysis my Mephisto, Soulstealer, which was threatening to be 25 ATK or so. Instead, he played some off-curve characters, which enabled him to use Mystical Paralysis once, but my huge Dr. Doom was able to get Ryan to exactly 0 with the help of a few power-ups.

As good as game 1 was for me, game 2 was equally as terrible. I wasn't able to get any traction early, as I missed my 2-drop and was under Political Pressure the remainder of the match. Due to my lack of an early game, I was unable to do much more than play a terrible curve deck, and I quickly died. A quick note: if you're following the coverage, the fact that Ryan played Political Pressure isn't written down, but pretty much every turn I only played a single character was a turn I was under pressure.

I thought game 3 was looking bad for me, as once again I didn't have a 2-drop, but I was able to play other characters and then catch up on turn 3 with Dr. Light, Master of Holograms and Straight to the Grave to find Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose. I didn't have a Devil's Due yet, but I did have Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom to find it. Unfortunately, I would have to wait until turn 5 to put the Devil's Due in play, which meant that I wouldn't be able to attack on turn 4.  Fortunately for me, my turn 5 was excellent, and I was able to KO his 4-drop Doom while maintaining my board. In addition, I dealt quite a bit of damage that turn as well. (Ironically, I had better turns in this game without the initiative than I had with the initiative.) Turn 6 was back to bad, and I didn't make much progress in the endurance department. I team attacked his 6-drop Doom and he paid 4 endurance for Political Pressure. I got a small victory when I used Asmodeus in response to his Mystical Paralysis. At that point, I figured that I couldn't win if he played a 7-drop and I only had The Phantom Stranger. On turn 7, Ryan had fairly dominating position, with Supermanhunter; Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant; and Kristoff Von Doom, Pretender to the Throne. My board consisted of Asmodeous; Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius with four +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters; Robot Destroyer; and Mephisto, Soulstealer hanging out in the concealed area. We were tied at 21.

Given the size of the characters in play and Ryan’s initiative, I assumed Ryan could kill me. At worst, if he had a single power-up for his Doom (or a Doomstadt), then he could simply send his Doom against Asmodeous for 8 endurance, send Kristoff into my Doom for 4 endurance after he removed Doom's counters and I reinforced, and then attack my Robot Destroyer with Supermanhunter for 10 more endurance. This would put me at -1 with Ryan still at 18—too much for my Mephisto. I formed up as well as I could, hoping that Ryan didn't see these attacks, or that he had absolutely nothing and I could use Devil's Due to stay on 1 endurance.

Asmodeous was in front of Doom. Robot Destroyer was next to Doom. When Ryan declared Supermanhunter on Doom, I saw my opening and I couldn't reinforce fast enough. Now I had to hope that he didn't have Savage Beatdown. Ryan’s final attack traded Kristoff for Robot Destroyer! I KO’d characters to Devil's Due to soak up damage and got ready for a counterattack. I retrieved Asmodeus from the KO'd pile and discarded as many characters as I could to boost Mephisto’s ATK. I actually didn't do the math, because I was just hoping it was enough; there was no way I would have been able to win with my decimated board against his healthy compliment of characters. Ryan counted it up and conceded!

I was a game away from winning the Pro Circuit, and many emotions were running through my head at this point. My brain was fried, and I had to pee. There was a short break after game 3, and my friends and teammates came over to congratulate me on the previous game. True gamer that I am, I noticed that the Anthony Avitollo had a Marvel Gallery Pack. I instantly grabbed it from him and opened it, calming my nerves somewhat. Shortly after, I headed back to the feature match pit.

As my reward for winning such a tight game, I was granted the odd initiative. Sigh. This game was looking outstanding, as I had all of my early characters before Ryan could get Political Pressure online. I thought this game might be very easy once Ryan missed his Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival, but he just naturally drew the Political Pressure. On turn 4, Ryan played Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius before activating his Boris. Between this and the fact that he had missed a drop on turn 3, I read Ryan not to have Doomstadt. If he had it on turn 3, then he would've just hit his 3-drop via Faces of Doom. Given that I had the odd initiatives, I knew I would have to do something special to win this game. I formed with my Doom and Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose protecting my other characters. When Ryan made the obvious attack into Poison Ivy, I used both the power-ups in my hand, then used Avalon Space Station, discarding Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff to get two more power-ups. After securing the stun, my Doom was able to attack directly, which turned out to be quite a big endurance swing. With Ryan having to pay to turn Political Pressure face down each turn, every point of endurance was important—11 endurance was huge.

Turn 5 was where things got strange. With an endurance advantage, I continued to press with Robot Destroyer, which Ryan matched with Garth ◊ Tempest. I attacked Garth with my Robot Destroyer (who had two counters from Devil's Due), but I was not happy when Ryan showed me double Cover Fire to brickwall the attack. This was nothing short of disastrous. The silver lining was that Ryan didn't have the power-up for Garth, which would allow him to stun Robot Destroyer as well. Considering that he didn't have a power-up, and that my Doom prevented Ryan from playing plot twists from his hand, I knew my attack of Doom with a double power-up into Garth was safe. With his attack step, Ryan decided to trade characters, sending his 4-drop Doom into my Robot Destroyer with a Savage Beatdown. I found this peculiar, since Ryan's deck benefited from having more characters, and this attack also put him lower on endurance. I shrugged and assumed Ryan had Supermanhunter to remove the counters on my Robot Destroyer.

Unfortunately for me, Ryan had a plan. With Garth already in play, Ryan's Boris turned into a Betrayal. This cut my options severely, especially since I could no longer grow a single character with Devil's Due due to Political Pressure. I was in trouble. To make things worse, Ryan had a Mystical Paralysis to complete his off-curve plan. Because of the presence of Betrayal, I could only play a 4-drop Doom. At this point, I thought I was locked out of the game; however, Ryan had only 14 endurance after using Garth and flipping Political Pressure, so I didn't have to do too much. I planned to hoard power-ups for The Phantom Stranger, then use Robot Destroyer to deal a bit of damage. I could also force Ryan to use Garth to return his Betrayal, which would use up another 3 endurance. If and when he attacked my 7-drop, he’d lose more endurance because of stunbacks. I thought I could do 14 somehow, and I had 34 endurance myself.

After I played The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero, Ryan put the Betrayal in his resource row and played it, then recruited Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius to flip it face down and reuse it. Ryan had to use Garth to replay Mystical Paralysis to lock down my 7-drop, and he took another 4 when I stunned his 4-drop with Robot Destroyer, putting him at 7. After all of this, I was left with a lone character, The Phantom Stranger.

Then the strangest thing happened.

Ryan started to KO his own characters. Garth was KO'd to Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival, and the 4-drop Doom didn't get recovered. Ryan was going to bet it all on Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon's Head! 

I was excited because I knew his plan couldn’t work: Ra’s can't become stunned, and I've been hoarding a grip of power-ups. As turn 8 rolled around, I realized that I would win the Pro Circuit if Ryan recruited the 8-drop. When Ryan played it and passed, I instantly passed back, forcing Ryan to attack with his Ra’s. In a last ditch effort, Ryan attacked with his 3-drop Doom and triple Savage Beatdown, but I powered-up four times and brickwalled the attack. With my locations, I was able to power-up three more times—I’d won the PC!

19-4

omg.

Flashback to 10 months earlier, in Cincinnati, Ohio:

Karl Horn, recent Pro Circuit Champion, recently received his trophy and check. He decided to bring it to a PCQ at Acme Games. The trophy and check were being passed around, and when I got my chance to hold the trophy, it was quite heavy. Much heavier than it looked. In a symbolic way, the trophy represented a burden.

End Flashback

As I held up the trophy, it wasn't heavy anymore. It felt great. Hugs, chest bumps, and Tommy Ashton's jumping on my back ensued. It was all surreal. As I write this, I am having a very difficult time putting my experience into words. I suppose after weeks of thought about what I should write in this space, I can only say that words cannot describe how I felt at the time.

I am truly honored to be a Pro Circuit Champion. I highly doubt that waking up to an oversized check and a giant trophy will ever get old. While history records only my name, by no means did I walk alone. I want to recognize the following people, for a variety of reasons:

Brian Gates

Tim Rivera

Niles Rowland

Robert Swarowski

Dane Young

Alex Gellerman

Jerry Whaley

Anthony Avitollo

Phimus Pan

Everyone behind the game at Upper Deck, specifically “The” Ben Seck, Patrick Sullivan, and Billy Zonos

Tommy Ashton

Doug Tice

Dave Spears

Loren Nolen

Mom (And the rest of my family, who probably cause server overload on Metagame.com during PCs by themselves.)

Thank you. I couldn't have done it without you.

Adam Prosak