I'm going to assume that most of you out there know who these players are, and thus need very little introduction. Nick "The Nut Low" Little and Alex "Google My Name" Jebailey are among the most colorful personalities on the Pro Circuit, and this was going to be an incredible match. I'm glad that the feature match area was as large as it was, or I'm not sure that the egos these two carried with them would have fit in. Before the match got started, Jebailey started things off by telling me about how he "Jebaileyed" his last two opponents on his way to the 2-0 final match. Nick had no idea what we were talking about. "What does ‘Jebaileyed’ mean," he laughed. When I showed him the Wikipedia.com entry for "Jebailey", he lost it. I've never seen a grown man laugh himself to tears in the way that Nick did. It was one of the funniest moments I've had on the PC. "Oh my God, that's priceless," he managed between gasps for air. Alex Jebailey has become a sort of in-house celebrity for us writers here for reasons that I can only explain in person.
"I'm going to count his deck; it's the only way I can win," Nick whispered to me, as he reached for Alex's deck. When he came up with 30 cards, he was a little disappointed. "Well, there goes my one percent chance to win."
Nick picked up the die to roll first and, when he rolled a 16, Jebailey immediately asked, "We're rolling low, right?" When Alex came up with a 17 of his own, Nick responded with an immediate, "Yes!" Jebailey wasn't too pleased with his opening draw and shipped it to the bottom. After he drew his second hand, they drew for their first turn.
Both players whiffed their 1-drop and moved right into turn 2. Nick had the initiative and chose Elongated Man as his recruit. Alex had Tomorrow Woman, the 3-drop for the cost of a 2-drop, and passed to Nick. Nick wasted no time with his attack and the players went to turn 3. Turn 3 brought Alex Captain Cold, who is a bit bigger than the average 3-drop in this format. Nick smiled as he moved to his recruit, and commented, "My deck may be better than me at this game." A boosted Copperhead with Atlantean Trident was an incredible play for his turn 3. Nice draw. Tomorrow Woman took a shot at the snake, who promptly evaded. Since the evading character stuns itself, the Atlantean Trident triggered, giving Copperhead a counter. That could get out of hand very quickly. Alex just shrugged it off, though, and bashed Tomorrow Woman back at Elongated Man. Captain Cold got some face time, and the players ended turn 3.
After the turn, Alex looked a little glum. "I can't believe it. I could have Jebaileyed you last turn, but I messed up." Nick responded with a fist-pump. "Yes! We're already up a play mistake."
Nick led the charge on turn 4 with a Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius. Jebailey had a Henry King ◊ Brainwave that went on a Membership Drive as his 4-drop. Lex got the first attack in and quickly shattered Captain Cold. Elongated Man smacked down his eternal sparring partner, Tomorrow Woman, and Copperhead went after Henry King. "Eww . . . this could be unfortunate," Nick realized right after making the attack. His Copperhead was just big enough to take down the bigger man. "If I had the card, you'd be dead," Jebailey warned him. "But . . . I don't." Upon hearing this, Nick reached his hand skyward, and pumped his fist hard enough to break something. Before passing the turn, Nick got in a little last minute evasion with his Copperhead to get another counter.
Turn 5 brought Scarecrow, Fearmonger into play for Jebailey. Scarecrow is incredibly powerful, especially when your opponent has a counter generator like Atlantean Trident in play. Nick used his Copperhead to play Mysterious Benefactor to grab Abra Kadabra from his deck. Lamenting his misplay from earlier, Alex sighed as he said, "Truth be told, I should have milled you, but I forgot and you got to keep your best cards." Nick kind of laughed and reminded Alex about the underwhelming quality of his cards. "I don't have any best cards." Alex decided to rectify his earlier misplay by using Funky's Big Rat Code to mill Nick. "Phew, at least I don't have any other cards I need in my deck." After the top card he milled was The Plunder Plan, he reconsidered. "Well, except that one." Score a moral victory for Alex Jebailey. Jebailey then used another Funky's Big Rat Code to mill himself. He was building up to take advantage of his Secret Society powerhouses. Unfortunately, he milled a Gorilla City
into his KO'd pile, which would most likely stay there for a while. Nick kidded him for targeting each of them with a Big Rat Code. "Come on man, pick a direction and stick with it!"
Jebailey smiled at Nick and decided to move to combat. He tried to use Scarecrow to move a counter that Nick had moved to his Lex Luthor with Sinister Citadel, but Nick still had the Citadel ready and used it to move the counter to his already enormous Copperhead. Alex just shook his head. He regrouped and sent his Henry King into Nick's Lexy. Nick simply reinforced and let Alex continue. Scarecrow rushed headlong into Abra, and Jebailey used Death Times Five to force through a bit of extra endurance loss. Not a whole lot had happened on this turn, which was a stark contrast to the turn to come.
Turn 6 was all TNL, and he started it off with a Charaxes, Killer Moth. Alex had a very imposing Gorilla Grodd as his 6-drop, though. For some reason, it appears that all of the monkeys in this format are good. I guess UDE just loves monkey, but, then again, who doesn't. Nick's first attack of the turn was Copperhead into Scarecrow. Thanks to his ridiculous number of counters and the Trident, he was going to be big enough to stun the much more expensive character. Alex decided it was a good time for him to use his Gorilla Grodd to steal the Copperhead by KO'ing his Scarecrow. However, it was the second time he had forgotten about the Sinister Citadel. Nick moved a counter off to his Charaxes, and then chose to KO his Copperhead to put yet another counter on his Charaxes. Alex was stunned. "Wow," was all he could muster. He was finished with his attacks, and all he had back was a Gorilla Grodd. Charaxes flew in, and there were enough characters in the KO’d pile to KO the Gorilla, which left Alex with no characters.
Alex had the initiative on turn 7, and he recruited a Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, which was gotten back from his KO'd pile by virtue of Slaughter Swamp
. He added a Quadromobile to Blockbuster and passed the turn. Nick didn't have a 7-drop he wanted to play, and chose to play Dr. Sivana and Henry King ◊ Brainwave on his recruit. Blockbuster was an astounding 20 ATK when attacking, but he was Alex's only character, so Nick would most likely be able to reinforce. Nick's only off-team character was his Abra, so that was where Alex headed first. Nick quickly used Henry King to KO him, which forced Alex to attack a reinforceable character. He chose to bash Charaxes, and the big moth went down. Things were looking incredibly bad for Alex, and he knew had dug his own grave.
Nick drew his first card for turn 8 and, when it wasn't what he was looking for, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Show me a big, green planet!" When he saw that the card was a Gorilla City instead of Mogo, The Living Planet, which he was looking for, he was more than a little disappointed. With a voice that sounded like a kid whose dog had just died, Nick looked up and pouted, "It was only a big, green city." He recruited Guy Gardner, Egomaniac and passed to Alex, who played a Solomon Grundy, Buried on Sunday. After some thought, Alex decided that he couldn't win and packed it in. After the game, Nick started peeling through his deck looking for the Mogo that had evaded him. "Mogo!" he yelled as he flipped the top card. "Mogo! Mogo! Mogo! There it was!" He and Alex talked a bit about Alex's misplay and how he could have won the game afterwards.
As always, when dealing with these two characters, this was an incredibly entertaining match. After Nick won, Tim Willoughby came over and took a look through Nick's six team, no team-up monstrosity that had somehow 3-0'd his pod. In awe, Tim could only manage to say, "Nick Little, you are a master."