Robert Gallagher is an independent businessman from Bakersfield, CA who says that “he plays cards a lot.” Meaghan Hoffman is a full-time parent from Rochester, NY who is raising twins. Both players played in the main event yesterday, but neither posted strong enough results to make it to the draft tables.

The reason we're following this match is Meaghan's deck, which actually has the potential to deal hundreds of points of endurance loss in a single turn. It's a Common Enemy deck that exchanges many of the control elements of normal CE for a combo beatdown element that is based around Cosmic Radiation and Team Tactics. It also uses cards that help the combo go off, such as Blind Sided and Not So Fast (as Overload is obviously bad news).

Gallagher started things off with an early Toad, missed his 3-drop, and then recruited a Sabretooth, Feral Rage on turn 4. Gallagher and her Common Enemy deck had nothing before a turn 4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius that let Gallagher do some swift bashing before Hoffman gummed up the board. Gallagher clearly thought the game was in control when he played Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr on turn 5 to Hoffman’s Ghost Rider, but he was in for a rude awakening.

“Ghost Rider attacks Sabretooth, and I have some stuff to do,” Hoffman said, entering her attack step. Gallagher said the attack was valid, and bam! Hoffman went off. “Savage Beatdown, Cosmic Radiation, Team Tactics, another Cosmic Radiation, another Team Tactics. Ghost Rider is now attacking for 56.”

“Wow. That's awesome. Uh . . . I guess I die, since I can't quite knock you from 29 to 0 in one turn. What turn do you normally kill on?”

“Usually turn 5, but there's about a twenty percent chance of going off on turn 4. My husband is a bit luckier than I am and he pulls it off a little more.”

“That’s crazy.”

Hoffman 1 - Gallagher 0