Normally, I’d start a community profile article by saying, “I sat down with Vidi Wijaya and . . . [talked to him].” But I didn’t. No, instead I just randomly started discussing deck tech with Vidi, and after a while, I realized that I should probably be writing this stuff down. Though Vidi’s great to talk to, I do technically need to be working. So, watch as I attempt to make random chatting with one of Vs. System’s top players into a readable interview!

Vidi Wijaya is one of Vs. System’s most recognizable names. A distinct player with his own style, Vidi made a name for himself in the TCG world before Vs. was released. At 21 years of age, he dodged my question about his occupation. “Uhh . . . Just put student.” I laughed and prodded. “I work a part time job, I’m lazy. I should proooobably be going to school.” He smirked a smirk that tacitly stated that such a possibility lay only in the distant future.

A native of Los Angeles, he describes his time not spent playing cards as being filled by “playing more cards.” I asked him if that meant poker. “Nah, I’m like the only Asian guy who doesn’t play poker.” I laughed. “No, seriously! I am!”

We talked a bit about $10K Long Beach, and I mentioned that I watched four people look at his team’s use of Jet-Pack in testing immediately before the main event, rush off to their decks, and add it to their own. “I think we should just start rigging that,” said Vidi. “Hey Carl!” He yelled to teammate Carl Perlas. “Next tournament we should all pretend we’re going to play Project Wide Awake in our TNB decks! People’ll be all, ‘I saw Wide Awake!’ ‘What the heck does that do?’ ‘I don’t know, get it into the deck!’” More laughter ensued.

Like most of the top players I talked to today, he was more than happy to discuss his feelings about Fantastic Fun. Vidi in particular was opinionated, since he was running it and had been testing with it for a while. “The deck is ingenious! How did they create this, it’s so good.” His quickly spoken dissertation on the deck seemed to agree with the general conception of the deck that the public holds—hard to use but incredibly powerful. Like many players, he was particularly impressed by the fact that the deck consisted of relatively old cards, with the exception of War Wagon.

His favorite thing about Fantastic Fun? He was all too eager to show me, riffling his deck and sticking a copy of Franklin Richards in my face. “A lot of people have cut this. He’s the nuts! If you get this on turn one, like, it’s crazy! I did that earlier today. I dropped him on turn 1. Turn 2 was my initiative. I activated him, recruited Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl, Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, and Advanced Hardware . . . it’s insane! He can do that, and he can make the deck go off a turn earlier bringing out Stretch on turn 5—totally nuts.’

I asked him if he thought the deck had any bad matchups, or at least if it had matchups he was having problems with. “Titans isn’t easy, and Curve Sentinels with early Total Anarchy. If a Titans player knows what they are doing, it’s really a very difficult matchup. Curve Sentinels is usually a very good matchup for Fun, but that early-game Total Anarchy can just randomly throw you off.”

The entire interview only took about four minutes. Honestly, Vidi’s brain moves faster than I can keep up with, at least when it comes to typing out what he’s saying. Fantastic Fun is a perfect matchup for him—it presents so many options that you need a brain like Vidi’s to really make the most out of it. While some players, such as Hans Joachim Hoeh, are renowned for their incredible focus on single elements of a game and are thus comparable to laser beams, even just talking to Vidi is more like a light show. But let there be no doubt about it, he’s a one-man lightshow of death. If he keeps gaining more and more experience with Fantastic Fun, he may be a number one prospect for PC: New York.