6:15 PM - Beating Down His Opponents!

Savage Beatdown may not be legal in this format, but that didn’t stop Roy St. Clair from putting it on his playmat! One of the three sweetest playmats I’ve ever seen—the quality of the printing was superb and made me instantly jealous!

 

For those who don’t know Roy, he’s always silently lurking on the leader board, with three $10K Top 8s to his credit. He’s been in the money in every PC he’s played in. He’s a member of a three-man team (with a larger Yu-Gi-Oh! contingent) called Immortal Technique, with Jose Barreros and Barry Russell. And Roy is looking at another shot at the money with a 6–3 record. He claims that adding Prismatic Shield to his Avengers deck won him six games in a row.

5:56 PM - The British Invasion!

There are five Brits in Atlanta for the PC—one being FTN’s Alex Tennet, and he barely counts, because he spends nearly as much time in the States as he does in London.

The other four are part of a team headed by Karl Bown, whose name you may recognize as the winner of the recent $10K at GenCon UK in Bognor Regis, England. The team is called Team Comic Culture, named after Karl’s comic store in Lincoln, and Karl’s main priority is to get as many players as possible interested in the game, playing in the shop, and hopefully, traveling to tournaments. This is such a priority that Karl actually split the $10K money with the players he plays and tests with, to encourage them all the more.

All I can say is wow! Let the rumors and predictions begin! 

4:30 PM - The Possibilities are Infinite!

Sadly, while no announcements were forthcoming about the next set, Infinite Crisis showed its sunny face with a massive banner that greeted players as they entered the hall. Comprised of a massive and extended version of the box art, the full range of characters is shown, from the previously shown Dr. Fate, Deathstroke, Black Adam, and Zatanna to Maxwell Lord, Wonder Woman, Flash, Superman, and Booster Gold, among others

 

It’s a sweet banner and it looks even better in person than on film. If you’re reading this, you should also check out UDE’s Infinite Crisis teaser. It was updated today, with a glimpse at Zatanna’s card and a hint at what’s to come next.

4:10 PM - Justice Is Served!

If FTN is in a pretty good position, then the über-team Skipped Heartbeat is destined for greatness! Led by Anthony Justice’s 7-0 record, they have three other players already in Day 2 and six more who need only a single win. And that’s not including several more still in contention! 

Here’s the rundown: 

Bill Murray fans will be proud of this foursome from Bonn and Düsseldorf, who have burst onto the PC scene with bright red toques atop their heads and cameras in hand . . . just as with their namesake. They’ve been traveling worldwide; filming everywhere; and playing Vs. from the $10K at Bognor Regis, England to Bremin, Germany. 

Team Zissou consists of Jonas Skali, Mario Boley, Manuel Peelen, and Thorsten Schelian (the latter of whom is unqualified and here for moral support . . . when he’s not busy playing PCQs to qualify for San Francisco!). At the time of writing this entry, Skali is 5-1 playing Avengers and Boley is 4-2 playing Squadron with Feral. 

My sympathies to fellow Metagame.com staffer Olav Rokne. This is his first PC on the Metagame.com crew, and . . . well . . . let’s just say it’s not gone so smashingly for my fellow Canuck. First, Olav’s flight out of Calgary was delayed, so instead of making it last night, he ended up flying here this morning and didn’t get to the PC until about halfway through round 3. 

Still, he was excited to be here and looking forward to getting into the swing of Metagame.com coverage! But it was not to be; our Militant Manager, Toby Wachter, sent him out to photocopy all of the decklists (“WORK HARDER, YE SCURVY LANDLUBBERS!!! YARRRR!!!” was the direct quote, I believe . . .). 

Little did Toby know what was to occur on Olav’s Voyage through Atlanta, an epic event that would make Homer’s blind eyes well up in empathy. He hailed a taxi, and the first shop he went to had a broken-down copier. Not to be deterred, he went to another print shop . . . but they didn’t do copies. And then his taxi took off on him. Stuck in the darkened underworld of the wrong side of Atlanta, Olav clung to his sacred deck-riddled texts and cried tears of joy and relief when a Good Samaritan offered him a lift. But Olav set one foot in the car, and the engine died. And would not recover. The poor guy’s car simply died.

Some people complain when they get feature matches because they have a bad feature match record (Hello, David Fielder!); others may find the spotlight on them or a vicious opponent intimidating. 

But not Matthew Tatar. He complains because he has to get up out of his seat and hobble over to the feature match area, which is all the way on the other side of the hall from the top tables where his name so often is. 

FTN is currently in a solid position with both David Leader and Ryan Jones undefeated after Round 5, Alex Tennet and Milton Figueroa at 4-1, and three more members at 3-2. That puts seven of the eleven members in serious contention, and the others are all still within reach of Day 2. 

I blinked once, twice, thought I had consumed one Red Bull too many . . . there was the spitting image of Harry Leland—mutton chops, swank blue jacket, and frilly shirt. All he was missing was the walking stick! But no, it was not Mr. Leland but Dayton, Ohio Vs. stalwart Scott Cozzolino. Oleg Cassini may have passed away last week, but slick Italian fashion still lives on in Scott. He’s part of a strong Ohio team that has attended multiple PCs and has had some success at the $10K level; the other members are Keebler Powell, Loren Nolen, and Anthony Cox. 

Scott started growing the beard from the second the Hellfire Club was announced, as he was intending to play them. Alas, he made a last-minute switch to Squadron after testing seemed to look down upon the HFC deck. But that didn’t stop him from dressing the part, or from making Kergy’s Best Dressed List for PC Atlanta!

Some great decks have popped up today, including the Skipped Heartbeat deck, most of which are running X-Men/Faces of Evil. Nick Little is the exception; he’s playing an X-Men/Mental curve deck riddled with Hellfire. 

Another deck that went 2-0 before finally falling to the might of one Adam Prosak is Carl Perlas’s Brotherhood of Evil deck! Carl has returned after a six month layaway in the Philippines, where he was on a work contract that forced him to skip PC Indy and PC LA. He’s back now after switching coasts to take a new post in New York, and he’s playing Brotherhood as usual. He almost changed his mind at the last minute but then stuck to it, for better or for worse, and it’s taken him to a 2-1 record.

I caught up with Alex Shvartsman as he was coming from a match, and he announced with a nefarious grin that he “smashed their Faces in!” And if he wanted to do the same to me, I’d probably let him after goofing in my Atlanta Preview by putting him and Craig Edwards on my free agent list; I didn’t know their team rosters and didn’t want to leave such Vs. powerhouses out of the preview, so I figured that was the best way to go about it. Well, their team didn’t think so, and after a vicious bout with Anthony Shaheen’s thumbscrews, I begged for mercy—which he granted on the proviso that I blurbed their team in the blog! 

 

So, with a big apology, the joint Your Move Games and Kings Games team lineup is: PC regulars Alex Shvartsman, Craig Edwards, Anthony Shaheen, Rob Dougherty, Darwin Kastle, Dustin Pidgeon, Jacob Rabinowitz, and Nick Cuenca; and PC upstarts and newcomers including Mike Olivson, Eric Hunter, and Adam Hamza. They play with an ever-changing roster that includes their core members and pretty much anyone from YMG or KG who tests regularly at the stores. This PC has a contingent that is 70% Bostonian and 30% New Yorker, and they’re almost all playing a crazy rogue deck that contains five or six different teams, no traits, and only Enemy of My Enemy for flavor. Watch out, Atlanta! This team should surprise their way into a ton of success.

 

10:45 AM - The All-Canadian Showdown!

This one had the makings of an epic. It was a round 1 feature match between David Fielder and Team AttaQC’s Benoit Chaurette; English vs. French, Ontario vs. Quebec, Toronto vs. Montreal—there hasn’t been a war like this since Tonya Harding kneecapped Nancy Kerrigan way back in the thug era of the figure skating world.

                         

On the flipside, neither of these players has been particularly successful in their feature matches. Chaurette’s gone 2-3 and Fielder’s gone 1-8. When the dust settled, Fielder’s feature match misery continued as Chaurette’s Mental deck took down Fielder’s Morlock deck.

10:15 AM - Welcome to Atlanta!

Welcome to Atlanta! Home of Gone With the Wind, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ted Turner, several slick sports teams, and the Jack Daniels distillery (where several hundred players will likely be headed once the lights dim and the curtain falls this eve).

 

I am your faithful blogger this weekend, and I humbly follow in the footsteps of the esteemed J. Gary Wisenheimer, Ted “Da Nutz” Knutson, and THE Ben Seck. I will do my best to keep up with their sharp witticisms and kooky antics.