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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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| Community Profile: Carl Perlas |
| Jason Grabher-Meyer |
| April 16, 2005 |
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Carl Perlas has defined himself as one of the most recognized players in Vs. System. He gave an outstanding early performance at PC: Amsterdam, made Top 8 in darn near everything he’s competed in, and is a marquee player of Team Realmworx. On top of that, he’s a down-to-earth-guy and a generally pleasant human being.
Hailing from Los Angeles, Perlas is a 30-year-old professional in the short-term disability insurance field. He was a bit vague about what that entails—I’m not sure if he’s really a broker or if he actually just dishes out “short-term disabilities” to collect “insurance money” from his “clients.” Don’t get me wrong, he’s as much of a great guy as he is a stout pit bull of an individual, and he could probably take on yours truly in any given parking lot on any given day.
2.jpg) So yeah, Carl “The Wrench” Perlas was running Big Brotherhood, which seemed to me like an odd call. “I just tried to guess the metagame a little, and Big Brotherhood has a fairly good matchup against Curve Sentinels, which I believe about a third of the people are probably using. The only things I think it might stutter to are some of the up-and-coming decks like EMS and Fantastic Fun.” Unfortunately, he guessed right—he’d already faced, and lost to, an Evil Medical School deck and had a 2–2 record at the time of the interview. “Hopefully I’ll go 7-2. I just have to play more non-jank matchups!” The environment was indeed janky today, with a huge amount of unpredictable rogue decks. “If I get out of the rut I’m in, maybe I’ll start playing Curve Sentinels . . . ” he grinned, seemingly kidding.
I asked the inevitable questions about PC: Amsterdam. “It was an utter disappointment,” admitted Perlas. “I went 5–0 and was leading the team and . . . uhh, my success just stalled . . . slightly . . . when I went 0–6 from there. I thought I was definitely going to make Day 2 with a decent record, but then it just went down the drain.”
He and teammate Ryan Jones looked exhausted towards the end of Day 1, so I asked if that was the main factor in his downfall. “It’s not necessarily the jet lag, but I played against some bad matchups, like the Marvel Knights KO deck. I lost two in a row to that deck because they do stellar against me.” He’d opted to play Spider-Knight. “I got sick, I’m still recovering. Not really sick, but I’m on the brink. You know . . . I need rest. I’m actually surprised I’m here! Some of my friends live in Seattle, so I actually came up more to just see them, but since the $10K is here, I decided I’d do it, as well.”
I was interested in hearing what he thought of Fantastic Fun. “I think it’s pretty good. It doesn’t seem consistent, but it plays pretty well. If people metagame against it, it’ll go down the drain, though.” Indeed, many people already were, as Micro-Sentinels made an impressive showing for the day. “If two people place Top 8 here today, you’ll see a ton of people playing Fantastic Fun in NYC. If two people can do that, it’ll blow up.”
Always curious to know the people behind the players, I asked what The Wrench did when he wasn’t playing. “When I’m not playing? Finding out the next place to play,” he grinned. “Finding out when the next event will take place. I don’t really playtest too much—it only goes so far for me. When I don’t play competitively, I’m playing a lot of casual decks. X-Statix/League is something I’ve been playing. You can play one guy at a time, Spin Doctoring or Dual Naturing your drops. Like, if I Dual Nature Bane out after I stun with Zeitgeist, it’s pretty great. Ra’s Al Ghul, the 8-drop, is sick. He makes the X-Statix Cafés non-unique, so he’s easily a 23 ATK/23 DEF. The deck works to some extent; it’s just getting over turn 7 that gives it trouble in some matchups. I’ll bring out Battering Ram if I have control of the initiative on turn 7—Magneto ruins my turn 8, but as long as I can get around him, it seems to go really well.”
Carl Perlas is cool, because despite the fact that he’s a successful pro-level player, he also just really loves this game. One of the great things about Vs. is that a lot of the great vets are really like that—genuinely nice people who genuinely enjoy playing. No doubt about it, Carl Perlas seems to be the perfect hybrid of hardened competitor and casual player.
He’s a great guy. Just don’t get near him if he’s got a wrench. |
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