“Jason Hager must be outside saying, ‘I’m so glad that buffoon Antonino won his last match and is playing Curve Sentinels. He gives me so much money when he plays that deck.’” De Rosa was referring to the semifinals match at Pro Circuit New York where Hager beat Ant with $6,000 on the line. De Rosa is playing the same deck archetype here as he was that weekend, while Hager has gone from New School to the evil Light Show combo deck.
Apparently there was some acrimony between the two in New York, because De Rosa is prone to jabber while Hager takes extended periods of time to think through his potential plays, but all that is water under the bridge now as the two have been pretty congenial this weekend..
Game 1 began with Hager tossing down the kids on turns 1 and 2 (Valeria Richards, Daughter of Doom and Kristoff von Doom, The Boy Who Would Be Doom), while De Rosa had no action until a Sentinel Mark II on turn 3. Jason was also burning through some spare cantrip Team-Ups in the first couple of turns, trying to find the right combination of action and characters to set up the combo. Hager recruited Sonar and Boris, Personal Servant of Doom for turn 3 with some help from The Ring Has Chosen. On turn 4, Jason burned two Cosmic Radiations to draw cards with Valeria and spent another Common Enemy from his hand, clearly searching for a card, presumably Dr. Light, but he had to settle with replaying Boris and then recruiting Rama-Tut instead. De Rosa put a second Mark II into play and then thought for a while about what to do after Hager used Sonar to exhaust a character. He exhausted a Mark II, and then chose not to attack with his other Mark II, leaving it open to counter Boris’s ability.
De Rosa boosted a Sentinel Mark V for his fifth turn, playing a defensive game and adding force to the board. A Mark II negated a Boris activation, but The Ring Has Chosen brought Boris back to Hager’s hand and into play, only for the other Mark II to negate that search as well. Thankfully for Jason, he’s a good player, and already had another Boris in hand to search out Signal Flare, which grabbed Dr. Light, Master of Holograms and all things unholy and combo-like. Doc entered play, Hager flipped Devil’s Due shipping King Tut to the discard pile, and Dr. Light brought Tut back along with Cosmic Radiation. De Rosa used Search and Destroy on Dr. Light, but Hager just moved Rama-Tut back in, continuing the loop. De Rosa conceded that he was beat.
De Rosa asked Hager how he was going to win that game, suggesting that maybe Jason would have made an arbitrarily large attacker. “I would have just done infinite with Hornet there—making a guy infinitely large against Curve Sentinels is just a bad idea.”
Hager 1 – De Rosa 0
“I want you to draw lots of Brainwaves and Sonars in this matchup . . . no Dr. Light, Boris or Valeria, please” requested De Rosa
Hager started game 2 with Wyatt Wingfoot, while De Rosa did hot things like hitting his one and two drops (Boliver Trask and Hounds of Ahab) and flipping up Total Anarchy.
“It’s always so hard to decide whether to try and win now or not,” admitted Hager.
“Win Now?!? You could actually win now?”
Very close.
“He has nothing in play and he’s actually going to win now. Jeeesus.”
Hager chose to wait and not play any characters on turn 3, and received a blessing when De Rosa completely whiffed on this 3-drop.
“You are sooo lucky.”
“Yer lucky I didn’t win on turn 3! I could have taken the gamble and possibly won on turn 3, but the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.”
“Sentinel Mark V,” said De Rosa. “Ah, nice card,” quipped Hager.
“Yer winning, don’t make fun of my cards.”
“You made fun of Micro-Chip (in New York)!”
“Yeah, okay . . . but only the person who is losing can make fun of the other person’s cards, okay?”
Hager recruited Valeria and then Dr. Light, and put The Ring Has Chosen on the chain, forcing De Rosa to Search and Destroy Dr. Light. With the Search on the chain, Hager used Millennium to team up Fantastic Four and Emerald Enemies and draw a card. He then played a second Millennium to draw another card, then a second Ring Has Chosen to fetch Kristoff and discard him. Hager then played Cosmic Radiation, brought Kristoff into play, used a third Millennium in his resource row to team up Fantastic Four and Doom, then drew another card with Valeria, again leaving his characters all tapped in a row. At that point he flipped up Devil’s Due and KO’d the good doctor, negating the search. Finally, he found Black Cat when the last Chosen resolved. De Rosa’s attacks whacked Kristoff and Boliver off the map and made the endurance totals 44-34 in favor of De Rosa.
On the next turn Hager recruited Black Cat and Dr. Light. De Rosa told Hager to simply show him the rest of the combo pieces, and he would concede. That’s what Jason, did and he was off to the finals, giving us yet another Light Show mirror match.
Hager 2 – De Rosa 0