This match was a rematch of the final round pairing during the extended Swiss rounds. Ben was hoping that he'd be able to reverse the result, since he was thoroughly beaten by the “Utility Belt” Gotham Knights deck that Dan has concocted. Ben was playing his own innovative deck, Fearsome Knights—a heavy lockdown control deck that has a tremendous late game with Psimon and Dr. Light.

Game 1

Ben won the dice roll and chose the even initiative.

Dan passed on his first initiative, while Ben capitalised by recruiting a GCPD Officer to his ranks. The second turn saw both players recruiting Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle, showing off that Gotham Knights prefers the slow control route to advantage rather than simple beatdown. Ben was able to exhaust his Officer to pay for Bat-Signal, searching for Alfred Pennyworth, while Dan, after missing his first turn drop, was forced to exhaust his Oracle for the same effect. Ben chose to use Oracle’s ability to gain a card during his recovery step.

Dan was still behind the curve on turn 3, only able to deploy Alfred and draw a card from Oracle with his resource points, while Ben was able to maximise his turn, playing the aforementioned Alfred as well as a Shimmer, which was used in his combat step to exhaust Dan’s Oracle.

Ben activated Alfred during his resource step, searching for a Marvel Team-Up, drew a card with Oracle, and played two GCPD Officers and replayed the returned Alfred. Dan finally had a full turn, using Alfred to search for Fizzle and replaying him, as well as a Huntress. Seeking to keep his card advantage, Ben team-attacked with 3 GCPD Officers on Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle. After the attack he then used Shimmer to exhaust Huntress.

Dan’s fifth recruit step saw him search for yet another Fizzle, and then playing Catwoman and Alfred. Ben decided it was also time for Fizzle, and the butler was sent to fetch it. He used the rest of his resource points to replay Alfred, two more GCPD Officers, a Bat Signal was sent to find Harvey Bullock and finally a card was drawn with Oracle. Harvey was put to work immediately, exhausting Huntress before any attacks are announced, but Catwoman has a deep-seated hatred of the law, and it showed with her subsequent attack on a GCPD Office. After that attack, Oracle was locked down once more with Shimmer, and Ben was able to draw from his Barbara during his recovery.

Ben used all of his resource points on the sixth turn to recruit Dr. Light, the backbone of his deck. Seeing the inevitable situation, Dan searched for Flame Trap, then played Batman, Caped Crusader and replayed the returned Alfred, who would soon be looking for a new job due to the amount of running he needed to do for this one. With the endurance totals at 48 apiece, it was easy to see that this game was likely to end in one huge turn.

Ben began his combat step with Dr. Light attacking the Caped Crusader, to which Dan responded with a Nasty Surprise. Ben exhausted his own Oracle with Shimmer, and combined with Alfred, was able to play Press the Attack and revealed Marvel Team-Up to attempt to ready Dr. Light. Ben used Dr. Light’s activated ability to stun Batman, to which Dan responded by playing Have a Blast! on the Marvel Team-Up. Ben would have none of this ruining his plans, so he revealed World’s Finest to counteract the Have a Blast! Dan played another Have a Blast! on the World’s Finest, determined not to have the Knights and Five considered a single team, but Ben attempted to negate it with a Fizzle. Dan was determined to Have a Blast!, so he played the third copy from his hand, also targeting the World’s Finest. With the chain reaching a ridiculous length, Ben added to it, playing a second Press the Attack on Dr Light, who readied and attempted to stun Batman again. Dan had the previously searched for Flame Trap, which was then the target of Ben’s Fizzle. This Fizzle was responded to by Dan’s Fizzle, on which Ben played his own Fizzle. Dan played his last Fizzle, forcing Ben to use Alfred to search for what was hopefully the last Fizzle of the game. Fo shizzle, or something like that. Dan decided to concede before his head blew up in confusion, and Ben went on to state, “Counterspells have come to Vs.”

Dan Gow 0, Ben Kreis 1

Game 2

Dan decided that being more proactive was going to help, so he chose the odd initiative. He wasn’t rewarded, and missed his first recruit. Ben didn’t miss his, and brought out a GCPD Officer, who was exhausted to Bat-Signal for Alfred. Ben kept up the tempo by playing Alfred and Harvey on his next recruit step, with Dan still recruiting nothing. After a few attacks to Dan’s face, we moved on to the third turn.

This turn had Dan finally making a play, recruiting Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle, and using his final resource point to draw a card. Ben used Alfred to search for Fizzle, then deployed his own Oracle and replayed Alfred, an eerie mirror of Game 1. The team of Harvey and his cop flunky attacked Oracle to prevent her doing too much damage—card advantage wise—and the recovery step saw Ben get farther ahead with another card from Oracle.

Ben took advantage of his multitude of search abilities by using Alfred to fetch the Underworld Star, replayed Alfred, and read in the Underworld Star that Shimmer is lo