OMG! OMC! AMC! - 7:15 PM

So there are all sorts of cool things to do at Gen Con So Cal. You can play any number of games, meet all sorts of Science Fiction and Fantasy celebrities, and find all sorts of unusual gaming bric-a-brac. There is even an area rededicated to the entertainment of the wee gamers in attendance.

The children’s play area has an ultra cool wall of Velcro, an inflatable area for jousting with inflatable battle sticks, and a terrifying metal ball that you can strap small children into and roll down a giant bowling alley. If it sounds more like a golden age man-trap from the Batman comics than an entertaining children’s diversion, you aren’t far off in picturing it.

Josh “One Man Crowd” Bennett was somehow convinced to subject himself to this experience. Omeed Dariani is not a man to resist the opportunity to subject his employees to being strapped inside constricting metal devices, and he cackled demonically about the prospect of capturing the whole event with digital photos and video. Of course, Omeed wanted to bowl an entire ten frames, but there were other kids waiting in line to be terrified, and one frame was all we could manage—much to Josh’s relief.

Another Squad Heard From - 7:07 PM

X-Men, Titans, Doom/FF hybrids, and even that old standby The New Brotherhood have all advanced their helmsmen to the Day 2 Draft portion of this Pro Circuit event. Jason Dawson ran his My Beloved deck through a gauntlet of more popular archetypes today, and when he took down David De Michele and his Titans in the eighth round, his below-the-radar deck choice earned him a chance to crack some Superman packs tomorrow morning.

It should not come as much of a surprise to find Jason blazing a trail with a new deck. While the rest of the world was busy toying with the namby-pamby Brotherhood decks that were populated with frails such as Destiny and Phantazia, Jason was making the Top 8 of the first ever $10K tournament in Philadelphia with the manly Brotherhood deck that he created. It was called Big Brotherhood . . . maybe you’ve heard of it.

My Beloved, with its Tower of Babel and Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head, is another deck that is designed to just own Teen Titans, which was bad news for De Michele, who was sent packing into round 9 still looking for that elusive sixth win. 

Making the Most of a Last Chance - 6:03 PM

Jeremy Thomas was one of the lucky players who showed up this tournament yesterday hoping to win an invite at one the Last Chance Qualifiers that Upper Deck offered all Thursday long. He was eager to enter one of the Constructed events with the same Sinister Syndicate deck he piloted to a narrow second place finish at a recent Florida PCQ. He quickly found himself out of the running, but with a newfound understanding of this weekend’s metagame.

He entered a Sealed Pack tournament and exited it many hours later with an invite to play today. After his Constructed LCQ experience he knew he could not play his Syndicate deck and audible to an X-Men deck he had built a few days before leaving Florida to com here. The deck is designed to beat decks that revolve around small drop characters such as Titans, Sentinels, and Brotherhood—all of which he ran afoul of in the LCQ.

I am happy to report that Jeremy and his X-Men are alive and well after seven rounds. He clinched a seat at tomorrow’s draft with his sixth victory and has handled the abundant Titans decks quite easily with Cardiac and Total Anarchy that are in his otherwise-Mutant deck for just that purpose.

And yet . . . - 5:57 PM

For all of the hype surrounding exciting new decks such as Going Rogue, Spider-Friends, and whatever else the mad scientists of Vs. System can come up with, table one of round 7 is occupied by two Common Enemy players—going well over the allotted time, of course—with pristine records. Matthew Tatar, who dislodged Adam Horvath from the undefeated ranks last round, and Sammy Gilly both chose to play the deck that won the last Pro Circuit, and it has served them both well. If and when one of them wins, they will sit atop the standings at 7-0 with a chance to face off against similarly 7-0 Eugene Harvey for the last undefeated record in the tournament.

Sittin’ Pretty - 5:47 PM

So it seems like you can believe the hype. Just a glance at the first row of tables, which feature nothing but undefeated and single loss players, at the start of round six revealed that Going Rogue was indeed all that it had been cracked up to be.

Adam Horvath was sitting at the top table facing down Matthew Tatar and the oh-so Common Enemy. The winner of that match would lock up advancing to day 2 which requires a 6-4 record. The deck’s designer, Eugene Harvey, squared off with Aik Tongtharadol and his Brotherhood build in yet another matchup of undefeated players.

Paul Sottosanti and Ryan Redner were grappling a couple of tables over—Redner was with yet another Common Enemy deck—in the one loss bracket, while Anand Khare took on Patrick Giles and his assortment of teenage superheroes.

Harvey, Sottosanti, and Khare all won their matches, while Horvath fell to Tatar. Harvey has locked up his seat at tomorrow’s draft table, and the other three can do the same with one more win. Remember, that is just the players in the first row of tables. Craig Krempels, Osyp Lebedowicz, and Billy Postlethwait were all 4-1 coming into round 6 wielding the deck as well.

Philip Masters Beatdown - 5:00 PM

There was a throng of TOGIT players sitting at 4-2 after the sixth round. One of those players was Antonino DeRosa and arrived at that record in a spectacular and completely unexpected fashion. He was facing off against Robert Gallagher and his Big Brotherhood deck. It was turn 10, and DeRosa’s Onslaught was staying hidden deep in his deck. Gallagher, who was at 1, had the initiative and built first. DeRosa looked for some way to do the final point he needed, and suddenly it came to him. He played Jean Grey, Phoenix Force and immediately popped her to sweep the board. He then played Puppet Master and when the initiative swung around to DeRosa—which did not take long, since Gallagher was looking at an empty board—the 0 ATK/2 DEF man swung in and was powered up for the win.

Not exactly what Harvey had in mind when he built the deck, but the weary DeRosa was happy to advance to a 4-2 record with an excellent shot at making Day 2.

Thankless tasks made easier . . .  - 4:12 PM

Ben Bleiweiss has been toiling away in the coverage room all afternoon typing away so you can have all the decklists once Day 1 comes to a conclusion. It is the ultimate in thankless, mind-numbing tasks, but it has to get done. Ben has to take his joy where he can find it, and he let out an ecstatic whoop when he came across the one Wild Vomit deck in the tournament through players up to the letter R.

Here Comes The Spider-Man! - 3:30 PM

Perhaps overlooked in all the hype surrounding the early success of the Going Rogue deck has been a string of solid performances based around the Spider-Friends affiliation. Bin Chen was 4-1 after five rounds with the $40 Hippos’ Spider-Friends deck that was designed by David Leader. Coming into the fifth round, three of the five players slinging the webs were 3-1, while the remaining two were 2-2.

Bin squared off with Jason Green in the fifth round. The deck’s power became apparent on the fourth turn when Jason sent his Terra into Will o’ The Wisp and attempted to Savage Beatdown only to be reminded that he did not have enough resources in play to use it thanks to Black Cat, Master Thief. Terra just crumpled on impact. Despite being locked under Raven for several turns, Bin managed to defeat the Teen Titans deck thanks to the abundant card drawing of Ezekiel and the opportunity to activate Mattie Franklin Spider-Woman three times when the team came across the table at the seemingly defenseless Mattie.

Bin’s Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man (aptly named) was utterly ridiculous with a ten card hand on the next turn, as it exhausted Jason’s whole squad when four Titans proposed to come over the table. It was so effective at stealing the initiative away from Green that Chen forgot that that the initiative was his own for the next turn. It did not matter as Spider-Man, Cosmic Spider-Man locked up the game on the next turn.

Danny Mandel was watching the latter portion of the match and was pleased with the cards he saw in play on both sides of the table. The 7-drop Raven made him happy because he could say, “That’s so Raven” every time Green used her ability, but he was also excited to find that Raven had made her way into the Titans deck.

More than that, he was thrilled to see Spider-Friends winding its way to the top tables. Seattle based Luke Chen was sitting atop the standings at 5-0 with a West Coast build of Spider-Friends, and Mandel was shocked that it took this long for players to make a go of it.
“For a long time that was our best deck,” explained the Vs. System Junior Designer. “It was so good that we had to nerf several cards in playtesting. But even then it was still good. That is why I was surprised no one was playing it on the PCQ circuit. 7-drop Spidey is just raunchy!”

$40 Hippos - 3:03 PM

At Pro Circuit Indy, Gabe Alonso was 1-3 going into the fifth round of play. He managed to eke out the three remaining wins he needed for the 4-3 cut off to Day 2. While he struggled through the Constructed portion of the event, he was confident that his Sealed Pack play would pull him through, despite never having done a real life draft prior to the tournament.

Gabe is a member of The $40 Hippos, a team that has its members split between Atlanta and Miami. The team members were extremely concerned about their inability to practice drafting as a team and develop a cohesive strategy regarding pick orders, affiliations, and reading a draft table. They turned to team member Chuck Bell, who wrote a web based program that they refer to as the Hippo Draft Program.

“We needed to play online, which meant we needed to build a way for that to happen. So I built one,” shrugged Bell. “It is designed with PHP and MySQL. We use it to draft, and then it allows us to play out our matches on Apprentice.”

More important than allowing them to play their matches is a feature that allows them to save every pick from every draft and deconstruct each draft down the smallest detail. “Thanks to Chuck’s program, I was able to dominate my draft tables, and after starting the tournament in the toilet, I finished in the Top 32 and won myself some money,” explained Alonso as he patted Bell on the back.

Even more impressive than Alonso’s finish was Steve Horowitz placing fifth overall in the tournament. Steve was able to cruise through Day 2 thanks to his preparation with Bell’s little creation. “It can also be used as a coaster—brilliant!” chimed in David Leader, with a solid imitation of the Guinness Draft commercials.

Alonso feels his team is better prepared for the draft portion of this event than most of the field. In the last week alone the squad managed to get in about twenty drafts for Man of Steel without either half of the team having to travel to meet the other half. “We have been able to replay all of our drafts and our team has a clear idea of what all the tier 1 cards are. We know exactly what we want to see when we open each pack.”

To find out what cards they pick first, we will have to follow up with them tomorrow, because they weren’t sharing any of that valuable information with anyone not on their team. The $40 Hippos are made up of Gabe Alonso, Chuck Bell, Russell Pippin, David Leader, Bin Chen, Milton Figueroa, and Steve Horowitz. Keep an eye out for a feature on the Spider-Friends deck that many of the Hippos are running during the Constructed portion this weekend.

Overheard on the floor . . . - 2:34 PM

Much like the Rigged Elections deck that took the metagame by storm at the last Pro Circuit event, Going Rogue is giving players fits as they try and figure out the contents of the deck. Then once they know what is in the deck, they need to figure out what those underused cards do.

Your Move Games’s player Chris Senhouse was going from huddle of players to huddle of players trying to understand one key card in the deck. “What does Emma Frost do exactly? Seriously, what does she do?”

Ka-Boom! Boom Room - 1:15 PM

While the TOGIT gang continues to do well with their Going Rogue deck, they have encountered an unexpected bump in the road. Many of the Titans decks in the room appear to be running Ka-Boom!, which can be very disruptive to the X-Men based deck if it takes out Cerebro. The deck is also very resource-hungry and needs to hit its 7-drop, Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath.

Steve Sadin is a Neutral Ground player who has been working with TOGIT for this event after his strong finish at Pro Circuit Indy. He was 2-1 with Going Rogue, taking a Ka-Boom! based loss to a The Brave and the Bold deck in an early round. “Everyone who has lost with the deck has lost to a Ka-Boom!. The Brave and the Bold is almost as bad a matchup for the deck as a Longshot-based Sentinels deck.”

Anand Khare, who was 3-0 with Harvey’s fiendish creation, agreed. He confided that the worst matchup for the deck is actually Rigged Elections. “You could actually pick out all the cards you draw each turn and you still can’t win.”

Sadin was not expecting to see Ka-Boom! in the Titans decks. “I don’t know why they are running it. They may have gotten wind of the deck. I don’t know how they would make room for it with Foiled and Overload already in the deck otherwise.”

What the Deck? - 12:26 PM

The night before a major Constructed event is always an odd cocktail of espionage, preparation, and scrounging as players try to figure out what other teams are playing, playtest the known matchups, and borrow the last couple of rares to make their decks tournament ready.

As I wandered about the site and the lobby check-in area of the hotel, I had the opportunity to speak to dozens of players and try to get the skinny on what decks they would be running. As of last night, Kibler, Walls, Reeves, and company were vacillating between Common Enemy and Teen Titans—a struggle many of the players I encountered were also embroiled in. Walls and Reeves were testing the Titans mirror late into the evening, with Reeves breaking out his broom against a frustrated Walls.

The only other deck that many players were considering was the Curve Sentinels deck that David Spears piloted to a second place finish at the Texas $10K event. A handful of the Vsrealms contingent were planning on sending out the Sentinel army, but not Spears. Spears changed his mind at the last minute and decided to play Brotherhood Burn, the deck that Matt Boccio used to win the first ever $10K event in Philadelphia, with the addition of four Flying Kicks. Spears’s teammate Robert Leander, who won the Texas $10K, was planning to run his trademark Teen Titans, and Mike Mikaelian went with Curve Sentinels.

The most exciting development of the tournament has to be the TOGIT deck that has been dubbed “Going Rogue.” Eugene Harvey, former U.S. National Magic: The Gathering Champion and one of the top TCG Constructed minds on the planet, recently picked up Vs. System and built a new deck with little influence from the existing metagame. At first glance, his X-Men based deck bears a passing resemblance to Solitaire decks that many players are familiar with, but this is an entirely new animal.

The entire TOGIT squad is running Harvey’s build, and Adam Horvath was the last player to find the final cards for his deck late last night. He had to borrow X-Corporations; Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath; Rogue, Power Absorption; and Jean Grey, Phoenix Force. It should be an interesting deck to follow. If it lives up to the hype—and the TOGIT gang has been hyping it hard—then you should be hearing a lot more about this deck all day today.

Going Rogue: Round One - 11:43 PM

Osyp Lebedowicz was paired against Melissa Hebra of Florida in the first round of play. Melissa was playing the extremely popular Common Enemy deck, which was good news for the TOGIT player. According to the playtesting results leading up to this event, Going Rogue has a 75% - 80% matchup against the format’s most popular deck.

As the game progressed, Osyp simply took control of the game with his array of stall characters and capped things off with his turn 8 Jean Grey, Phoenix Force. Melissa smiled and wished Osyp luck in the next round. Osyp laughed at the cards in his deck as he gathered up his things.

“When Eugene showed me the deck I told him that it stinks. ‘Look at how many bad cards you are playing!’” Osyp sighed and fanned a set of Jean Grey, Marvel Girl, “But he kept beating me—look at these cards! We’re playing four of these!”

Melissa Hebra was surprised by the deck, “I have seen stall decks before but not anything like this one—not Sunfire, that’s for sure.”

Of the eleven players with card-for-card identical lists in the tournament, only Antonino DeRosa lost a game for the first round.

Osyp wandered over to watch Adam Horvath finish up his round one match against a My Beloved deck. Quite a crowd was gathered to see the deck in action as word of the TOGIT creation had spread throughout the tournament site. As Adam easily dispatched his opponent with a turn 8 Jean Grey, Phoenix Force and followed with a turn 9 Onslaught, Osyp tried to downplay the deck for the crowd.

“Onslaught? That guy’s deck stinks,” shouted Osyp in a poorly disguised voice. “Good luck in the tournament with that pile, pal!”