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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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| Round 4: Craig Edwards vs. Avinash Nagar |
| Geordie Tait |
| May 14, 2005 |
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Curve Sentinels is a consistent deck with few weaknesses. Every rule has an exception, however, and this matchup promised to be an uphill battle for the robots. In round 4, Avinash Nagar, known in Toronto as a strong player, took his metal battalion to war against what may be its worst possible matchup. Sitting across the table was Craig Edwards, the 2nd place finisher at the Gen Con Indy PC, piloting Evil Medical School.
Both players were 3-0 going into the fourth round, and needless to say, they were trying to avoid tarnishing their sterling records.
 The game started with a duo of mulligans. Edwards led off the match with a GCPD Officer who went straight-up L.A.P.D. on Avin, getting in for a point of endurance loss on the first turn as the Toronto native had nothing to play. Edwards repeated the unanswered attack during the next stanza (when he was on the initiative), with a Robot Sentry joining in the assault. Avinash was lacking both Boliver Trask and Hounds of Ahab.
Avin, already a huge underdog in the matchup, could only quip, “Not sure if I’ll give you a challenge!” as he played resource number three and a Sentinel Mark II. If the pesky robot frustrated Edwards, who had finally drawn an Alfred, he didn’t show it. The butler made an appearance alongside a second GCPD Officer, and the GCPD Officers were placed in the front of a box formation.
Avin’s Mark II got pretty busy on its own, though, as if Nagar needed to make up for the time he had lost by passing on his first two recruit steps. The Sentinel cruised over to Robot Sentry, pulled a Nasty Surprise/Overload combo, and then popped Alfred in the mush, as well.
Craig recovered Alfred and tried to use his ability in his subsequent draw step, but Avin had previously drawn a now-useless Boliver Trask and used it to fuel the activated ability of his Mark II. Craig played out Alfred again and then Boris, passing priority, but with no sign of Dr. Doom anywhere, the old man was rendered impotent. It was not an optimal turn 4 for Craig, who would have been reusing Bat-Signals and tossing down double Reign of Terror at this point if his fortunes had been better. Avin, to his credit, came up with some quick offense in the form of Sentinel Mark V and attacked Boris for 1 (he was reinforced). Then, as if things weren’t already going poorly for Edwards, at the beginning of recovery, Avi dropped a bomb in Micro-Sentinels, targeting one of the two GCPD Officers and Boris for the KO of both cards at the start of the next draw phase.
 Sensing the obvious weakness in Edwards’s draw and having the initiative, Avin played out his top turn-5 stud in Nimrod. Edwards attempted to use Alfred again, but Avin wasn’t about to let the dangerous MS deck take a breath; he Reconstructed Boliver Trask and again discarded him to fuel Sentinel Mark II’s negation of the effect. It was a real squeeze play, and Edwards was suffocating under the weight of his poor draws. All he could do was replay Alfred and a less-than-threatening Shimmer, a character not exactly known for her strength on off-initiative turns. Things were looking lopsided—Avin’s board was Nimrod, Mark V, and Mark II against a GCPD Officer, Shimmer, and Alfred—and he had the initiative!
Avin pondered his attacks. Mark V bashed the cop, who was reinforced, then Nimrod knocked home the first big shot of the game by serving Shimmer some tasty elbow pastries to the tune of 9 endurance loss. Endurance totals were 46-33, but Edwards scored a minor victory by activating Alfred before Avin’s draw on turn 6. His elation was half sarcastic and half genuine, though he might have been even happier if Avin had elected to discard the Bastion in his hand to negate Alfred’s effect for a third time.
“Finally!”
He searched out his card (a Bat-Signal) but his draws were kind and he didn’t have to use it during the turn. Instead, Edwards spend his build phase recruiting Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius (chaining and hiding a Paralysis on Nimrod) and then replaying Alfred, who was now batting a respectable .333.
Undaunted, Avin simply fired Bastion onto the table. Edwards’s rejoinder was a frustrated smile and shuffle of his hand. “You got the god draw,” he almost whispered, resigned. The EMS player wasn’t dead in the water yet, however. He finally had Doom on his side, making his Reign of Terrors useful cards. It took him only a second to Reign Avin’s Mark II and follow up by teaming up with World’s Finest and using Shimmer to exhaust Avin’s whole team, ending the turn without a shot fired.
On turn 7, Avi could only blow a Genosha for the sub-optimal two cards and then further lower the bar by not finding a Magneto. He settled for a replay of his Sentinel Mark II, to which Edwards wisely responded with Alfred’s ability. All at once, between Avin’s under-drop and Edwards finally being able to use his Alfred, the tide seemed to have turned in favor of the EMS player. He pressed the advantage by fetching another Reign of Terror. Avin then played a Boliver Trask, finding a second Mark II to swell his army to a force of six characters. Edwards played for the late game (and the endurance loss double-donut) and used Mystical Paralysis on Bastion. He followed that bit of chicanery by teaming up again and using his Bat-Signal to find and recruit another copy of the good doctor. Doom came down, Bat-Signal went face down again, and Reign of Terror jumped out at one of Avinash Nagar’s two Sentinel Mark II’s. Then, finishing off the eventful turn with a master stroke, Edwards popped Robot Sentry onto the board and used its ability on the hapless Boliver Trask, who had been killing time in Avinash’s front row. After the final sword was sheathed, Avin was left with only Mark V and Mark II as viable attackers.
The Mark V, not one to miss a chance to wreak some havoc, went off to make trouble with Dr. Doom, resulting in a double stun and endurance totals of 41-28 in favor of the Curve player. Avin was not out of tricks, either. Without hesitation, he sent his Sentinel Mark II in to pull a Nasty Overload drive-by on Alfred and then crash into Shimmer while carrying a double dose of Savage Beatdown! Life totals were now at 41-13 for Avin, but Edwards had managed to reach turn 8, the true late game, where his deck is designed to rule the roost.
 After some debate, the deliberate Edwards decided to recover Dr. Doom, sending Alfred and Shimmer to the bin. After some more thought, he kicked off the eighth turn by recruiting a GCPD Officer, and using the officer to Bat-Signal, he found another Shimmer. Then, in a savage Avalanche of plays, he dropped in succession a second Robot Sentry, the aforementioned Shimmer, Alfred, and the kicker—a Power Compressor for Dr. Doom, stopping Avin’s Mark II from meddling with Shimmer’s burgeoning plan to exhaust all of Avin’s characters. Avin gamely struggled on with a Mark V, bringing him up to 7 total characters, but his entire squad ended up sideways regardless. Edwards had brought the game to turn 9, his proverbial wheelhouse, without taking a single point of endurance loss in the process.
Avin was leading off on the pivotal turn and had Magneto (about two turns too late), but a shake of his head revealed that he was skeptical about his chances. Edwards was eager to get to work, leading off his recruit phase with Alfred’s ability and searching up The Underworld Star. Then he used Underworld Star to find Dr. Light, and the deathblow appeared to be on the way in textbook EMS fashion. After the dust settled from the Mammoth boosting, Edwards had a mountain of characters (including a ready Boris and two Dooms), a newly face-down Mystical Paralysis, and a Dr. Light that quickly stunned Magneto to deal 7 to Avin. Boris was then activated to fetch Press the Attack, which readied Dr. Light for another attempted stunning, this time on Bastion.
Avin thought hard and then powered up his Mark V’s with Bastion’s ability, once each. Then there were two power ups on one Mark II and a single activation on another. After all the spare Sentinels had been discarded in the hope of one final, fatal, Death-Star trench run effort, Bastion was stunned and Avin was dropped to 33 endurance—still far ahead of Edwards 13, but with almost no chance of surviving a solid, initiative-fueled turn 10 from Edwards, who had all his tools in place.
That said, there was considerable pressure on Edwards, as well. He had to come up with the perfect formation to stop Avin’s forthcoming attack, which would consist of multiple 8/8 Mark V’s, a 6/5 and 5/4 Mark II, and Nimrod. With so many characters, the scene was hard to describe, but Edwards eventually decided on his formation, and Avin launched an attack into the back row at one of Edwards’s adjacent Shimmers. The Doom with the Power Compressor exhausted to Mystical Paralysis on Nimrod, but Avin managed to knock key holes in the formation and send his second-to-last Mark II into the fray with a Savage Beatdown in tow to take the match on his final turn.
Avinash Nagar wins!
Post-Match Reaction
Avinash Nagar
GT: Going in, knowing what he was playing, you must not have been too confident.
AN: No I wasn’t!
GT: As the match went along, you seemed to have some momentum building on your side. Can you describe what happened there for you to take the victory?
AN: (smile) Umm . . . luck?
GT: Luck, well—
AN: Well, luck and skill played a part. I was lucky to negate his Alfred for so long. After I did it the first time, I noticed that he had severe drawbacks with Alfred. It was key. I tried it out the first time, just to test him out and see if he had any plot twists.
GT: And when he seemed to really need the Alfred . . .
AN: When I he seemed to really need it, I continued to negate it, until turn 6 when my only option was to pitch a Bastion to negate it, which I would never do.
GT: What sort of things have to happen with your deck to beat an EMS deck?
AN: Mark II. Overload. Early Overload, and just . . . early drops. If you don’t have the early drops to take out his small characters, you’re not going to have a good game.
Craig Edwards
GT: Obviously, you were confident going in, knowing what he was playing. Things just didn’t go your way. Could you describe what sort of things have to go wrong for Curve Sentinels to actually beat your deck?
CE: Well, I drew really bad, and he was using his Mark II—he had enough guys to keep using him—and I drew no search whatsoever . . . I drew no Bat-Signals, no Dooms. So on turn 4 when I tried to use Alfred, he stopped that, which is good, I guess. Sometimes it’s good but sometimes it’s awful. So he only got to attack with one guy, but I just couldn’t find a Bat-Signal or Doom. So I was behind then, and like, he Overloaded and Nasty Surprised twice, and he had Micro-Sentinels to KO two guys. And even with that, I still went into turn 9. I would have been okay if I had had another Dr. Light in the KO’d pile, but the Dr. Lights were all in the deck. I exhausted two guys, KO’d two guys . . . but he just had too many guys on the table.
GT: What percentage of the time would you say you beat Curve Sentinels with your deck?
CE: I’ve heard people say 85 percent, and I would agree with that. I mean, I played one earlier and it wasn’t even close. I made mistakes and I still won. And he had [drops] 1 through 7. I guess if they get Micro-Sentinels on turn 3 and you don’t have a killer draw, it can be tough, but that’s about it. |
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