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Table Judge Matt Tabak and I gave the decks a quick one-turn warm up before the players sat down. I felt pretty good with Vidi’s build. |
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Quang Nguyen and Vidianto Wijaya, who live fewer than forty miles apart from one another, face each other in the semifinals. |
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This was sure to be a classic matchup, and representative of the major matchup from Day 1 here at Pro Circuit Atlanta. Shane Wiggans is squaring off with the standard Squadron Supreme build against Anand Khare's X-Faces deck. |
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Quang’s Top 8 here comes quite a while after his $10K win back when the game was young. Niles was in that $10K Top 8 too, and he lost.
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Khare: “The pace I play at may best be described as glacial. I am under the illusion that if I spend more time making decisions, I am then less likely to make mistakes.”
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Vidi Wijaya is on one side playing the stereotypical Squadron Supreme deck. Matt Oldaker is playing an X-Men based Mental deck that relies on its endurance-gaining effects such as Eye of the Storm to keep from dying before he can establish control.
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This mid-bracket quarterfinal saw Shane Wiggans run his Squadron Supreme deck against Brian Gates’s X-Faces build.
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The Draft portion of the Pro Circuit has come and gone and, as usual, destroyed many players in its wake. |
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Going into the last round on the bubble is always stressful, but both Anthony Justice and his opponent Tommy Ashton face the prospect with aplomb. |
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The winner of this "no holds barred" cage match would win the right to be considered for Top 8. |
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Both players have five losses coming into the round, and the victor in this match needs to win out and get lucky on tiebreakers if he wants taste Day 3 glory. |
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Before the round, the players were discussing possibilities for making the Top 8 based on their respective tiebreakers. They came to the conclusion that Graham couldn't make it, while Alex was a lock if he won out. |
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They’ve each chalked up thirteen victories and need two more to secure themselves a seat at the big table tomorrow. |
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Alex Tennet is a prestigious player with a rather impressive resume. |
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Going into round 16, they each have 11 wins and, if the stars align correctly, could be walking home with the EA Savage Beatdown. |
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"I don't even know what initiative I want . . . uh . . . I'll take evens," said Josh. |
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The round 15 feature match between Michael Dalton and Anthony Justice began quietly, with both players shuffling their cards in uninterrupted silence. |
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Masami Ibamoto, Japan’s biggest export since Biolante, is a two-time $10K Top 8 player and all-around nice guy. |
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I have been raised in a world where there were no characters that cost 8, only characters that cost 7 or less, or blank cards. |
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Teammates Andre Müller and Alexander Jersch went into the first draft with the same plan—to build a low-cost JLI–Injustice Gang deck that used the powerful pumps available to the JLI in combination with the Injustice Gang’s ability to put out monstrous numbers of Army characters.
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Steve Horowitz’s performance has been impressive on the Pro Circuit thus far. |
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Nick "The Nut Low" Little and Alex "Google My Name" Jebailey are among the most colorful personalities on the Pro Circuit, and this was going to be an incredible match. |
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I sat down to talk with Masami Ibamoto, Akihiro Shimizu, and Shota Yasooka to discuss Sealed Pack strategy from the other side of the globe. |
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Both players were going into the round having won their first match and aiming for Day 3. |
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Of the top ten decks from Day 1, nine were aggressive strategies ranging from the obsessively homicidal burn deck piloted by Jesse Hill to the swarming X-Faces deck employed by four of the top-10ers. |
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For those of you just joining the Vs. System world, Doug Tice is the man of the hour as far as Sealed Pack play is concerned. His opponent this round is a member of the strong German contingent that has been putting up impressive numbers since the dawn of the Pro Circuit. |
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Las Vegas native Josh Wiitanen, hot off his success at $10K San Francisco, came through Day 1 of Pro Circuit Atlanta with a 7–3 record. He is looking to build on that and add another Top 8 performance to his list of achievements.
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This was a very difficult table featuring some incredible players, and Doug was in the unfortunate position of being seated directly between Karl to his left and Alex to his right. |
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Anthony Justice is better known as a Constructed player than as a drafter, and his performance yesterday put him in the top draft pod today. |
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This is an all–Your Move Games match for a slot in Day 2. |
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After nine grueling rounds of play, we have finally narrowed it down to a single undefeated player. |
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Despite ending his European adventure and moving back to the wilds of Western Canada, Dean hasn’t lost his edge. |
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Alex Jebailey nearly Jebaileyed himself in an earlier round, but Vidi Wijaya saved him. Now Vidi has to battle the Dance Dance Revolution world champion. Oh noes! |
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Neil Reeves is pretty happy. He’s playing Faces of Evil, and he’s doing pretty well. He started out singing a merry tune while shuffling. . . |
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Many Japanese gamers approach the games they play with such professional diligence that it doesn't take them long to reach the pinnacle of any game. |
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The numbers are in, and Squadron Supreme is dramatically the most popular deck for Day 1 of Pro Circuit Atlanta. |
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“The Nick Little” is playing one of the more intriguing decks in the field today, a controlling and defensive little number sporting largely X-Men characters, with a few special tweaks to put it over the top.
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John Fiorillo is a Pro Circuit mainstay who has put up a number of solid finishes in the past. His opponent this round, Anand Khare, is used to being on the other side of the keyboard. |
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Both going into the sixth round with a 4–1 record, Pro Circuit veterans Neil Reeves and Jason Dawson were both in good standing to make Day 2. |
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Ryan Jones is commonly known as the pretty boy of the Vs. System circuit, and not too bad a player in his own right. His opponent, Matt Tatar, is a retired foot model who came to the tournament with a cane to support a leg injury he had recently suffered. |
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Karl Horn is hot off winning Pro Circuit Los Angeles and seems well prepared to break the Curse of the Extended Art Beatdown, making Day 2 in subsequent events. |
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Every so often, a deck comes along that truly meshes with who you are. |
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In the blue corner, Michael "What's under the hat" Jacobs, one of the premier players in the game, and many players' vote for the best player in the game. In the red corner, Matt "Chicken Dance" Boccio, a veteran of numerous $10K Top 8s. |
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“I don’t think there is a single person in the room apart from us playing either of these decks.” |
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Going into today, if you'd asked me what I thought the most-played decks would be, I'd point you to the most recent Golden Age PC, and the destruction that Avengers, Faces of Evil, and Squadron Supreme wreaked on the—mind you—Golden Age format. |
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Here it is: the inaugural feature match of Pro Circuit Atlanta. |
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It’s the first round of a whole new Pro Circuit, but it seems that various players still feel like they are in Los Angeles. |
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334 players from eleven countries came out to compete this weekend. Here's the breakdown. |
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