As many people have noticed today, the format is far healthier than everyone predicted. The expected field of nothing but Good Guys has yielded to something far more interesting. CMVU, Good Guys, Secret Society, Shadowpact, and Rock of Eternity builds have been showing up all over the top tables.

Walking around toward the end of round 6, I came up on Chris Bender playing a match with his variation of a Rock deck. It wasn’t Ahmed and the JSA support cards that caught my eye, but rather the fact that he also had Detective Chimp, Bobo T. Chimpanzee in play at the same time. After watching him defeat his CMVU opponent with both versions of June Moon ◊ Enchantress hitting play at various points in the game, I sat down to talk with him and Zach Krizan, his teammate and co-creator of the deck.

The two aspiring pros from Waco, Texas said that the deck emerged much like it did for most people—the moment they saw The Rock of Eternity, they wanted to break it. “We were looking for all the different characters we could abuse by getting a free activation every turn. The obvious ones were Ahmed Samsarra and Thunderbolt, but we also thought that June Moon had the potential to be a beating when combined with the Rock.”

Zach added, “I think we did a pretty good job predicting the metagame for this event. We thought that the biggest decks were going to be Good Guys, CMVU, and WWIII. I’m a little surprised that Good Guys are doing as well as they are, because I figured that most players would be packing more hate for the matchup, but there are still some undefeated players using Good Guys.”

When asked about their matchups against the field, they said that Good Guys was a good matchup for them if they went into turn 4 at or below 25 endurance so they can activate June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch. Otherwise, they say the matchup is still in their favor. Zach went on to say that CMVU is a difficult matchup with odd initiatives but a great one with evens. “We really want to be able to use June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Bad Witch, or else it becomes a difficult matchup for us to win.”

When asked about their favorite parts of the deck, they immediately pointed out the Helm of Nabu and Fate has Spoken, saying that when they were able to activate the 6-drop June Moon twice a turn, it was almost impossible to lose. Advance Warning is another card that they singled out. “We had three copies of it throughout testing, but had to increase it to four just for the fact that it’s probably the best defensive plot twist in the format.” They went on to say that they had also been having problems with decks that could pump out of range of their defensive cards. Zach mentioned his loss to Tim Batow earlier when he saw a Connor Hawke ◊ Green Arrow; Kendra Saunders ◊ Hawkgirl; and Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Thanagarian Enforcer pump Tim’s characters to astronomical heights.