With so many top players dropping like flies, the field is wide open for newer teams and independent players. One of the day’s best is a Northern California team called Sac Town’s Finest. Fronted by team spokesman Brian Forth, and packing a ton of very original decks, the team includes former Shonen Jump Championship Top 8 player Patrick Holmes.
The team also features Jeff Vertrees, Brendan Chock, Kyler Holoway, Jason Shannon, Ben Lair, and Andrew Dahkil. Chock and Shannon were 5-0 at the time of this interview, and several other team members were 4-1, so they deserved a bit of publicity.
I started with the usual questions; namely, the whos, hows, and whys of team profiling. Based out of Sacramento, the team casually came together like so many of the best groups do. “Basically we all play at the same store, A-1 Comics in Roseville. I’ve been playing there for two years. It just came together all of a sudden. We started going to regionals together, competing seriously and stuff, and it just kind of went from there.”
Northern California takes some heat sometimes from its southern counterpart. SoCal is renowned as having one of the best metagames in the world, and Northern California players often get the short end of the stick. I asked what Sacramento’s metagame was like, and Brian was happy to answer. “It’s jus as competitive as it is anywhere else. We’ve got top-tier players: we sent eight or nine guys to Nationals last year. It’s just as good as Southern California or the Bay Area, or the East Coast, in my opinion.”
Call me jaded, but I always ask new teams a couple difficult questions in order to see if they really know what they’re doing. I dropped one of them on Brian, asking him point-blank about what advantages his team would have over others. He gave it some thought and then replied decisively: “We actually all kind of build different decks, so it’s easy to deck test against each other. Instead of everyone playing the same decks and not really being able to learn much, we all have different play styles and it gives us more of a sense for what the game is going to be like. I’m more of a Beatdown player, Jeff’s kind of inventive—he never tries to go cookie-cutter with anything. He was doing the Dark Coffin stuff a while ago, and did well with it at a regional.”
He continued. “We’re a big group, so we can help people out with cards. We’re all borrowing cards today, actually. It’s a good tight group.” He was also eager to share positive views about the current format. “We all like the current format. I think UDE and Konami are heading in the right direction for where the game could go. I have some changes in mind, but I like where the game is headed right now. I wish Book of Moon wasn’t limited, just because it’s my all-time favorite all-purpose card, but I mean, I like the format.”
The team has a casual, open perspective on potential growth. “We’ve grown from two to twelve people in the past couple years, and I don’t see us stopping any time soon.” I inquired about recruitment. “We are kind of recruiting right now, but we only recruit within the city. We’re always looking for new players – Kyler just got added to the team because he had two 6-0 tournaments. We’re always looking for new players in the town, we aren’t cool enough to be exclusive.” He grinned.
And the team’s goal here today? “We basically came today to show the country that Northern California, Sacramento in particular, we got game. We’re not to be taken lightly. We might not be able to travel as much, but we’re for real. We don’t want people to underestimate the little guys. Just because we aren’t known doesn’t mean we aren’t good.”
I was intrigued by their spread of decks here today. “I’m running a Control deck based on using Dekoichi and Magical Merchant, but I also use Don Zaloog aggressively. I’m trying to expand my advantage while limiting theirs” Forth explained. “Jason Shannon, who’s 5-0 right now, is running a Tomato deck with three Mystic Tomato and three D. D. Assailant. You’ve seen Jeff’s deck. Brendan Chock, who’s 5-0, is running a Burn deck. Ben Lair is running Strike Ninja, Patrick is running a Chaos build with typical stuff, Dekoichi and Merchant. Kyler is playing his own build – it’s a Toolbox that splashes Strike Ninja.
We joked about how good the Ninja is in topdecking situations, prompting forth to gleefully declare, “Hey, I got a monster that can’t die!”
Wrapping up, I asked him if the team was seeking sponsorship. He laughed and gave an emphatic “Heck yeah!” For anyone who missed it, that home store was A-1 Comics in Roseville. You can’t see it, but I am winking right now.
Sac Town’s Finest have a lot of members that are currently in Top 8 contention, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to make a placement in Day 2. With innovative and varied style, and a superior system for testing decks, this is certainly a team to be reckoned with!