Vs. System.org

               After several weeks of testing the time had finally come to see if I would be able to defend my title of UK National Champion, in a day long VS Marathon. Would it be another glorious victory (or at least a respectable defence) or ignominious defeat. Read on True Believers to find out:

 For those of your that don’t know, the UK Nationals was using a dual format structure. There would be six Swiss rounds, followed by a top 8 cut. The first 3 rounds of the Swiss would be played with Silver Age Random Punks decks (so no rares allowed). The next 3 rounds would be Golden Age Bring Your Own Two Teams (choose two teams who are automatically crossed over, but all the cards in your deck must reference one of the two teams 9 BYOTT in future reference). The Top 8 would be best of 3. You would play a game in each format, and if a third game was required randomly decide on the format for that one.

With that in mind I will start by giving you my final deck lists. These were both tested pretty extensively against whatever opposition I could find, in a variety of formats. It is almost impossible to predict the UK metagame, so I was more concerned with making sure that the basic shell of the deck was sound than anything else.

Silver Punks – D’Illuminati

4 Black Bolt – Illuminati

4 Mr Fantastic – Keeper of the Power Gem

4 Doctor Doom – Richard’s Rival

2 Sub Mariner Keeper of the Time Gem

1 Black Bolt – Keeper of the Space Gem

4 The Captain – can’t Remember His Real Name

1 Mr Fantastic – Critical Thinker

1 Doctor Strange – Keeper of the Soul Gem

4 Iron Man – Keeper of the Reality Gem

2 Sub Mariner – Neptune’s Fist

2 Doctor Doom – Sorcerous Savant

1 Professor X – Illuminati

1 Doctor Strange – Master of the Mystic Arts

4 Secret Government

4 Mystical Paralysis

4 Flying Kick

4 Divided We Stand

4 For Great Justice

4 Omnipotence

3 This Bores Me

2 Death of the Dream

               This is really an old fashioned control deck. You exhaust key opposing

characters off-initiative using Doom and Iron Man, and do as much damage as you can while maintaining as much of your board as possible when you get a chance. It plays a lot like old style Doom decks in that regard, and given that was the first deck I ever made to me this is a very comfortable style of play. The card that impressed me most was For Great Justice. Testing had shown me that I wanted a little bit of endurance gain to help out against the ultra aggressive decks. I originally tried Medi-Kit, but found that I didn’t really have the characters spare to exhaust. It was only then that I remember all the internet buzz about Exiles and For Great Justice as a way of helping against them. I tried it out and it was great, and probably gets the vote as the best card of the tournament for me. There is one especially nice trick in the deck. Combine Sub-Mariner on turn 3 with either The Captain or Mr Fantastic on 4 to recur a handy Plot Twist (exhaust them both to put it on top of your deck and then either draw it with The Captain or use Mr Fantastic’s ability in the draw phase – his effect will then ready him so you can recur again). Doing this with For Great Justice especially is a great way to deal with aggressive decks.

               In hindsight I would look to add another 7 cost character, probably in place of

one of the copies of This Bores Me. The only Illuminati guy worth considering is Black Bolt – Ultimates, but the nature of the deck means that you can just include any solid 7 cost character you like really. Other choice that occurred to me would be The Thing, Jean Grey, Nyssa Ratko, Kara Zor-El (Darkseid), Hercules and Ultimaton (who was originally in

the deck actually).

BYOTT – Wheels of Steel

4 Beast – Wild and Woolly

4 Forge – The Maker

4 Iceman – Jack Frost

2 Lady Mastermind – Reagan Wynngard

4 Rogue – Power Absorption

2 Cyclops – Man of Action

4 Rachel Summers <> Marvel Girl – Deathmarked

2 Mimic – Exile

1 Doctor Strange – Ally of the Four

2 Professor X – World’s Most Powerful Telepath

1 Cyclops – Mutant Messiah

4 Signal Flare

4 Cosmic Radiation

4 Children of the Atom

3 Phoenix Rising

3 To Me My X-Men

4 Extreme Manoeuvre

3 Worthington Industries

3 Xavier’s Institute of Higher Education

2 Cerebro

               This deck is based (and named) after an old Unlikely Allies deck I was very fond of that would typically win with Professor X based burn power. I couldn’t use all the Doom tricks in the format so after playing around with a couple of options I remembered that the Fantastic Four has this pretty ace Cosmic Radiation card that would probably work rather well with activated character powers…After this stroke of genius I made the effort to actually own some copies of the card (along with Signal Flares) and away I went. While Professor X will usually win you the game, the key card is Iceman. With Rogue available to copy him you can shut down any curve based attack in it’s tracks very easily indeed giving you plenty of time. Off-curve strategies are harder. Iceman is still great, but you really want to hit Cyclops and then Rogue in this case, to let you wreck them off initiative. One other trick that I found surprisingly effective was to use turn 5 to wreck my opponent’s hand. Combining Rogue with Rachel (and Iceman of course) with a Cosmic Radiation will often leave my opponent with a mostly frozen board and almost no  cards. It doesn’t actively win you the game, but it sets up your later turns very well.

There is one key flaw to this deck, and that is speed. You can potentially win a game on turn 6 but really you are not expecting to win until turn 7 at the earliest. This means that some combo based decks like War Paint will just beat you, barring a bizarre draw on both sides. On the other hand, in a environment full of combat decks you do very well indeed, and that is what I was expecting to face.

So my plan was to play up to 15 games in a single day with two different control decks that would both set in for a long game. Sounds like fun to me. (Not fun was realised the night before that my X-Men deck was short two cards. Last moment rummaging through boxes to find extra copies is not a great way to spend your evening).

I arrived at the tournament site to see a lot of familiar faces, which is always

nice and very shortly afterwards we were into action, with 3 rounds of Silver Punks.

Round 1: vs Matt Cooper running Darkseid/Gotham Knights Substitute/Unravel Reality

               Matt is one of the best active UK players. Given I can be a pretty cocky kind of guy I expected to face him at some point in the tournament, but round 1 brings a little extra pressure. In my favour is the match-up, given that this is one I’ve actually played a couple of times, to success on each occasion, so my confidence is high. As it turns out beating a deck that seems determined to misfire on it’s owner is a little different from taking on the same deck when it is actually running nice and smoothly.

               We both started out well. I was able to hit an Unravel reality with Death of a Dream which is always nice, and Doom along with Iron Man were keeping the board under control, though with all the Hidden characters there were a lot of characters on the other side. Crunch time came on turn 7, when all I missed completely. I was able to recruit a 3 cost Doom and some other guy, and the subsequent Mystical Paralysis dragged the game into another turn, but I really needed to win it then, and Matt’s Lady Shiva was just too big to let me make any really profitable attacks. Turn 8 came around and

despite my best efforts there were just too many attackers to deal with. Losing the first round isn’t a complete disaster, (I fully expected Matt to keep my Tie-Breakers nice and high), but it did put on quite some pressure to win my next few games.

Round 2: vs Guy running Exiles Curve

               There are a couple of ways I think to run Exiles in this format. If you own any Clash of Worlds you can make a pretty effective version of the Mariko burn deck. If you don’t you have to play a little more fair, though you can still flood the board with characters, using Blink to cheat on resource points.

               Unfortunately for Guy his deck decided that although it had the potential to do some nasty things, it was much more interested in playing like a curve deck. To compound matters his deck wasn’t even playing especially like a reliable curve deck, with him missing turn 4 and not even having anything to usefully do with his resource points. I remember having to play a flying kick to force a stun on a Mariko with Doctor Doom (after Guy used Defying a God and Boiling Point). I also remember missing a trick with Iron Man, after attacking with him into Rogue and not using my other guys to exhaust somebody before I was stunned, which I fully intended to do. The game finally came down

to Guy’ Namora against my Sub-Mariner, and let’s face it. There’s only ever going to be one winner in that battle of the Atlanteans. Imperious Rex!

Round 3: vs Helen running Avengers Reservist

               Good old Avengers; Simple but effective, and really one of the cornerstones of the format. Fortunately for me I knew all of this, and so had built a really basic Avengers deck to test against, whereas I was pretty certain that nobody else would have been doing much testing against an Illuminati deck. Provided there were no surprises, I knew that if both decks did their thing, I would come out on top. Curve decks like Avengers are especially vulnerable to the off-initiative exhaustion that my deck contained, severely restricting their options and letting me build up a powerful board position I could take advantage of.

               Happily things worked out even better than that. The first few turns were pretty standard, with some hidden characters punching each other, and then I believe Spider-Woman and Dr. Doom facing off. My Dr Strange on turn 4 was opposed by Storm (much nicer to see than the Human Torch for a deck like mine). This was the start of the game swinging, as two power-ups for Doom stunned Storm back, and Dr. Strange was able to take down Spider-Woman building me a slight board advantage. This really paid dividends the next turn as Iron Man joined my gang, but was opposed by Spider-Woman again and a Dagger. (Interestingly, my own Avengers deck would often miss a key character in just

this way – far more often than I would have expected with all the rallying, and it was a pretty major flaw in my deck so I wasn’t so surprised to see it happen here). I was able to clear the board up nicely that turn, and with Iron Man to deal with the Invisible Woman on turn 6 I had a clear path to victory.

So that was the first batch of games dealt with, and my Illuminati had come good after a shaky start. My aim now was to win at least my next two games. This should be enough to put me into the top 8 cut. But now it was time for the format switch, and to see if the

X-Men could do as well.

Round 4: vs Amit Sharma running Brave and the Bold

               Amit was one of the people I had tested with for the event, so we each had a pretty good idea what was in one another’s deck. For any who don’t know, Brave and the Bold takes the best tricks from the Teen Titans and adds a few tricks from the Gotham Knights. I knew in this case that I could expect Batman on 4, to maximise the damage from multiple Team Attacks, Fizzle effects, the namesake card (of course), and most worrying, GCPD Headquarters to KO my characters without giving me many ways to deal with it. On the other hand I had made a couple of small changes to my deck, and I knew that if I could avoid losing characters I should be in good shape. Titans decks tend to be pretty slow, curving out on turns 1-5 and then going for the kill after that, and my deck really messes up any sort of curve deck.

               The game itself went smoothly from my point of view. I missed turn 2 but had Iceman and Rogue ready to go. Turn 4 was the decider for me. Amit sent in his team of Batman, Tim Drake and Oracle, but without the dreaded police HQ. This meant I was safe, and Iceman and Rogue combined to keep his characters out of the way for a turn. Cosmic Radiation combined with Extreme Manouveur on turn 5 left Garth in the same exhausted situation. Rose Wilson <> Ravagers finally dealt with the frosty menace on turn 6 but the game was pretty much over at this point. Professor X wheeled into play, and

with Rogue still around and no Titans costing more than 5 that was the end of that.

Round 5: vs Blake running Avengers/Brotherhood Reservist

               This was a deck I had heard about and kind of expected but had never seen in action. I was expecting it to be a swarm based deck (I had played against X-Men/Brotherhood swarm that was pretty nasty in my testing), but it turned out Blake was running a more curve based build, that would use reservist characters to keep the New Brotherhood operating. Not that I knew that from the first few turns however. Blake started out with Rem Ram before hitting Iron Fist on turn 2. I had a Beast who I

expected to soak a bit of damage and filter some cards to find me a Cyclops to fend off the expected horde. Blake had other ideas however, with an Eviscerate followed by Kill the Flatscans to get rid of Beast and certainly surprise me. Still, the blue guy wasn’t vital to my scheme so I was kind of happy those two tricks had gone, and had a Lady Mastermind to help me out next turn. Again, under the impression that I was up against a swarm deck, I chose to play her over Iceman as she had been a little more effective in my experience against that kind of opposition. Blake had a pretty nice turn of Avengers Reassembled for Amelia Voight on top of his deck, Bring in Cap to counter up his team and then get a free character. Lady Mastermind Beat up on Amelia, before choosing Iron Fist as to get stuck. A good thing too as Call Down the Lightning and another Kill the Flatscans meant I still had an empty board and a rapidly diminishing Endurance total.

               That was where the game swung however. Blake’s next recruit was Random, and his hand was empty so I could see what I was up against. I took the opportunity to play Iceman (and stick a counter on Rachel Summers). Whilst I took some damage, That put Random and Iron Fist out of Action. Rogue joined in next turn and the combination of Cosmic Radiation and Extreme Manoeuvre clogged the board up again. Blake’s deck was now running like a curve, and now that I recognised this I was in control. Blake was out of tricks now, though one copy of the New Brotherhood had finally turned up, and unable to muster more than one attack in a turn. Cable – Secret Avenger protected him from Professor X for one turn, but when turn 8 came around there was no way out, and a board of characters costing 5 or less is just what I wanted to see.

Round 6: vs Dave Pyrrah running Teen Titans/X-Men

               There were an awful lot of Teen Titans around this tournament. This version of the deck takes the best tricks from the Teen Titans (sound familiar) only this time spices things up with the X-Men weenie support. To Me My X-Men and Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters give you more readying and Fastball Special lets you deal with characters of any size. Dave was also running a definite swarm strategy, with plenty of card drawing supplied by both teams

               This was an odd game. The early turns were pretty even, with both of us jockeying for position. I was using Lady Mastermind and Forge to beat down as well as try to lock up his board a little. Dave had recruited an Aquawoman, so keeping her out of action with Lady Mastermind’s effect was restricting his flow of cards, at least a little, though the Titans direct stun effects were starting to bite. My Endurance was still high though, and my board position pretty intact and Dave’s hand was starting to vanish. Around turn 5 we both had an Iceman in play, and that was really messing with both decks ability to function, though with Dave having more characters, he was having a slightly easier time of it. The game really swung on turn 6. I recruited Doctor Strange, who would be able to bring my whole team of characters back into action to mess with Dave’s turn and let me get to 7 with Professor X and my opponent with an empty hand. Dave completely blindsided me (not literally of course) with Koriand’r <> Starfire. I must admit I’d completely forgotten about that card, with poor Strange in the Support Row. With my plans now wrecked, Dave was able to use his team-attacking tricks to finish

the game. I won’t be making that mistake again!

So after the Swiss rounds I was 4 wins and 2 losses, with the losses happening at the beginning and end of the tournament. I’m quite bad indeed at working out the kind of records you needed to make it through to the cut, but with 8 people getting to continue I was pretty confident of making it. I didn’t actually hear the announcement of the standings but I believe I just managed to make it in 7th place. Good enough, because now we get to start again.

Quarter Finals: vs Tim (Lupercal)

               I’ve met Tim a few times, the last one in fact in Loughborough where his Spider-Friends deck beat my Negative Zone one in both the Swiss rounds and the final so I was hoping for a bit of revenge. Tim’s Silver Punks deck was a version of Quicksilver/Sinister Syndicate. Basically a bunch of really aggressive little guys backed up with Quicksilver and a lot of turn long ATK pumps. It’s a pretty standard sort of deck designed to run you over as quickly as possible. His deck for BYOTT was My Beloved (Gotham Knights/League of Assassins). This was a curve deck that made up for it’s generally ordinary sort of characters and lack of combat tricks with an awful lot of negation effects based on Gotham Knights fizzle cards and the infamous Tower of Babel.

Round 1: BYOTT

               Given I had done quite a bit of testing against a League deck using the Secret Society and Black Manta to play Babel every turn and had yet to lose a game to it I was pretty confident of this round. However all this confidence did kind of rely on my deck helping me out just a little. Tim was running along quite nicely, as his deck put out various characters. My deck on the other hand decided that only playing on even numbered turns would be a splendid idea. Now I had some Signal Flares to try and sort this out (3 in fact, which would normally be excellent), but Tim had either a Fizzle or Bat Got Your Tongue for each one, plus a spare one left over to negate Extreme Manouveur on turn 5 that might have still got me into turn 7 where I may have been able to do something impressive with the initiative. As it was I was run over the next turn. (For those interested, my opening hand was Beast and Rogue. Despite knowing that I wanted to hit Iceman, Beast gives me half of a Mulligan and with two early characters (for my deck) sorted I thought it was worth the risk, and I probably would do the same again.

Round 2: Silver Punks

               I’ll be honest; I didn’t expect to win this game. While my deck had most of the tools I would need, my sluggish early game and lots of hidden characters meant that an early Quicksilver could hit really hard and there would be very little I could do to stop him. My first hand was an easy mulligan, giving me nothing to do before turn 5. My second hand (and first draw), was very interesting. Iron Man wasn’t great, but both copies of Death of a Dream, 2 For Great Justice and a Secret Government was about as good as I could hope for plot twists. I just needed to hit a character. Tim missed turn 1 but had a Razorfist and Green Goblin for turn 2 while I was still waiting (though I was bright enough to use my Secret Government to make sure I hit on 3). It was the next turn where the game was decided. Tim had Lockjaw, which also meant he had Quicksilver as well as a BPRD Signal device to protect him. I had a hidden Sub-Mariner (I’d picked him in case it let me set up the recurring endurance gain trick I mentioned earlier). Tim did a whole lot of maths and worked out that he could leave me at 2 Endurance. With Quicksilver’s readying on the chain I played Death of a Dream. It would either save me 20 or so Endurance, as well as reduce Quicksilver’s impact, or give Tim the trick he needed to win the game that turn.

In some kind of karmic justice for all those Fizzles I came out on top here, or at least the top of Tim’s deck was kind to me (though For Great Justice was giving me a nice secret cushion as well). A turn 4 character would have decided the game right there I think, but all I had was Black Bolt (Gem Keeper). Tim recruited some guys and wiped out his own resource row to reactivate Quicksilver, but with no more pumps I was still around, and Fusion left the table. With Iron Man on 5 I was left with no visible characters. Tim kept his board as it was to keep Quicksilver going (He could have played a resource to get another little guy, but Black Bolt made that a little risky). Unfortunately for Tim I had just pulled an Omnipotence for the pesky little Avenger. I ended the turn on 1 Endurance. (Though

this seems like I was rather lucky, I did actually have a final For Great Justice trick that I was holding for emergencies). Turn 6 saw a pretty large Sub-Mariner on my side, able to bash for lots while holding off the weenies rather well so it was on to a deciding game.

Round 3: BYOTT (randomly decided)

               Despite getting battered in the previous game I was still confident that my deck could win, provided that I got my characters on the board. My opening hand this time had Beast and one of the filter locations (I think Worthington Industries but I don’t actually remember) so that was about as good as I could hope for. Even better when my next draw gave me Iceman. The game proceeded according to plan, only this time it was my plan. On turn 3 in response to a Barbara Gordon <> Oracle draw I was able to play Signal Flare. Tim had a Fizzle costing precious cards, but a second Flare resolved giving me everything but a guy for turn 6 (I searched for a Rogue). Tim went for Merlyn on 4, planning to stun Iceman, but then realising that he would still end up a character down. This definitely played into my favour. While I only had a Cyclops on turn 6 I was still happy. Turn 7 began with my initiative and Professor X.

There were three things on my mind. The first was Batman Cape and Cowl that I know needed stunning. The second was the fact that with Ra’s Al Ghul waiting in the wings for turn 8 I needed to win right now. The third was the possibility of a Tower of Babel messing with my plans. I stared with a speculative team attack by Rogue and Rachel into the Kate Kane protecting Batman (I could have actually attacked Bats himself but missed that somehow), while Cyclops stunned a little Huntress that was hanging around. With his protection out of the way Professor X dealt with Batman personally. Now things got a little complicated. A recovery effect on Rachel let me use To Me My X-Men to send Professor X into David Cain (Tim had played him instead of a 7 cost guy). I then played Cosmic Radiation. Tim used Demon’s Head in response to find a Lazarus Pit to recover Batman but a second Cosmic Radiation jumped ahead on the chain to let Rogue and the Professor deliver a 18 point

burn as well as stun David and that was the game.

Semi Finals: vs Joe (Lord of Limbo)

               As you might expect Joe was playing at least one slightly unexpected deck, though his Silver Punks deck was an old concept – shame on you! I’m kidding of course. I like playing Joe. Firstly he makes some really interesting decks that I would never have come up with. Fortunately for me, with one recent exception the decks I am playing when we have met have been perfectly suited to dealing with his. It’s almost like I pre-metagame against him or something. Would that be the same? Well not quite. For BYOTT Joe had only a deck he could come up with. X-Men/Pro-Registration, just to let him use the Superhuman Registration Act to keep the weenies coming and Underground Movement to hide key characters. Very neat. And you can bet he had those pesky Fastball Specials as well. His Silver Punks deck was a pretty simple marriage of the Vision/We Can Rebuild Him/Messiah Complex Engine and Shield Wolverine direct attacks. Do a little burn, play Wolverine, pump him up and attack to the face for a lot (possibly twice with Lady Deathstrike).

Round 1: BYOTT

               Well I hadn’t been having quite as much success against the x-Men weenie decks as I would have liked, or that my testing had indicated so this promised to be a tricky game. I was doing fine at first, holding off the swarm as best I could, though Joe’s Longshot hitting 2 copies of Fastball Special was cause for concern, and my discard tricks weren’t so effective against a deck powered by the Superhuman Registration Act. But the main thing that swung this game away from me was Iceman. Not the Jack Frost version, but the other one from Marvel Evolution that stops characters who have used activated powers from readying. Hmmm – a card that works to counter pretty much my whole deck. And once he was hidden and with no Cyclops in sight on my side that was game. I had to choose between trying to keep the board clear and actually doing what my deck was supposed to, but neither option seemed that likely. In the end a Fastball Special on my one decent defender and a bunch of attacks co-ordinated by Cyclops – Slim were enough to finish me off.

Round 2: Silver Punks

               So another crunch game against another aggressive deck. Joe had a pretty good idea what my deck did and wasn’t looking too happy about the situation which can only be good for me. He also seems pretty unhappy with his opening play as the first two turns brought some Shield Agents to the table, though he did follow that up on turn 3 with Wolverine, along with yet another Signal Device making my Doctor Doom a little less impressive (I think I searched out a Secret Government rather than my usual Mystical Paralysis). The rest of the game was rather odd. I had a Doctor Strange on turn 4 that restricted Joe’s options a little and he was just filling his hand with the Vision, counting up, and asking what my Endurance total was a lot. I was attacking for as much as I could to keep his board clear of little guys (I saw Shield Agents, Speedball <> Penance and Hank Pym <> Yellowjacket) and do as much damage as possible. I definitely know that I played For Great Justice for 5 Endurance and that Doctor Strange cancelled at least one Flying Kick targeting Wolverine when Joe finally went for an attack. The net result of these shenanigans, and my constant attacks was that on turn 6 my Sub-Mariner was able to thump Joe into a hold deep enough that there was no coming back.

Round 3: Silver Punks (These random choices were all pretty good for me)

               This time we both had a pretty good idea what was going on. The difference was that my deck was co-operating with me much more than Joe’s was with him. Maybe that brainwashing on Wolverine was wearing off? He turned up on schedule with his buddy Hank Pym, but this time without a Signal Device letting Doctor Doom keep the nasty little mutant out of the way for a turn or so. All the while I was attacking Joe as often as I could. The key to this match, as far as I can see, is to keep the scores as close as possible, and indeed for both games I was often slightly ahead. Because Joe’s deck was based utterly on Wolverine and drawing lots of cards he had almost no visible characters in play other than occasional little guys. This meant that effectively, all my characters had Wolverine’s text so I could just smash in for big damage. With running a curve this meant that provided I didn’t just get pounded out of the game on turn 3 or 4 I would be able to match the damage output over the longer period and eventually exceed it, so that was what I was trying. Turn 5 was the best moment for me in this game. Omnipotence naming Lady Deathstrike and a second speculative one on Crack Shot left me in great shape and once again it was down to the Sub-Mariner to save the day. Even a set of Power Dampeners wasn’t enough and Wolverine’s last attack left Joe just a few points short.

Finals: vs Matt Cooper

               Well I’ve got to hand it to Tim. He managed to pick the 2 finalists a couple of days before the tournament, and his other pick (Dave Pyrrah) was easily in the top 8. I already knew one of Matt’s decks pretty well, and his second was Brave and the Bold which came as no surprise to me. (I have definitely heard from Matt on a couple of occasions that he is a big fan of the deck). At this point I was really happy with my days work. While I definitely wanted to win, my main aim this year had been to put up a vigorous defence of my title, and getting to the final is about as vigorous as I could get without actually winning it again. Losing to Matt is no shame but now that I was this far I was hoping for some good games (or at least as good as we could both manage after around 8 solid hours of VS).

Round 1: BYOTT

               Unfortunately for Matt the first game wasn’t going to be that good for him as the first move from his Titans deck was Batman on turn 4, facing off against Beast, Iceman and Rogue, with Rachel Summers shifted out. This put me firmly in the driving seat, and I was so confident that all my guys were sitting happily in the front row, just to make sure I didn’t get caught out by Starfire. Any attempt Matt made to put a dent in my position was fended off with X-Men recovery cards. I even attempted a turn 6 win, planning to use To Me My X-Men to attack twice with Mimic, but a Titan’s Tower activation scuppered that otherwise excellent plan, and even missing turn 7 left me with such a dominant position that turn 8 was plenty with Cyclops – Mutant Messiah making his first appearance of the day.

Round 2: Silver Punks

               I was hoping here for a chance to get my revenge after losing in the Swiss. That game had been close enough that I was confident if I hit my curve I would win it. Naturally I started well by missing turn 2, but at least Matt did the same. Doctor Doom and Dark Firestorm were the first characters to face off, followed by Darkseid and Mr Fantastic (I had The Captain in hand at this point, but playing a guy that can’t deal with Darkseid at all well didn’t seem like the best option. In fact things were generally going quite well, with Iron Man and Sub Mariner making their scheduled appearances. Turn 6 saw me take quite some heavy damage, with Matt having 3 Joining the Darkseid along with Dark Champion (there was an Omnipotence set for Unravel Reality), but I was still in the game. All I needed was a 7 cost character…

Well I had Doctor Doom – Sorcerous Savant, so it wasn’t a complete disaster, but life was still going to be trick. I worked out my plan as best I could. Iron Man, Sub Mariner (with Divided we Stand) and Doctor Doom faced off against a visible Darkseid and Lady Shiva, with Dark Champion, Cassandra Cain and Dark Lantern all freshly brought into play in the hidden area. Iron Man took care of Darkseid with a power-up, Doom used a Flying Kick to take care of Shiva, also being sure to sacrifice Iron Man to get two uses out of the For Great Justice in my resource row, and an extra in my hand to gain 15 endurance. Sub Mariner attacked directly. I had a This Bores Me for Matt’s first combat trick, but the huge attack of his characters along with throwing away the rest of his hand to Cassandra was just enough to tie the game, and my wrecked board position meant there was no way I could hold on. My real problem against this deck were actually the hidden characters, Normally I would be able to make sacrificial attacks to clear opposing characters out of the way, and doing so would make it easier for me to control those that remained, but I wasn’t able to do so against this deck.

So we were set for a deciding game, but at this point Matt decided to concede the final to me.

               In the last game Matt had left Cassandra Cain in the Support Row of his hidden area and without range she wouldn’t be able to attack. I noticed this in the process of beating up on Darkseid and was naturally quite happy. Matt was less so and said that he had meant to move her and asked if her could. After a long hard day we were both a bit too drained to be our usual jovial selves and so I initially refused. Matt accepted it, and carried on but I then realised that I would much rather have a good game than win based on a mistake that was a result of tiredness and trying to speed up the play so we could both go home. Cassandra magically appeared in the front row just in time to punch Mr Fantastic in the face, and that damage later cost me the game.

               While the more competitive players amongst you may wonder why, I’m happy with the decision I made. I’d still be happy if we had played a third game and Matt had beaten me. Whilst I love winning and definitely have a competitive streak in me, more than that I play games like VS to have fun, and if I am going to win I want it to be on my terms. That might mean playing decks I have built myself with a few unconventional choices, but it also means playing in a certain spirit. Enjoying yourself, taking your losses as well as your wins with a certain amount of grace, and making sure your opponent has a good a game as you do. I think it was a similar attitude that made Matt offer the concession and I was happy to accept it.

So I get to be UK Champion for at least another year, losing as many games as I possibly could on the way to victory. With that in mind I had better start planning for 2010 right now.

Special thanks should be made to Amit Sharma, Gary Hewitt and Mark Hooton (who had last minute trouble and couldn’t attend) for putting up with having all their characters exhausted or frozen in place depending on the format, and especially Barney Smart who did all the above, suffered a serious deck frazzle in the BYOTT and still stuck around for 3 hours or so to give me a lift home, and of course thanks to Dave and Tyler of the House of Heroes for running the event in the first place, and everybody else for turning up and making sure it was a great day.