Mega-Weekend Chicago - Part Two

Saturday

I told Niles before the tournament that I would play whatever deck he decided to play.  He really liked the Checkmate/Marvel Knights deck that I had built so that is what we decided to play.  The decklist looks like:

4 Connie Web
1 Jacob Lee
4 Black Thorn
4 Ahmed
3 Punisher, Guns Blazing
1 Elimintation Protocol
1 Captain America(5)
1 Annihilation Protocol
1 Huntress(6)
1 Punisher, Angel of Death

1 New Baxtar Building
1 The Alley
4 Brother I Satellite
3 Dr. Fate’s Tower
2 Checkmate Safehouse
1 Brother Eye
1 Sewer System

4 Threat Nuetralized
4 Cannibal Tech
4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Defensive Formation
3 Knightmare Scenarios

4 Laser Watch
1 Amulet of Nabu
1 Cloak of Nabu
1 Helm of Nabu

     One thing that you might find interesting is the low character count in this deck.  It may seem that this is a mistake in deckbuilding given the loyalty requirements on your early drops, but Checkmate is very good at hitting it characters in the early game.  With this deck you really need to aggressively mulligan for Connie Web or Black Thorn.  Black Thorn is part of the the card drawing engine,  so she may be the most important character in the deck.  On turn 3 the main play is Amhed searching for The New Baxtar building  and recruiting the Laser Watch enabling you to draw 3 cards.  The deck want to hit Punisher on turn 4 and equip him with the Fate set and a laser watch.  Punisher seems a little overpowered to me, ang along with the Fate set he just gets insane.  The deck looks to control their board on 4 by Ko’ing their 4 drop with Punsiher, then it goes for the Brickwall on turn 5 with Defensive formations and Captain America. 

     We arrived at Pastimes and sign up.  First round pairings go up, and they tell us its going to be nine rouds of swiss, with a cut to Top 8.  This day was filled with me playing against many different decks, and a bunch of people that I’ve seen from around the PC scene.  Surprisingly in this tournament I played against 9 different decks in the swiss.  I played against: 1 Villians/Spider-Friends deck, 1 Darkseid/Gotham Knights, 1 Mirror Match, 1 Shadowpact/JLA deck, 1 JLA Terminal Velocity Deck, 1 Secret Society/Deadshot Deck, 1 IG/ Concealed Deck, 1 Checkmate/Heralds of Galactus, and 1 deck that escapes my mind right now.  My deck really came to play, as I went 9-0 in the Swiss rounds. 

     After the swiss the worst possible outcome occured as I was paired up against Niles in the first round.  The judges checked our decklists, and Niles had made a small mistake and was given a game loss because he wrote down 4 Knightmare Scenario and 3 Defensive Formations.  I won the die roll vs Niles, and with the correct initative, I was able to beat Niles in the one game we played.

     In the Semis I was paired against Todd Carlson.  My plan going into the match was to play Ahmed visible and get the Fate set onto him as quickly as possible to soak up damage.  I knew the longer the game went the more the match was tilted into my favor.  First game I missed Ahmed, and Todd just bashed me.  The second game was interesting as I didn’t recruit anything on turn 5 or 6, but Todd did not have much going on either, and Punisher, Angel of Death sealed the game for me.  The third game started off great with me hitting Black Thorn and Ahmed.  I searched up Baxtar Building, and started the card drawing engine.  By turn 4, I had drawn a bunch of extra cards, but I missed on my MK Character and was forced to recruit Elimination Protocol.   Turn 5, I drew some more cards, but missed on Captain America again, and I died on this turn with 3 Defensive Formations in hand. 

     It was a let down to go undefeated in the Swiss and not to win it all, but there is always another VS tournament around the corner.  Congratulation to Todd on winning it all and to Michael Barnes for making it to the finals. Todd you ended my undefeated record, I look forward to a rematch at worlds(hopefully we will both be at the top of the swiss again).

     After my loss in top 4, we decided to leave and get some Deep Dish Pizza.  Shortly after we arrived at the Pizza restaurant, the TAWC guys also arrived and joined us for dinner.  I have never had the pleasure of hanging out with the TAWC crew before this event(except for the great Tim Batow, who we teamed up with for Sydney), but let me tell you it was a great experience.

     After we devour our Pizza, and learned a thing or two about the little deck format, the TAWC crew were nice enough to give us a ride back to our hotel and to play a cake draft against us. The best part about the ride back to our hotel was that there were 6 of us and only 5 seats. Patrick really bit the bullet and jumped in the trunk, and rode the entire way back to the hotel this way.  After turning the wrong way a couple times, and a couple U-turns without the brakes being applied(sorry for all the laughter Pat!), we finally arrived at our hotel.  I’ll have to ask around, but I know there are pictures of Pat in the trunk floating around.

     We decided to draft Marvel Team-Up, since those were given out as prizes the night before.  I forced the off-curve Sinister Syndicate deck, and boy what a failure.  I had a bunch of 1 and 2 drops, but besides that I had very little in the way of pumps, and cards that would help my strategy of underdropping.  The teams for the drafts were: Niles Rowland, Patrick Yapjoco, and myself vs. Michael Barnes, John Hall, and Shane Wiggins.  After 8 intense matches the records were:

• John Hall 3-0 (sick draft skills my friend)
• Niles Rowland 2-1
• Patrick Yapjoco 2-1
• Shane  Wiggins 1-1
• Michael Barnes 0-2
• Tim Rivera 0-2

     The last match came down to me against Michael.  For some reason after 14 hours of Vs System I can’t raelly remember what happened in our match, but  my crappy deck was able to pull out a victory in a very close match.  Niles and I remained undefeated in Cake Drafts, and can’t wait for the next Cake Draft at worlds. 

     After the match was over it was about 2 a.m. and the TAWC guys decided it was time to sleep, so they left.  Patrick and I finished up our decks for the Modern Age tourney on Sunday, and were ready for the tournament tomorrow.