(As with all pieces of my writing, expect it to change once it’s posted. I hope you enjoy this little piece. It has the potential to be disappointing, but I hope you guys will still enjoy it. In addition, this report has thinly veiled references to racism and drug usage. There isn’t a lot but it may not be appropriate for children. That means you Graham. Hit the back button)

(I mean it man, I’m not playing around. I should’ve never posted those bb.com links!)

My name is Paul Sung. I’m twenty years old and I’m a student at the University of California Riverside. My goal in life is to become a personal trainer and to open some type of international business that focuses on Chinese/American business. But you didn’t come here to find out too much about me did you? You came here because this thread beckons of either incredibly long writing or some low brow humor. Well, this thread has a little bit of both. I haven’t had a good reason to write about VS in awhile, but I do now, so get a drink and sit down. This report is 27 pages on Microsoft Word so you might want to empty your bowels first.

This story is about a man and a PCQ and his attempt to qualify for the seemingly elusive professional circuit.

Intro

Let’s start from the beginning. At the start of finals week at UCR, I became aware of a PCQ that was going to be held on January. As my better half was going to spend winter vacation in the Philippines – most likely doing the national dance of the Philippines tinikling! - it suddenly seemed like I was going to have time to practice and play lots of VS. I became very excited especially since Golden is my favorite format in VS.

When I started testing – I use this term very liberally since I didn’t do anything as intense as I would’ve liked - for Golden Age, I really wanted to play something that ran eight generic tutors. Specifically, I wanted to play MxyBacks Lost in Space variant. The deck was like a super condensed capsule of every single good card in the format. Secondly, it seemed a lot more interactive and thus considerably more entertaining then TDC stall. I tested both lists and I got the feeling that Prosak’s was “Fondle, fondle, fondle, smash face.” Whereas TDC stall was more of a “Fondle, fondle, fondle, fondle board, fondle board, fondle board.”

While Prosak’s list looked very good, I was very doubtful of its ability to consistently beat FTN’s CrisisDoom – specifically Supermanhunter. This was a great piece of tech that was – unfortunately - discovered prior to the Pro Circuit. As such, it wasn’t an issue of maybe it wouldn’t be played – it was already out there in the open. This, combined with my assumption that CrisisDoom would be the most popular deck from the top eight during the PCQ season caused me to gravitate heavily towards TDC stall which seemed much less vulnerable.

The fact that Supermanhunter would be played also had a few more influences on my choices. I had been tweaking with a GK/Doom/Checkmate/Fearsome Five/Kree school style deck that used Devil’s Due to toss counters on Doom/Ronan. It consisted of Phantom Stranger exhausting Cops who’d suck up early damage, then being KO’d to power up Ronan, and finally being recycled with Arsenal of Doom and Brother Eye. Throw in Frankie Raye, and the deck seemed pretty good in paper. Of course, this whole game plan is ruined by a single Supermanhunter.

Or Flame Trap.

Or Betrayal.

Bad times indeed.

The alternative then, is to find a dedicated win condition to overpower them. The problem was that the deck’s engine required a huge amount of slots. The smallest dedicated win condition I could conceive of us the one-two combination of Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria and Press the Attack, Dr. Light, Arthur Light or most simply Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. However, the increased awareness of just how easy it is to play Asmodeus when you have twelve generic tutors and huge ways of recycling cards meant that I had no guarantees of being able to getting the 8th+ resource I needed. Maybe in the early rounds where everyone is like “What are you playing?” but certainly not in the top 8, which is where I wanted to be. Now Utility Belt does answer Asmodeus… but there are other cards like Ra’s al Ghul which further complicate this. Furthermore, putting a Utility Belt on a one drop is no type of guarantee. I am certain the puzzle is solvable but I didn’t have four Enemy of my Enemy and Straight to the Grave accessible at the time, so testing this deck too much was pretty moot as I had very few guarantees I could actually get them should the need arise.

As I didn’t get to play as much as I would've liked, my goal was to play something a bit different but still familiar enough that I felt confident about piloting.

Legion of Changes

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Legion of Superheroes – unless you’re CHDB – was neither a specific team nor a specific character, but a simple card called Mobilize. I’m certain most of you know what Mobilize does, but for the purposes of completeness, here it is:

Mobilize
Set Legion of Super Heroes
Cost 3
Type Plot Twist
Flight No
Range No
Ongoing No
Rarity R
Card Text:
As an additional cost to play Mobilize, discard a card.
Search your deck for a character card with an affiliation shared by all characters you control. Reveal that card, put it into your hand, and shuffle your deck.
Artist: Clayton Crain
Number: DLS-187

Mobilize does a lot of interesting things for deck-building. The card is basically a generic tutor that favors mono or possibly dual team decks. The gains made by Mobilize decks aren’t as huge for all teams as we would like to think, as everyone is stronger by an equal margin. That doesn’t make it bad though, as every team can always use more consistency. However, there’s even more to Mobilize then just that in my opinion. Most VS decks are built adhering to the theory that there are 30 cards you recruit, and 30 cards you row. There are exceptions to this – any type of reservist deck being the largest offender, and LustOfPower.dec also doing this. In general though, we don’t far too much away from this guideline.

For those of who have been playing Magic for awhile, do you remember Alan Comer’s Miracle-Gro or Turbo Xerox, or Kibler/Rubin’s Super Gro? All of these decks subscribe to the philosophy of cheating on their deck building by playing cheap search spells as opposed to lands. This meant that while other decks would hit land gluts arbitrarily, the blue deck would instead be drawing into mini search spells that would let them take control of the game mid game. In VS we don't want to draw excess charecters once we've hit our drops. As such, it is ideal to find a way to minimize our actual charecter count while guranteeing that are able to play them promptly.

Traditional tutors like Enemy of my Enemy, Bat Signal and The Ring has Chosen have all had a strong character component to them. Ring requires you to have enough willpower, which requires you to either: Find a character with willpower, or one or more that has enough willpower to get what you want. Enemy turns a character you don’t need into one you do need. I’m not saying that fulfilling either of these above conditions is terribly hard – both Lost in Space and 10 Teams have shown us the opposite is true - however, they do exist. Subsequently, they cannot be considered characters in the scheme of deck-building even though they are effectively acting as proxies for them.

Mobilize – and similarly Wild Ride and Kindred Spirits – though, do not have such a stringent requirement. Mobilize doesn’t force you to convert a character for a character, it just wants a card. Wild Ride doesn’t even need a character – although the endurance loss is often a huge drawback. Kindred Spirits only requires temporal card advantage. Each of these cards allows you to play fewer guys then you would ordinarily have to because there is no character requirement. While Mobilize is not as pure – it needs something on the board though even then it is still a much more relaxed condition - as Wild Ride in this respect, it still performs this function well. When you factor in cards like Birthing Chamber and Elemental Converters, it's not unrealistic to consider pushing your charecter count lower.

(It should be noted that in most decks that run Wild Ride we do see a strong 30/30 build in them. I think this is partially because the Marvel Knights have three very playable characters that function as plot twists – Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction, Micro-Chip, Linus Lieberman and Dagger, Child of Light – and partially because they run some crucial off-team character they can’t search for – most notably Hounds of Ahab in MKKO.)

A lot of people have been wondering about which affiliation gains the most from Mobilize. People from the far left people have been saying the Arkham Inmates and the Manhunters. From the right, people have been pushing the Sentinels and Teen Titans.I really don’t think Sentinels gains anything from Mobilize. The deck was already consistent enough. It's not tier one not because it’s not consistent anymore, it’s because it’s underpowered. The Avengers have a similar dilemma: A well built reservist deck should not be struggling for its drops. The cards that do plug in the holes for the reservist deck are found in other team which facilitates the usage of Enemy of my Enemy instead.

In my mind the team that gained the most from Mobilize was the Teen Titans.

GO!

Here’s my evaluation. Once again, feel free to discuss this on the forums – I would like to see was my assessment correct.

First of all, the Teen Titans have a very good set of tool-box characters. Cards like Koriand’r <> Starfire, Tamaranian Princess, Connor Kent <> Superboy, Tactile Telekinetic, Dick Grayson <> Nightwing, Titan’s Leader and even Kole from Origins are all back-breaking in the right match-ups but suffered from how awkward they were in application. Specifically, these cards are so narrow that you can not afford to run more then one. This meant that unless you were lucky and drew them, you needed to Optitron for them. The Teen Titans have a very solid curve of recruits during the mid game – three drop/Terra/Garth - and as such you really can’t afford to Optitron mid-game for your end-game bombs. This isn’t to mention the fact that telegraphing your bombs – most notably Starfire – often reduces it’s effectiveness to the point where it isn’t worth it anymore. With Mobilize, you can now sand-bag the tutor and play it just before recruits, which allows you to retain the effectiveness of your utility characters.

Secondly, Mobilize acts a proxy for Garth and Terra. These are cards that you really want to draw. This is pretty simple to understand. By shaving one off from each of your four-ofs, you make room for four copies of Mobilize which effectively means that you are playing three more copies of each of your desired drops. A lot of you will argue that it’s probably not good to skimp on characters. This is why I have not skimped on any of my low drops. Mobilize is only used as a proxy for my fours through sixes and not my twos or threes. I’m still playing the same amount of guys - it’s just that some of them can be Roy/Terra/Red Star/Garth when I need them too. I realize it is very contradictory to replace a character that is a definite four-of with tutors, but it works out much better in application.

Finally, it lets you off-curve better. As was mentioned, previously, if you peeled redundant copies of Terra or Garth in the mid game, there wasn’t too much you could do with them beyond the simple power-up. By switching some number of them to Mobilize, you ensure that you will almost always have an off-curve play.

Back to the subject of cheating your charecter count: Being able to cheat with your character count is even more important to Titans. A quick glimpse of the tricks your standard Titans deck runs gives you: Foiled/Ka-boom, Teen Titans Go!, Press the Attack, Betrayal, Meltdown, Null Time Zone, Removed from Continuity, Titans Tower, USS Argus, Optitron, and Tamaran. Some of these cards are more crucial then others – especially in this current metagame – but for the most part, a given Titan’s deck will play 80% of the aforementioned cards. You often end up with people running three copies of Press the Attack or Teen Titans Go which are all very solid and important cards in order to fit in tools needed for the metagame. Conventional Titans’ lists are very compact and tight: If we had been given a Signal Flare for Titans, we would have to seriously revaluate things as this card would be considered a plot twist and not a character and would fight for deck space with our crucial locations and plot twists. With Mobilize though, we can play the tutor and still find space for all our tricks.

Titans decks are very good at cheating on character drops. Dove and Hawk effectively act as either your one or two drop, respectively, or your three drop. Roy is your three drop, but he’s also your six. Not to mention we have Argus which can let you dig for cards. Red Star is a four and a five. Unlike curve decks, you’re totally fine with drawing small characters late in the game which makes having a curve that is heavy on the lower drops fine proposition.

As you all know though, Mobilize does require some level of commitment in terms of deck building. Mobilize requires all the characters you have in play to share a team affiliation, and also forces you to play lots of characters that cost three or less in order to make sure you can promptly use it. As I alluded to earlier, the Titans doesn’t really have a problem here. In terms of playable threes you have: Beast Boy, Roy Harper <> Arsenal, and Hawk/Dove. Below that you have Hawk and Dove once more and Tim Drake. Previously, low drops were maximized in order to allow optimal usage of Argus. This same skeleton also allows us to make good use of Mobilize and Roy Harper. This configuration is strong without us even looking to the new Titans to diversify our early drops.

Speaking of which, there are a lot of new playable Titans. A lot of people see the new Titans and think something like: “They’re not Garth/Terra/Roy.” That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t good or shouldn’t see some play.

Back to the Present

So I started testing with a pretty conventional Titan’s lists against a variety of people. Here’s a PM I sent Patrick “Majestic” Yapjoco early on in my process.

And the more exciting part…

Most of Patrick’s sentiments were echoed by Carl “CaptainCarl” Perlas. He also did not seem to think that Ravager five was very good, but the three drop was the bee’s knees. With suggestions of such a good pedigree, it seemed inevitable that my original build changed considerably during the weeks to come. Obviously, I also spent a huge amount of time paying attention to VS Realms. I paid particular attention to various Titan’s threads to see if I could gleam any information, or to see how advanced the integration of new cards had become. Two key threads in my studies:

http://www.vsrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47284

http://www.vsrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47061

The most interesting thing here is about these lists is the resurgence of The New Brotherhood. The Teen Titans traditionally have had a favorable match-up against TNB and this made me a bit more confident in my decision. The fact that TNB was very cheap and the fact that some locals – most notably the extremely cool Mike “Ranmasolo” Malaspina - had posted about it indicated to me that it might be bigger part of the metagame then I previously thought.

Ironically, as time passed by and the metagame seemed to be more diverse, I became less confident in my original assumption that Crisis Doom would be the dominating deck. All the same the deck was slowly evolving. I felt proud to be playing something that was unique, even if it wasn’t as groundbreaking.

One of the things I’ve increasingly realized about playing well in CCG is how important it is to have a team. For me I didn’t really have a team to test with during the month or so before the PCQ, and as a result I relied heavily on jumping on people to OCTGN with.

The week preceding the PCQ was the Near Year. To me, New Year is like a mini-rebirth – it’s like a time where we can begin life anew, to change and improve who we are. My ethnic background is Chinese/Greek/Portuguese – which somehow means I look Filipino – and I am very proud of how rich the legacy my Greek and Chinese ancestors are. Both Greek and Chinese philosophy has each had a huge influence on the development of the Western and Eastern world respectively. Both cultures have huge volumes of literature about what it means to be the ideal person. I apologize if I offend with my ignorance other cultures, but I’ve always thought that one should aspire to the Greek and Chinese ideals of man. Not saying that other cultures of bad ideas of what the ideal person is, I’m just saying that I believe the philosophies these two cultures teach are great. They’re similar in many ways, but the Chinese ideal focuses more on an individual’s conduct whereas the traditional ideal Greek focuses on how to make one ’s self totally awesome.

Why is this relevant? Well, one of my steps to achieving my ideal was becoming good at VS. I have always have had the mentality of “If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it as best as I can.” In fact, I think I spoke of my desire to improve in this game on another thread. Unfortunately, I was sick for a good part of the vacation so I wasn’t able to play cards in person. Like I have touched on before, the Bay Area is not a place to go if you are looking to bash net decks against each other. The Bay Area is the place to be if you are looking for fun games of VS and to meet great people. My only recourse then, was to test online.

I really hated having to go on AIM asking people to OCTGN. First off, I was asking the same people literally day after day after day for games of OCTGN. After awhile it started feeling like I was begging them for a game. Sometimes after I IM’d someone, I could see their face in their mind. Usually the face looked something like:

“God, this guy must have no life. LOL GOOD THING I’M NOT LIKE THIS LOSER I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND LOL!”

The biggest victim of my constant barning was probably Duncan Tang. (Cheers!) I was on this guy’s nuts like a fat ugly drunk insecure female at a frat party. I would wake up in the morning and PM this guy repeatedly if he was online asking for a game of OCTGN. I literally did this for a week and a half straight. It became my daily ritual – wake up, shower, take a leak, eat food, PM Duncan and smash F5 repeatedly. Duncan sometimes relented and played me which was awesome! Despite my relative ineptitude, I learned a lot from playing with Duncan. He was like the abusive father I never had, or perhaps my own personal Michael Jacob. I received so much uncouth verbal abuse from this individual that I was truly questioning was he really a Brit. Instead of phrases such as “How much I loath…” that I feel are more typical of the cultured Briton, I got phrases like “You’re a ####ing moron.” Like a sadomasochist, I found myself unable to stop and I continued to play as much OCTGN as I could.

Eventually in one of my test games I drew Argus and Lorena. I proceeded to win the game fairly handily with this combination. I’d like to thank Yoda-X42 for this little insight. This little quote turned me on toward Lorena’s power, and by Jove, her power is great.

In the course of three games, I went from running one copy of her to debating whether or not a fourth copy was necessary.

Speaking of Lorena, here’s my opinion on some of the new Titans for the purpose of sparking discussion.

The New Hawk/Dove: The most interesting set of new cards. One thing you can do is use the old Hawk to boost out the new Dove. This is in my mind a huge negative. If the two Doves didn’t have the same name, you could conceivably go – off-initiative of course:

“I recruit Holly Granger <> Hawk, Avatar of Chaos, searching out Avatar of Order. I recruit Hank Hall <> Hawk, Agent of Chaos searching out Dawn Granger <> Dove, Agent of Order.”

Obviously, you are doing all this work to set up a fairly dangerous Roy Harper. You could use Optitron to set it up, or use your one remaining point to play Pantha or replay either of the Doves post after you’ve used them to enhance Arsenal.

The next thing is that the old Dove is just flat out better the new Dove her Dove’s ability is just horrible – I can’t really see why you’d even play her. First of all, it’s already unlikely that your opponent is going to brick-wall your team attack. Her ability is so specific - she needs to be attacking - and requires you to be in a bad situation to be decent. The old Dove though offers you a net gain of +3 ATK – I don’t see very man situations where the + 1 ATK buff is going to stack enough times to get you more then + 2 ATK.

While she does power-up the old Hank Hall, the same issue remains: Is a 2 power flier better then insurance against your opponent brick walling a team attack consisting of three to four attackers? I think the answer is yes.

The new Hawk is decent but still lacking. As it is, you’re paying two resource points to get a 2/2 and a 1/1 which results in three pts of ATK on turn two, which is just on-curve, as opposed to the old Hawk/Dove which results in six points of ATK on turn three, which is above curve. This is not to mention that you probably want to play Tim or Lorena on two. She is very good as a substitute target, and her ability to power-out Roy in the end game is incredible. Beyond that I don’t see her being very awesome. Plus, she makes you run Dove who you never want to draw.

Beast Boy, Party Animal

I thought this guy was horrible at first, but I began to warm-up to him. A good part of the reason I think he’s good is that he’s a substitute three. This means that should you chose to play with Ravager – and I really think it is correct to play her - Party Animal lets you do something once she’s lost her counter. He’s also one of the few Titans who don’t have cosmic. A lot of people are also giving this guy a bad rep because he’s not the old Beast Boy. The fact of the matter is that when you substitute him play he’s likely to be about the same size as the normal Beast Boy if you were able to keep him in play that long. Who cares if he doesn’t grow after that? You should be looking to end the game around then. He does interact negatively with Roy, but on average you’re looking at a 6/6 or 7/7 for three resource points which is a good deal anyway you can cut it. He’s VERY good, but you really only want one copy of him as you want to draw him late.

Lorena Marquez <> Aquagirl, Titans Tomorrow East

Pick up this card right now while she is cheap! She is truly the sleeper card of the new set. Aquagirl is ridiculous. Most people evaluating this card seem to think she’s regulated to some type of Underworld/Secret Society deck. The assessment is half right; she would be good in there, but she is good in many other decks like conventional Titans.

Lorena is one of those cards you really have to play with to appreciate just how good she is in conventional Titans. A lot of us look at her and we see an Argus on legs, and stop looking. We keep the Argus mentality of “flip it, use it, and toss it” and we see few ways to get rid of Lorena and we immediately disregard her. However, consider this: With an Argus in play, Lorena has no drawback. These two cards let you sift through 8 cards a turn and drawing two. Isn’t this a much better alternative to the conventional draw phase? Even more so if you have Terra and another Argus face down. Her throwing cards into the KO’d pile is not a drawback – there isn’t much of a difference between putting the cards on the bottom, in the KO’d pile, or removing it from the game – and is often a way to power-up Garth or Starfire.

The fact that she has substitute is just icing on the cake. You can play Hawk on two now if you don’t have a two drop knowing you can substitute Lorena in and still be able to boost out Hawk and Dove later. She also lets you remove Ravager should she become a liability. Her 4 DEF means she sucks up some good amount of damage. Did I mention that her ability isn’t cosmic stamped? Her one draw back is that she’s not very combat friendly. However, if you didn’t phase stamp her ability I suppose it would be too good in conjunction with Teen Titans Go.

You do have the potential to Aqua lock yourself, but that can be played around with intelligent deck building and forethought.

Connor Kent <> Superboy, Inspiration to the Legion

There are two cosmic characters I can really find myself playing in Titans, and one just happens to be my favorite Titan in the comic book series. His substitute means you can switch out Terra when it’s unlikely that you’re going to stun any more three drops. His eight attack means that he can stun other fours back and potentially some relevant five. Being able to fly and break up reinforcement channels is his biggest bonus.

His ability is really good, though it’s often not as good as you want it. It’s the versatility of it that makes it so wonderful. Sometimes it’s another Press the Attack on Roy. Sometimes it makes sure that Tim is there to take a hit for a team. Sometimes you have Red Star and you tap dance on your opponent’s skull. Sometimes it doesn’t do anything. Those are the best times of all because that means you already won.

Raven, Rachel Roth

One of the most common plays a Titans player ends the game is: Swinging with Garth, Pressing him, Swing, then recurring the press for 27 END loss after you’ve had a Teen Titans Go turn. Raven - if you substitute her after a Teen Titans Go turn - can work similarly.

The problem with her of course, is that she doesn’t do anything. The only thing she does is cause breakthrough. Look at characters like Terra and Red Star – they all possess similar sized bodies to Raven, but have incredibly relevant abilities. In my opinion, she’s much more of a win-more card. Very few decks can recover from a well executed Teen Titans Go turn. During one of these, you should be stunning their board and keeping three to four people alive which allows you to Press them on your opponents attack which allows you to either reinforce a whole lot of damage, or lets you decimate their board with some combination of Roy Harper/Terra/Ravager. Similarly, if you are wary of your board position, it’s not hard to find some other character to Press repeatedly. In addition, you may find yourself burning a Go/Press just to ready an appropriately sized charecter to substitute. Honestly, if you are in the position to double Press someone I really don’t see how you’re losing the game – barring Ra’s al Ghul or Dr. Light boosted.

Now You See Me and Born in Blood

Both cards are very good with Raven seven drop from Origins. Titans certainly have a lot more control cards and perhaps Titans control is now feasible? Consider:

Turn 2 – Puppet Master
Turn 3 – Ravager
Turn 4 – Terra
Turn 5 – Garth
Turn 6 – Starfire
Turn 7 – Raven
Turn 8 - Megatron

How nice is Garth recurring Cover Fire?

The Puppet Master/Ravager/Terra/Starfire combination is one that offers you a fairly strong mix of off-initiative control. Outside of this though, I don’t think you have enough space in a conventional Titans’ list to play this combo consistently.

Phantasm

Yeah, the guy from DOR. I mention him because he has “great synergy” with Aquagirl who can flip up your KO’d pile. For those of you who don’t know what Phantasm does, he’s a 0/3 that gets +10 ATK if you have 10 or more guys in your KO’d pile. Well, I had this guy in my deck for exactly one game. In that game I didn’t draw Aquagirl and I had to play him as my three. Good thing I was able to substitute him out.

Basically, even with Aquagirl this guy is still too narrow as it’ll take you three activations to power him up – you’re depositing three cards that may not necessarily be characters. He pretty much fulfills the same role as Party Animal except you can’t substitute him in if you need to play Hawk/Dove on that given turn.

Rose Wilson <> the Ravager

Both of the Ravagers are very narrow and have horrible stats. However, they provide a certain function that is rare and valuable – off initiative control - and they do it very well. Hence, the deserve examination.

The five drop suffers a bit from the bannings, as her best target is gone. Previously, you could Ka-Boom a control player with Garth in play, and follow it up with Ravager, Daughter of Deathstroke. Without Dr. Light, they can’t build up on you and you will slowly whittle their board down. These decks often lack the brute force to take Ravager’s counter off and you could proceed to win fairly handily. Without Dr. Light, Daughter of Deathstroke still has a few good targets: Zazzala <> Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive, Reed’s Rival, Roy Harper etc. I found her a bit awkward in Titans given how bad you want Garth, not to mention that Terra does pretty much everything you want Ravager to do.

The three drop also has her merits too. Her ability effectively negates Dr. Light. Beyond that she is also an awesome weapon against off-curve decks. Sometimes your opponent plays Hawk and Dove and you stun one of them. Sometimes your opponent equips a character and you shoot the guy in response. Her stats are definitely low, but keeping her cosmic counter on her for more then one turn is much easier then you think, as Golden is populated by decks that a) Don’t want to attack or b) Don’t have fliers. In any case, the strength of the Teen Titans has always been their flexibility – they can punish a bad draw but they can also drag the game out. All Ravager does is increase your flexibility. In addition, she has substitute which is sorely underrated.

Anyway, I’m sure you guys are curious for a list…

Characters - 26
4x Tim Drake <> Robin, Young Detective
1x Bette Kane <> Batwoman, Titans Tomorrow East
3x Lorena Marquez <> Aquagirl, Titans Tomorrow West
2x Hank Hall <> Hawk, Agent of Chaos
2x Dawn Granger <> Dove, Agent of Order
3x Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Sharpshooter
1x Beast Boy, Garfield Logan
1x Beast Boy, Party Animal
1x Rose Wilson <> the Ravager, Titans Tomorrow East
3x Terra, Tara Markov
2x Red Star, Leonid Kovar
1x Connor Kent <> Superboy, Inspiration to the Legion
2x Garth <> Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer
1x Koriand'r <> Starfire, Alien Princess

Plot Twists - 20
4x Mobilize
3x Absolute Dominance
3x Null Time Zone
3x Ka-Boom
4x Teen Titans Go
3x Press the Attack

Locations - 14
4x U.S.S. Argus
4x Tamaran
3x Titans Tower
3x Slaughter Swamp

This is the final list I came up with. Duncan thinks that I have too many four drops, which I am inclined to agree with. I really don’t know who I’d cut – I like having two copies of Red Star so I can Mobilize for a power-up, Terra is simply ridiculous off-initiative, and Connor is so versatile.

If you look at my list, perhaps the card that stands out the most is Slaughter Swamp. Slaughter Swamp is really nice in my build. First, there’s incredible synergy between Aquagirl and/or Tamaran and Slaughter Swamp – it allows me to search aggressively for my curve and allows me to recollect my earlier drops when it’s time to off-curve later in the game. Secondly, it is a powerful tool against Dr. Light allowing me to break up my opponent’s recursion when I need to – who plays Slaughter Swamp in Titans? Slaughter Swamp is also incredible in conjunction with Red Star should I miss Tamaran. Did I mention how good Slaughter Swamp is with Titans Tower – I hear recurring Beatdowns and Nasty Surprise are good? That’s not all though! It’s also nice insurance against locking yourself with Aquagirl. Ultimately, Slaughter Swamp didn’t do anything really well - it was just a very flexible card to draw.

At the same time, if you look at the most the most glaring omission is the lack of Optitron. I didn’t cut Optitron for Mobilize as much as I cut it for Slaughter Swamp. Still, that’s not a very concise explanation, so let me break it down in detail more.

There has been some argument on the forums with regards to Mobilize and Optitron. A lot of people have been saying that you can/need to cut Optitron now that you have Mobilize. Others have said that there’s no reason not to run both. Some have even said that Mobilize doesn’t deserve play.

For awhile, I agreed with the sentiment of running both. However, after testing for awhile, Optitron just didn’t pull its weight. Like I mentioned earlier, Optitron is only really feasible in the first two turns, after which you want a straight curve. With my emphasis on lower drops – especially as I realized how bad I wanted to hit Aquagirl or just any two drop so I could substitute her in later – I found that I always wanted to play a two, and thus Optitron was only feasible on the first turn. With Aquagirl, Slaughter Swamp and Argus working over time I found that I rarely had trouble finding my late game drops or the tutors to find them which meant I never needed to use Optitron. The last straw was my constant attempts to reduce the number of characters I was playing. It’s very hard to pitch a character card to Optitron when you only have characters in your hand that are different drops.

After awhile, I never found myself thinking “Oh, this would be better as an Optitron.” The Aquagirl engine is just so powerful. In addition, I don’t run Speedy either which is another incentive to run Optitron. I realize that having a conditional tutor like Mobilize which demands that I have earlier plays seems like it would push me running Optitron which could guarantee that. Certainly being able to go turn one Optitron to fetch Aquagirl is amazing. However, the narrowness of the card in this build led me to play something that seemed to be better more often.

The other big eye sore combination is that of Absolute Dominance and the lack of Removed from Continuity. This change was motivated by Captain Carl aka Carl Perlas. In a metagame filled with low cost characters, it seems fairly prudent to play some combination of Total Anarchy/Absolute Dominance seems like a solid addition if you are playing curve sized beats. As more and more PCQ top eights came in, it became evident TNB seemed to quite popular. This became another check in the plus column to running either of these on-goings. Anarchy is given the boot here because you – obviously - really don’t want your Roy or three drop getting KO’d which will give you a little problem when you are trying to play Terra or Garth. Dominance also has the nice advantage of being a great way to let go of Aquagirl.

Morning

Fast forward to the day before the PCQ: I had pretty much finalized what I thought was the deck I wanted to play. I headed over to a local gaming store – Collector’s Corner in Piedmont– and did some practice with two local players. There names shouldn’t be unfamiliar to Bay Area players – these are the infamous To brothers. For those of you who aren’t from the nickel and dime, the Tos are two brothers named Jeffrey and Jason – 14 and 11 respectively – who are incredible players. People – like myself at first - often mistake their youth for inexperience and expect to get a bye. However, the Tos are very good technical players and play extremely tight. The younger To in particular is especially good. If the CABAL ever manages to shape up, I am certain both of them will be a forced to be reckoned with on a Pro Circuit.

Anyways, we played around with a variety of decks ranging from The New Brotherhood, CrisisDoom and of course my build of Titans. The Tos also assembled a copy of TDC stall at my behest – more on this later. It was particularly nice for me as I had been playing on the internet and didn’t have the opportunity to actually touch and feel cards. Ultimately, they weren’t certain of what to play, but they had certain inklings: Jason – the younger one – wanted to play X-Statix/Villians, while Jeff the older brother wanted to play CrisisDoom.

I was already set on playing Titans but the Tos had very few of the new cards. I was hoping that a few local players might have the cards I needed and thus decided to play Titans with TDC stall as a back-up. We tested for about a few hours straight before I had to drop them off back at home. The Tos were still not certain about what to play. I spoke to them on AIM later and linked him to the post where FTN talks about the changes to their deck they would make after the Pro Circuit – most notably how they would fit in Frankie Raye.

The night before the PCQ was especially amusing for me because I had to makes lots of phone calls inquiring about various decks. Michael “dizbuster_7” Gilmore had two copies of Mobilize and a copy of Aquagirl with my name stamped on it. This meant that I was short a few other cards, most importantly two more copies of Mobilize and two more Aquagirls. I needed to get in touch with Khoi Nguyen, a good friend and local judge who let me know earlier that he had copies of Mobilize. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Khoi’s phone number so I started calling around all the stores he was affiliated with in order to get someone who knew his phone number. Finally, I was able to get Khoi’s number, but when I called Khoi didn’t pick up. I left him a message and hoped that he didn’t lose his phone. In the off case that Khoi did not pick up, I called up another regular at our hobby league – Brian Gerbi – and manage to borrow four copies of Enemy of my Enemy from him in case I needed to assemble TDC stall.

The Day of the Tournament

I went to sleep fairly early the day before as I wanted to make sure I was able to wake up on time. I didn’t sleep well at all that night. I’ve played in two other big VS tournaments in my life and I’ve never slept very well before. I guess I just have a very nervous personality. Somehow in between thinking about whether or not I’d find all my cards and what kind of metagame was going to be there tomorrow I managed to doze off.

It was still really dark when I woke up. Northern California is incredibly cold and extremely gloomy. My home is especially so due to it’s proximity to the coastline. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and took a look at my cell phone that… 9:20? Holy crap! The convention center was more then an hour away and registration ended at 9:45. Not to mention that I had to pick up the Tos! How did I oversleep? Why didn’t my alarm go off? Why the hell do I sleep so much?

I threw on my clothes and ran outside after I finished breakfast. I picked up my phone to call Khoi but he didn’t pick up. I called Mike to see if he was at the convention center, and he said that registration was going to end soon. I curse and kick my car…

…when suddenly my leg decided to #### with me and gave me a cramp. I clenched my eyes in pain, and punched my car. All I hit though was... cloth? Suddenly, somehow, I found myself back in bed. I checked my cell phone and it said 3:10 AM. Damn, I must’ve been so afraid of oversleeping tomorrow that I dreamt about it. * Sigh * Anyhow, after pushing my bit toe up in what felt like an eternity, the pain subsided and I found myself drifting back to sleep. I woke up at six, and did a few body strength work outs to get myself awake. As of then, I was still not yet certain whether or not I would play TDC stall. A shower and a shave later, I wasn’t any more certain then I was before, but at the very least I was ready to leave home. Before I left, I updated my iPod and printed out two different decklists using OCTGN – one for TDC stall and the other for my Titans. I also printed out directions using Yahoo maps for the convention center.

I arrived at the Tos around 8:10. Making good time I thought to myself. I handed Jeff the directions and told him to help me navigate. For some reason though, Jeff a high school student was having trouble discerning letters and numbers on Yahoo map. I thought he was joking with me as once and awhile he would give me the proper directions. My faith in him would end up costing me.

We have some fairly interesting discussion on the car. Jeff hangs out with a lot of people from the hood but his goofy complexion makes it really hard to take him seriously when he starts acting tough.

Meanwhile, I got my iPod attached to my car and I’m just chillin’ while we’re discussing. I’m mostly listening to stuff from Jay-Z and Kanye West. I’m getting reprimanded by Jeff because I’m listening to so much black music. I put on some Asian music on and this kid starts calling me a fob. Finally, I put some Fort Minor on and he calls me a twinkie.

You can’t win them all I guess.

When I got to San Jose it was about 8:50ish. As I was on the 880 I saw a sign that said San Jose Convention Center. Now, I’m no Sherlock Homeboy but that sounds awfully like where we’re suppose to be. I ask him is this where we’re supposed to be and he agrees. So I pull off the exit, and I follow the signs toward the convention center. Since we’re in local, I feel comfortable multi-tasking and I take the directions from the Jeff. However, the directions don’t match where we’re at. I decide to ignore Yahoo maps – BIG BIG MISTAKE – and I continued to follow the cute little signs that said “Convention Center ->”.

After 10 minutes of driving with nothing happening, I decide to call Khoi. I tell him the cross streets and Khoi, doing his best Sage impression, tells me that I’ve gone too far. So I drive head back on to the 880 going North. However, I don’t see any directions that match the mapquest. Getting scared again, I decide to call Khoi.

“Hey Khoi.”

“Hey man, where are you?”

“Hey, I’m on the Montague Expressway. Did I go too far?”

“Dude, how did you get to be 10 miles in the wrong direction?”

…

“JEFF YOU (insert random colorful phrase) !!!!”

So I get off at a random exit and I make a U-turn again. This time I follow Yahoo directions to the dot, and I’m able to make it to the convention center rather uneventfully. The problem is that I’ve wasted a huge amount of time during my direction changing. By the time I get to the convention center it’s like 9:38. Registration ends in seven minutes. I drop the Tos off and go find parking. At this point for my Titan’s deck I need:

4x Mobilize
3x Lorena Marquez <> Aquagirl, Titans Tomorrow East
2x Absolute Dominance
1x Null Time Zone
1x Beast Boy, Party Animal

So I head into the convention center. Off the bat, Khoi being the absolute gangsta has got my back and hands me a pair of Mobilizes and an Absolute Dominance. I hit up Mike and he has a pair of Mobilizes. The problem now is going to be finding Lorena Marquez. I ask around and nobody has any of her. The typical reaction I get is “Who?” Ultimately, I end up finding a chap by the name of Josh who has a pair of her. I offer to buy it off him, but he graciously lends them to me instead.

So now I’m short an Absolute Dominance and a Null Time Zone. Great, I can find rare Legion cards but I can’t find cards from Crisis or Avengers. The timeline for registration is pushed toward 10:00 presumably to accommodate the kids that are playing at the Yu-Gi-Oh regionals that day. I stop by Mike’s table and he asks me what I am missing. I tell him, and he says that he may have the Null Time Zone. Mike then goes through all his decks and miraculously pulls out a copy of Null Time Zone!

So now all I’m short is Absolute Dominance. I walk around asking if anyone has it. Miguel, a player who I am familiar with by face, hands me a foil Absolute Dominance telling me that I can borrow it if I don’t use it against him.

My day is going good! I’m going to go play in the PCQ! I can’t believe it all worked out. I’m so excited! Two Aquagirls means that I have to up one of my other drops but who cares? I got all the cards I needed for my deck!

“Attention all players registration for the 10:00 VS System PCQ is now closed.”

My day now feels like an episode of Curb your Enthusiasm.

So I rush up to the registration table. Luckily, Simon, the judge who is working the table there knows me. He takes me directly to the Judge’s booth. The judge for our PCQ is named Rob I believe – I had met him at PC: SF earlier in the year and he was just an all around very friendly guy - gives me a smile that seems to indicate that he had been expecting this. I’m not sure was he expecting a straggler or was had Khoi pulled some of his Vietnamese witchcraft but either way it worked out and I was in!

So, I sit down at Mike’s table where a bunch of us are congregating. Mike asks if anyone wants to throw down and I offer. We each fan out our opening grip when the PA system announces first round of pairings are up.

Good luck!

ThugFry was Right

While we sit down it’s announced that the tournament would be best out of three. No real reason was given, thought it might have had something to do with the fact that we had a Yu-Gi-Oh Regionals in the same room. There’s a fairly strong response from the players – “WE DIDN”T COME HERE TO PLAY YU-GI-OH!” – but we took it in stride and played.

Round One – Michael Gilmore.

It was kind of ironic that my first round was Michael Gilmore. I was expecting Michael to play on of his typical jank decks and expected something akin to a warm-up match.

Man, was I wrong.

Michael led off with a first turn Moloids and a second turn Moleman. I answered with a second turn Aquagirl. Michael flips up Devil’s Due and KOs his Moloid to put a counter on Mole Man, then exhausts Mole Man to bring him back.

On turn three Michael has Zazzala, while I have Ravager fetched off a freshly drawn USS Argus. I am fairly confident about this match-up. Michael “dawnyoshi” Rosenberg had told me about this match-up earlier and from what I understood it is fairly favorable. I set up with Aquagirl in front of Ravager and slowly pick off his guys. Ravager allows me to stun his Moleman and Michael doesn’t have enough Moloids to get to Ravager, so Ravager keeps her counter.

I have initiative on four, and I have Terra. Staring at my board of Ravager and Terra, I can’t help but feel all warm and cozy inside. Terra will stop all of Zazzala’s burn, and Michael’s Moloids are too small to get through her, especially since I have Ravager who can break up any potential team attacks. Of course, I don’t need to worry about that as I have a pair of Teen Titan’s Go in my hand and a pair of locations in my resource row. Michael, under drops with Dr. Doom, Richards Rival and puts a copy of For the Glory of Doom on top of his deck. Mike then brings back a Moloids, and forms up with two Moloids in the back row, Mole Man and Doom in front of them, and Zazzala hidden.

I team attack Moleman with Terra and Ravager. A bad move no doubt in a vacuum, however, my plan is to ready the and start firing stuns and Michael’s board left and right. Mike however, has plans of his own:

“Reign of Terror.”

Reign of Terror?

REIGN OF TERROR?

“Kang thinks you should pay more attention to thugmotivation101! NYAH~!”

“Kang, shut the hell up. All three of you.”

“Kang thinks someone’s butt hurt! NYAH!”

The Reign completely blindsides me. My attack is wasted and the turn is his. Michael chooses not to attack my board, but I am rapidly taking damage from the pair of Master of Puppets in his resource row and the Glory of Doom he has replaced into the row by KOing a Moloid. A Devil’s Due doesn’t help me, and pretty soon Michael gets Enemies for a Tattooed man and puts him into play. I play Roy and flood the board with some weenies – I believe Hawk and Dove – in an attempt to use Roy to stun his attacking Tattooed Man. My efforts are wasted though, as he handily removes the counters on his Tattooed Man and burns me out with his minions.

Game Two

Game two is even worse then game one. I do not draw my Argus and Aquagirl this game. I do however, draw Absolute Dominance. However, Absolute Dominance is not nearly as good as I want as he has so many ways to KO his characters in response to the removed from game trigger. This game however, does last longer then the previous game as I have the right initiatives. Once again, I do my best to control his board using Terra and small attacks. On five I don’t have Garth, but I play Red Star and use him and Tim to try to clear his board. Once again though, I have no answer to Tattooed Man. Mike’s engine is up by this point and the terminal synergy between Devil’s Due, Tattooed Man and Master of Puppets dashes any hopes I had of going 5-0.

0-1/0-2

I am disappointed to have started off my game like this. On the other hand, it feels better to lose to a friend and a local as opposed to someone I didn't know - or even worse didn't like. I can still Top 8 with a 4-1. Mike wishes me good luck and we hope to meet again in the Top 8.

In between rounds one and two, I go and get a game with Curtis “T’Challa” Brown. Curtis is playing his Turbo thing today. The game is much closer then I would like it to be, but Roy eventually stuns his board up and I win.

By the way, it may not have been obvious but that was foreshadowing.

Round Two – Jarrod

Jarrod is a very friendly individual, and apparently part of Eugenio’s crew. I was very lucky in this tournament with regard to my opponents: They were all extremely courteous and friendly. We make some small attack about me losing all my cards at the Heralds of Galactus pre-release. I tell him that while I am still mad about losing my stuff, but I find it pointless to get mad about something I can’t do anything about. He echoes my sentiment and reminds me:

“Yeah, it could’ve been worse. It’s not like you lost a limb or something. You can always just try to collect more material things.”

I know Jarrod is playing Future Foes – he lost to Jeff and his CrisisDoom in the round before and Jeff sent six drop Doom with double Beatdown into Blue Beetle. I find it only fair to tell him that I’m playing Teen Titans. Jarrod informs me that he knows what I’m playing.

Fair and square.

Game one.

My first hand is:

Press the Attack
Press the Attack
Teen Titans Go!
Tamaran

This hand is utterly atrocious and I toss it back. My next hand is again a three twist hand with Bette Kane as my only play. One of these is a Mobilize though, so I feel confident that I maybe able to maneuver my way out of this.

Jarrod leads off with a turn two Corkscrew. Bette goes down and loses her cosmic counter. I draw on three and it’s Ravager and some random location. I was debating about the Mobilize but I figure I needed some insurance that I would have a play on four. Jarrod has a prompt Time Trapper. He also flips up Fate’s tower and suits up Time Trapper.

So I’m dealing with a un-targetable 9/9 on turn three that has flight, range, and can’t be Terra’d?

Holy crap TDB! That’s something Titans don’t want to see!

I match him with a third turn Ravager. His Time Trapper makes me a sad panda as I am drawing into Mobilizes. I play a Terra on four but I can’t touch his fate suited Time Trapper. Jarrod plays Enemy on turn four, asking himself “What do I have for Titans?” I offer Hawkeye out load half jokingly and half disbelievingly, only to have the formerly deceased archer materialize before me. Right now, I am wishing that I had Betrayals in my deck. * Frowns * Anyways, I am unable to harass his board and soon a Fated Computo pummels me into oblivion.

Game Two

I apologize if I cannot retail all the details of this particular game very well. Jarrod had a Corkscrew on two and Dr. Fate on turn three – of the search harassing variety. I had Tim Drake on turn two and Roy Harper on turn three. Eventually, Dr. Fate swings into Roy Harper. Two Roy Activations plus a Tamaran activation means that I am stunning Dr. Fate back. This results in a power-up war that I lose which depletes most of my hand. I have Terra in my hand but no locations, not to mention no answers for his Fate Artifacts. I scoop on turn four because I really didn’t want to have to play out what I felt was a losing game.

0-2, 0-4

Three to be Won

3-2 could conceivably make top 8, but as my breakers are horrible it seems rather unlikely. Anyways, now seems like a good time to go over a really interesting games I saw.

Because we have are playing best of three, end of time procedures are very weird. Apparently, when time is called and the game counts are even, a third game is played with three turn who determines the winner.

I was watching a game between Checkmate/Heralds and Future Foes – who was piloted by Miguel Rodriguez who was the guy who lent me the Dominance - which was forced into the three turn procedure. I am rooting for Miguel here, but the game doesn’t look very promising for Miguel. On turn two, the Checkmate player flips up Brother Eye and fetches Sarge Steel. His opponent plays Corkscrew, who unfortunately is not Concealed-Optional. On turn three the Heralds player flips up Fate’s Tower and Fate’s up his Sarge Steel! He actually draws Ahmed Samsarra, but because of how excited he was about drawing the gear he forgot to play a resource. The Future Foes player has Tarik the Mute. The Tarik player goes to Mobilize for a power-up to ensure the double stun, however Corkscrew is in play. Even if Miguel did KO him, he would be short the necessary amount of damage to push the game to the fourth extra turn.

Pairings go up and I’m at the top tables. Apparently, I got a win somehow. I go to the head judge and he rectifies it and we get repaired. I’m now at the bottom. One of the nice things about being at the bottom tables is how friendly everyone is. We’re really not playing for anything, and I think this is one of the best ways to make acquaintances. The top tables are always filled with flimsy hand shakes, rigidly defined turn sequences and sarcastic mutters of “How lucky.” The bottom tables are filled with jokingly, relaxed players and just all around friendly people. Miguel who is at the table quips that “We should all just light one and pass it around.”

Stu, where are you when we need you?

Round Three – Adam

I saw Adam earlier and he was playing Spiderfriends apparently. At this point, I’m kicking myself for wanting so hard to write something. I really should’ve played TDC Stall. As it turns out, his deck was a bit less Spider and more of the "friends".

Adam wins the roll and chooses evens.

Adam starts off with a turn two Pip the Troll searching out Soul Gem.

I have Aquagirl on turn two. Booty brickwall.

I have Roy on three, while he plays Gamora with a Soul Gem. I have an Argus here so my set up feels pretty strong. We trade hits and keep going.

On turn four he puts down Julia Carpenter with a Soul Gem, and sticks Reality Gem back on his Gamora. The Gem takes down my Argus and that pretty much decides the game. He plays Spiderman on seven and steals my attack step. Roy, however, doesn’t take to being exhausted too well and takes a shot at Spider-Man. Unfortunately, my attempt gets fizzled by a Nice Try. For some reason as this happens, a mental image of Michael Jacob going “Nice card.” Flashes in my head. Spiderman attacks my Dove with a power-up and puts me at exactly zero.

Too be honest, I was getting a bit mad at this point. I wasn’t mad at getting beat though, I was getting mad at myself. I spent so much time playing and refining my deck, so much time trying to study up on the metagame, and here I am in the bottom throes unable to defeat even a casual deck. This was nothing against my opponent – he played perfectly and was extremely cool about everything - I was severely disappointed at my inability to play well. Like I said before, I believe if you’re going to commit something you should do it well. Here I was committing to something that I love so much and I was not doing well. The sentiment of “I should’ve played TDC stall” was so strong. Creativity doesn’t pay the bills. But hindsight is always 20-20. I reminded myself that I had entered this PCQ not so much as to win, but in order to write something nice, and I shouldn’t forget it.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and counted four cards from my deck. I slowly fanned them out before me and opened them.

“I’ll take odds this time.”

Game Two

Game two played pretty much like game one. Adam curves out with Pip, Gamora, and Moon Dragon. There are a few big differences here. I have Beast Boy on turn three this game. Beast Boy gives him nine types of hell as he keeps getting larger. A Space Gem on Moondragon threatened to take Beast Boy down, but a crucial brickwall by Tamaran and discard on turn four means that his Moondragon can no longer threaten Beast Boy.

Another big difference is that he doesn’t have Reality Gem. As such Aquagirl and Argus start giving me everything. In the last game I didn’t have a complete idea of what to do, but I do now. I aggressively search for a copy of Null Time Zone and a copy of Ka-Boom.

On turn five, I play Garth and play Teen Titans Go. In unison with a substituted Connor Kent, Beast Boy and Hawk/Dove I take his board down. He has a freely evaded White Tiger, but when he misses his six the game is over. I flip a Null Time Zone on Nice Try and stun his entire board. A Ka-Boom on his Avalon Space Station means that Spiderman won’t be stopping anytime soon.

Game three is literally exactly the same as game two. I lead off with Robin and substitute him for Lorena on three. The game ends in the exact same way with a Ka-Boom on a location for turn six, a Null Time Zone for Nice Try, and a Roy Harper stunning his entire board.

1-2, 2-5

Adam is incredibly frustrated. Ironically, he has the exact same feelings as me. He was very disappointed in his deck. His friend comes up to him and tells him that “You probably put a lot less time into this then a lot of other people.” I take a little offense to it when he says it, but then I shake it off. I agree with his friend and say that it’s just a game, and that he probably gets a lot more ##### then me, and in the greater scheme of life that’s what’s more important. Honestly, I’m just paraphrasing here. I’m pretty sure what I said had a lot more of the f-bomb, and a lot less of the proper grammar and punctuation.

Panda vs. Panther

Round Four – Curtis “T’Challa” Brown

Fact: Did you know that Pandas are actually deadly killers? Panda mothers are fearsome fighters when it comes to defending their babies. We’re conditioned by the media to believe that pandas are some type of soft cute animal when in actuality they’re huge and extremely deadly. Pandas are known to fight off and kill wolf packs that attack their cubs. Pandas have also experienced a record number of births this year – 34 were born, with only 4 dying.

Could a panda defeat a panther in the wild? Probably. It would probably help if the bear was deranged because he had rabies or some other type of disease.

Could I beat Curtis though?

Game one is the shortest game I have ever played in a sanctioned tournament. Here it is. I’ll do it MODO style.

TheDerangedBear chooses odd initiatives.
Turn one - TheDerangedBear's intiative.
TheDerangedBear plays a resource.
tchalla plays a resource.
Turn two - tchalla's initiative.
tchalla recruits Alicia Masters.
TheDerangedBear recruits Tim Drake <> Robin, Young Detective.
TheDeranedBear declares an attack of Tim Drake <> Robin, Young Detective on Alicia Masters.
Attack is legal.
tchalla plays triggered ability from Alicia Masters.
tchalla: CTRL+Q, E
tchalla has conceded from the game.

(Cue the fanfare and “TheDerangedBear has won! The game ended up turn two.”)

In all honesty though, I was quite surprised that the game ended like this. Curtis then told me had four loyalty characters in his hand and there was no point playing a game if he couldn’t actually play.

Game Two

I have everything I need this game. I lead turn two with Tim Drake. Curtis has Human Torch, Hothead. I don’t remember the rest of the game very well. I know at some point I flip Absolute Dominance and eat his Hothead without getting my gun stunned. However, I also remember boosting Hawk and Dove and having Hothead swing into my Dove. In any case, Curtis doesn’t have much.

I remember this much though: On turn five Curtis has Longshot and recruits Human Torch. Curtis flips Heroes United and in response to it, he burns me and uses Longshot calling Human Torch and thing. He then flips Cosmic Radiation and repeats this process thrice. Only one of the Longshots isn’t a dud though. Curtis then recruits Thing, Heavy Hitter.

I forget in what order exactly I play out my guys, but I know I end the turn with five characters one of which is your favorite sharpshooter and mine.

At this point Curtis calls over a judge, and moves away from the table to talk about something. Curtis comes back to the table and sends the judge away. I ask Curtis what it’s about and he says he can’t tell me because it will reveal what he has. I ask him what his question is regarding and I toss out a few words such as timing, priority, etc. Curtis then tells me it’s a matter of timing.

I’m not sure who exactly it happened from this point on, but the short of it is that Curtis wants to know if he can substitute a character during the build phase if I choose to snipe Roy. I am a little hurt that Curtis thought that I wouldn’t know the answer to this. Heck, I think I was the one who put the entry for substitute in Wikipedia!

The short of it is, no, you can’t. Substitute can only work during your recruit step. I was wondering about this back when I tested - "Can I substitute Beast Boy in response to Reign of Terror?"The only exception being Raven – which Curtis had in his hand – but he had no other Titans in play. Roy takes Thing down and that’s all she wrote.

2-2, 3-5

Since our game ended fairly quickly I pulled aside to watch Jeff and Jason play. Jason is playing another little kid which I find to be hilarious. Jeff on the other hand is playing IG burn. The result of this game left me with a little moral quandary.

The IG player has the even initiative and its turn eight. His board is seven drop Joker from Crisis, and Scarecrow boosted. Jeff on the other hand, has The Phantom Stranger and Scarlet Witch, and Ra’s al Ghul. the Demon's Head.

At the start of the attack step, the IG player activates Scarecrow and burns Jeff for damage. Jeff thinks for awhile and concedes.

I am wondering whether or not it is ethical for me to step in right before they pick all the cards up. I know for a fact that I’m biased here so I doubt the appropriateness of me stepping forward as some type of arbitrator. Regardless, I ask our head judge and he tells me the only thing I can do is get the judge if he’s nearby. It’s the judge’s responsibilities to handle things like these and not the players, and that it’s my responsibility to make sure I point out the mistake to my friend after the game.

What do you guys think?

Poor Jeff.

Anyhow, in between rounds two local Filipino locals come up to me and ask if I am Filipino. I seem to get this question a lot for some reason. Somehow, this sparks into a discussion about race.

For starters apparently “Filipino’s are the Mexicans of Asia.” Someone said the exact same thing to me yesterday but he used a more colorful comparison instead. The funny part about that was that he said it with a Mexican guy nearby and the Mexican guy looked like he was going to kick his ###. Good thing the guy who said it was humongous and averted disaster. I’m surprised the Filipino guy said it so casually, from what I understand Filipinos consider themselves Pacific Islanders and not Asians. I think something of it has to do with racial tension between the native Filipinos and the Filipino born Chinese.

The best part was when one of our local judge Chris told us how someone came up to him randomly and asked if he was related to Curtis. Now this Chris guy is black, and I’m sure we’ve heard the stereotype of all black people looking alike and this Chris guy is getting bothered by this. It would be very hard to understand why this is funny unless you have seen both Chris and Curtis this might be a bit more interesting.

Anyways, we have one round left.

Round 5 - Miguel “CarlosTheDwarf” Rodriguez

Miguel is playing Futures Foes and we’ve been hovering near each other the whole day - both in terms of standings and physically. Miguel is also going to be writing a report soon, so you should probably look to his for much more detailed coverage of the match-up.

I win the roll.

Game One:

We both miss one, but on turn two he has Tarik the Mute while I have Aquagirl. Tarik is big, but Aquagirl is larger and we bounce and nothing happens. That’s not all Miguel has up his sleeve though, as he flips a concrete jungle. Concrete Jungle is bad times for me but hopefully it won’t be too horrible.

For his three, Miguel has Time Trapper. I have a Beast Boy. If I remember correctly, we mutual each other except I have a Tamaran. Miguel is able to deal some breakthrough and plays Fatal Five Hundred searching for Lightning Lord. Nothing really happens so we go on to the next turn.

Turn four, Miguel has Lightning Lord, which I discard too. Between Concrete Jungle, Lightning Lord, Time Trapper and Chain Lightning I’m discarding a huge number of cards a turn. The discard is painful, but because my deck has such a huge emphasis on recursion, I am able to hit all my drops.

My big break comes on turn five. Miguel has no five drop and instead recruits Brainiac and some other two drop. Teen Titans go let’s me stun his entire board and preserve much of what I have. On turn six, he has Ol-Vir. He has a brain fart and forms him in the back. I discard a random card, and recur Starfire. As Ol-Vir’s ability is combat stamped he doesn’t get invulnerability and I take the game.

Game Two

He takes odds in this one.

This game is fairly similar to the first one. Again, I hit the Argus and Aquagirl combo. I get my engine rolling. Unlike the previous game, Miguel has a lot less discard – he did not hit Concrete Jungle- but he doesn’t miss his drops this time. A pair of Fatal Five Hundred ensures that he hits a solid curve of Torak, Brainiac 5, Lightning Lord, Atrophos. With Argus, Aquagirl, and Mobilize I too am able to hit all my drops properly so this is a real game.

The game was more or less decided on turn five. Miguel has Torak, Lightning Lord and Atrophos. He has them set up in an aggressive L formation with Atrophos as the pivot point, Lightning Lord behind and Torak next to him. I have Garth, Red Star and Lorena set up in a defensive position with Garth behind Red Star. I have two cards in hand so Tarik is huge. I sub out Red Star for Ravager and use him to stun Tarik. He then sends Atrophos into Lorena which I reinforce. Finally, he sends Lightning Lord into Garth with a Chain Lightning. I discard and he powers-up. I am able to Tamaran for a deadly brickwall.

Next turn I substitute out Ravager for Beast Boy and play Roy. Despite my overwhelming board presence, the size of my characters means that I don’t have enough damage to kill him this turn on six. We go to turn seven where he recruits Emerald Empress. A freshly recurred Starfire puts an end to that plan.

2-3, 5-5

So I lost the last game? How did that happen? Well, at 3-2 with my tie breakers there didn’t seem like there was much chance of me getting top 8. In addition, I was not eligible for the amateur prize, whereas Miguel was. So it seemed very rational to scoop to Miguel who had a chance of getting some packs and a deck box. Miguel out of gratitude gives me the foil Absolute Dominance that I borrowed. I then gave the Dominance to the Tos who had lent me the cards I needed. Win/win situations like these are somewhat rare I suppose, and I am glad that I was a part of this. I’m not sure what happened to Miguel but I certainly hoped things worked out for me. After I turned in the match-slip I went back home as my parents were beginning to wonder where I had been all day. They don’t approve of me playing VS so I made up some rather flimsy excuse about going somewhere.

Outro

So I end the day with a disappointing 3-2 doesn’t really prove anything about this particular build. I don’t think my prediction of the metagame was too far off, as there were a decent number of Doom decks and decks with locations...except they were all at the top table.

: (

I would like to blame my results on luck - not getting paired up against what I was teched against - but I really think that's irresponsible. If anyone can help me out here that would be awesome. One card that I really wanted to play was Betrayal. Ka-Boom can destroy things like Thannagar but decks like Crisis and Skrulls still have ways around it. Still, it's so back breaking when it resolves. I think that Betrayal is always a decent call for PCQs though, as you likely run into tons of creative Enemy driven decks.

I’m not really good at ending things so I guess I’ll just leave it on this note: There are a lot more players in the Bay Area that I thought there were. At Collector’s Corner I met with two guys – can’t remember your name but you guys played TNB and Titans/Rock – who were both really solid players. If you guys see this drop a line on this thread! I really think that us in the Bay Area should really get focused on our game. There are a lot of great people here, but I think we suffer from a lack of communication which means that we aren’t able to playtest as effectively or coordinate these things as well. If anyone in the Bay Area is interested in getting together for competitive VS you should totally stop by Games of Berkeley on Monday and Eudemonia on Saturdays. Right now we have more casual players, but we have quite a few super good players who are just uninspired right now. *COUGH* MITCH/RICH *COUGH*

Finally, if anyone is interested in an OCTGN test session please IM me. My AIM is DerangedBear. I totally understand the pain of trying to test on OCTGN and would love to help you in anyway you can.

As for me, Melissa returned today. I don’t know if that’s a : ( or a : ) But for the foreseeable future, I don’t think I’ll be playing in any tournaments. : /

Anyhow, hope you guys liked this despite the ####ty ending…

Good luck at your PCQ.

- TDB

PS: Trade me your Aquagirls please?

Finally got all of it read... not bad...

Some good stuff in there it tell you what.

This is really good, and I can't wait for part 3.

This belongs on Metagame.com Premium. 2 out of 3 parts and it's already got information and ideas that haven't appeared anywhere else; anecdotes that make the story personal for the reader; and attention to detail in all areas that show not only do you have something interesting to say and an interesting manner of saying it, but you've done your homework too.

Don't know what the highest compliment I can give you is, but here goes: I wish I had written this.

Comments typed as I'm reading along.


I love the abusive father analogy.

I'm Scottish so that would exclude me from the "All brits must be posh and nice" stereotype if you were getting at that.

I've already told you techno's Koriand'r story and the hell he gets from it.

Yes, I am a supporter of the Michael Jacob "You're a freaking idiot!" school more because of a lack of composure to nurture mistakes - far easier to be nice IRL, online is just frustrating :)

Just noticed a typo on the Raven section where you refer to Raven as Terra when you're comparing bodies (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere).
I only mention this because I know you'd want this perfect as you can get it.
You also forget that Raven's pro's over the other 4's are flight and concealed optional. In addition to the press FTW senario there is the "is what she offers over the other 4's good enough?" question.
I think the answer's no but you've come to that conclusion as well already.

"8 drop Megatron" - ROFLSTOMP!

No short write up for Bette Kane? I'm a little surprised considering how much you were pimping her when we played. You can even mention how she protects you from Flame Trap ;)

Bloody hell.....a bit tight on collecting your cards mate. Least you got them in the end.

Best of 3 what the slag....I have no idea if I would call that a sandbag but that's surely not kosher. I'm very sure some decks benefit from being in a best of 3 rather than a 1 game match. There's also time issues....I can't see how this is a good decision if UDE have plain and simply said best of 1 ever since Indy 04

Dude in game 1 was your attack legal when he plays the Reign? If it was you could still TTGx2 and wrecked his board something awful.
If it wasn't then n/m - it's a minor detail that's just very interesting to know.

Typo in round two. You say "we make some small attack" when you mean small talk (I hope you mean small talk...)

Wow....your top tables/bottom table shenanigans sound very um....pish. If we still had PCQs here you'd love it ;)

As a player you have a "duty" to play the game correctly and if illegalities occur in either your game or someone elses arise you are to bring it to a judge's attention regardless of how it affects you.

So yeah you should have told a judge but not many people will blame you especially seeing as you're saying you didn't know - PM me about this if you want.

Round 5 - RESPECT THE STARFIRE!!! You took her out. You suck so much you know. I repeat; RESPECT THE STARFIRE!!
Round 5 game 2 - I think you have a mistake in your game. You Sub out Ravager for BB:PA and recruit just Roy. Why not keep Ravager and recruit both BB and Roy unless there's something missing here.
Ah Starfire again. He deserved to lose to that if he didn't learn from game 1

You sound mildly downbeat in the outro.
Predicting the Meta is part of the preperation percentage on how to do well at tournaments. I don't think you should feel too bad about it. After all you've cited lack of team and such which are fundamental to the preparation process

You can look at the tournament in this way
Round 1 - you screwed up game 1 (did you even play a NTZ during the day? the report is severly lacking them). Game 2 an AbDom or a RFC would have been sweet for you on his MoleMan/Doom/Zazzala.
Who knows what would happen in this one.
Round 2 - you got 9/9'ed twice on turn 3. This is hardly anyone's fault except for Ben Seck's.

Great report.
Shame about the result.

Tommy's post is utterly correct, ride the compliments mate.

I'm really enjoying this, keep it up!

very, very nice read. i def liked how it went through the whole process and i can't wait for the third part. the first paragraph instantly caught my attention when you said you were studying to become a personal trainer which is exactly what i am doing. good job.

I hope the third part isn't too dissapointing...

A Part 4 where you discuss what you'd like to change in your deck would be pretty cool. 3-2 with a new deck without a whole lot of practice isn't so bad, especially when you got blindsided by some things, like Reign of Terror. Next time you'll know to expect it, and call it out with NTZ.

A disappointing quest. You didn't get the "ship" or the "Key that's really a sword, but it's really a key that just happens to open people's death when you stick it in them." You should've eaten your arm-less stealthly archer...just like massagers!
















ps, good read. (R V B mini quest)

BRAVO! It's amazing how well you delved into the card choices. I came to many of the same conclusions as you did, and would definetly have weathered the same list through a tournament as well. I had a list with 2 optitron most recently, and besides that, it was like you were in my head. Good Job, definetly pm'ing you for contact info.

Props and Slops

Props:
Duncan Tang, Hendy, anyone I played in OCTGN - Thanks for the games. I owe you a milkshake if we ever meet. Duncan, especially, xieh xieh ni!
Patrick Yapjoco, YodaX-42, and Carl Perlas - Thanks for the advice, you guys really put me toward the right directions.
The Tos - For all the cards
Josh, Miguel, and Mike - Thanks for the cards
Khoi - Not only was this guy a super navigator but also the master of the hook-up - in all sense of the word.
All my opponents - For being cool.
UDE - No matter how much I ##### in the forums, this is the best ####ing game ever.

Slops
Techno - Where were you this time man?
Yu-Gi-Oh Players - Wow, strong orgasm.

Good job paulie shore.. Like the whole pcq being hidden in your threads name thing yer so clever.. Anyways the only things stopping me from getting serious about testing: 1) money 2) lack of other serious players in the area 3) time... the heart for the game is there and I've got ideas for days hah.. I think same goes for most of the area.

awesome thread, and it should be some sorta of featured article. You my friend are a great writer. :)