Storytime Part 2! VS Unleashed!'s contest day 2

Today, we'll be taking a look at entries from bkwrds and Fiend28!

bkwrds

1) I was introduced to Vs by a friend of mine who really just wanted to play bad kitchen table decks. He encouraged us to buy Spider-Man starters as they were selling for $10 at the LCS. He stopped buying cards after DCR and stopped playing shortly thereafter, as the two of us he had taught to play had kind of... figured out how to build winning decks? and Andrew was stuck on first gear, so he'd lose every time. [My friend] also taught [another friend], who I still manage to play about once a month, maybe less. [the second friend] hasn't built anything new since we tested for the 1st City Champs, so it's getting a little stale for me.

Things looked up for a while when I moved to a new town for work, about 80 miles away, and there was a scene with 7(!!!) guys. I wasn't always flush with money for cards like those guys were but obviously being the 8th man I was welcomed with open arms. Somebody had a new booster box every week when we played, so there was always limited of some kind, which is sadly my favourite. Unfortunately, they're now 80 miles away and meet on Sunday nights... my current situation REQUIRES that I work Sunday nights, so I get to play with them... never. I see them at tournaments and we carpool, so that's a plus. Good guys, though. Really smart. We all went to the Burlington event and had a total blast.

2) Online is where Vs came to life for me. Always people to play on MWS, tournaments to participate in, people to send cards to and receive cards to (I still make minor trades, I just get geeked out over getting cards I'm looking for) and making about 500 posts on VSR before it shut down. I'm actually a lot more active here on .org as there are fewer people posting. I have been on MWS since 2006, playing bunches of games against bunches of opponents, missing sleep, seeing cool decks, playing against some of Vs Royalty (Spooky, Shane, David Leader, Alex Jebailey, ThugMo, and so on...) and holding my own. Built some fun decks of my own, and used cool combos featuring rares I can't afford. I.. love it, and I still get in as many games as I have time for.

Sidenote: I get a great big kick out of Scott's 100 Ideas as I can remember a lot of what the old decks looked like from memory and know what kinds of decks I like to play with. 30 cards is a fun number for me, I don't know why it works so well, but it does. When I deckbuild I spend a lot of time choosing between 2 slots/3 slots and 3 slots/4 slots... 30 card constructed kind of does away with that, and it's nice.

3) I never lurked. I always wanted to put my piece in, on the off chance I knew what I was talking about.

4) You know, I never made it to a PC, or even a 10K. I have half a mind to try a new game when my kids are older, just so I can get the feeling of going to a tournament with 80-100 people and money on the line. I did test for the first City Champs... but it didn't go so well. I never really had a real group of people to test with, and I could convince people to play against me... but they didn't understand what I wanted to do. I took an Inhumans/Hellfire team-up to the first City Champs and thought that it would do really well, because the deck had a lot of good tricks. It whiffed... badly. I lost the games I had a chance in through BRUTAL play error and when my deck hit I'd run into tricky high-level ninja shit like Fated-Up Secret Society... FTL. Is there a remedy for BRUTAL play error? Because it's a small problem I have.

I remember telling my friend that I wanted to test for 10k Toronto (the Silver Age JLOA one that Jacob won) and I had a really bad X-Men deck based on playing the Energy plot twists (it was bad but fun) and I kept losing to one friend who had Savage Beatdown and Blind Sided in the same deck. It made me so mad! and he didn't understand why I didn't want to lose that way. Anyway, I wrote the date down wrong for 10K Toronto and totally missed out, took a shift, it sucked. Sounds like going sucked from the people I know that went.

I did go to a PCQ for Heralds, and finished 5th out of 20. Not bad for my first PCQ slash 3rd time playing Sealed... I got to play against the guy who built the Parademon loop deck for the first time. Isn't it sad when your fav opponents move on? Anyway, finishing as the highest "amateur" gave me a free deckbox! I'm looking at it right now, it's one of the coolest times I ever had playing Vs.

Bright side to the story about the Inhumans/Hellfire deck -- I was trying to get ready for the Burlington BYOTT last month. I wanted to build a rushy rush deck, something faster than that Avengers/Brotherhood nonsense. It was going to be MOE and Syndicate. I built the deck on MWS, tested it, played it against some good decks (thanks, Bircher!) and won... did pretty good with it. So I'm trying to build it, and I can only find 1 Goblin Glider (Seriously?) and 2 The Wrecking Crew... it's now 3am, and I need sleep because I'll have to be up at 8am or whatever to make it to Gday's tourney on time.
Screw it. Believe it or not, my Inhumans/Hellfire deck is still pretty together... so... why not just take the team-ups out? So I did! Add in 4x Waking the Ancestor (AWESOME card) and 2x Cardinal Law to make up the cards the team-ups took. The deck did well.. I placed 5th, with zero testing! Put the deck together in the convention hall itself. Two of the guys I drafted with placed 1st and 2nd. Very cool. We drafted MEV and I forced X-Statix, LOL. It was fun. Gday gave everybody 30 or so MUL and MEQ and when I told him I had never bought any DC he demanded I take all his Chaff from DOR to DLS... playsets for every common and uncommon! Wow, what a nice guy. What a prize. Best tournament I have ever attended, I wish I could go back this weekend.

OSM Responds - I'm seeing a trend here; whenever vs players move, generally they move to a place where there are more vs players [by coincidence of course]. Ain't that somethin'. It's a shame that work can't always mesh with card flopping, but maybe a bright side is, well you said your friends said the 10k didn't go so well. I guess since you worked that day, that'd be a net-gain right? Limited is a ton of fun; I like it so much I've played with opened cards and make random pile drafts. I'm glad to hear that your experiences with Gday's event were great. Unfortunately, I don't have quite the prize stash that Gday has so I'll be sending you 10 vintage EAs, 5 subset cards and 5 MEV rares. And some DC stuff I dig up, since you mention having the commons/uncommons from DOR-DLS.

Fiend28

For your contest I am going to have to go with Question #4. I never had much of a playgroup as Vs never really caught on down here in my part of North Carolina. All in all, I only got to play maybe a year of Hobby League and sometimes those nights we would only get 4 or 5 people. I would like to comment on question #2 for a sec and say that Carlos the Dwarf with his website and all the shenanigans that they do over on the Lost Hemisphere have kept me interested longer in the game then if I was just surviving on my own instinct.

Any who enough babbling onto Question #4. The tournament that I remember testing for the most and also remember the best because of the outcome, would be a local PCQ I believe that was set during DC Modern Age when Justice League and Infinite Crisis was legal.

Going into the tournament the top decks were “Fate Society” secret society with the fact artifacts abused Deadshot and fating up your biggest drop every turn. Usually got the full set out by turn 2. The Shadowpact/Secret Six deck that was popular for awhile I believe the secret six was used to help with search. Involved conjuring out big guys. Good Guys was still popular but not seen as a top deck. I’m assuming there was some Checkmate build as well since that deck seems to be always be good no matter what tourney it is in. I absolutely loathe checkmate though and probably have blocked out any involvement Checkmate may have had in the tourney.

I want to say that Secret Society was seen as the best deck as a pro had just won a major tourney with it. At the time that I started thinking about deck lists for the tourney I had a pretty serviceable Good Guys deck built. It wasn’t complete on some of things you would think that are an automatic four of in the deck but back then I had a limited budget on cards. It did play like any other good guys deck just maybe not as consistent. The other nifty thing about the deck was I was good with it. I understood the whole nuisances of the Ally effects and how to play the deck effectively. Even though I liked the deck a lot I listened to all the people that said it wasn’t right for the tourney and looked at some of the decks that sprang out of Infinite Crisis. As much as I hated Checkmate I also hated the Fate Artifacts and so even though Secret Society was seen as the best deck, there was no way in hell that I was going to play that deck.

Shadowpact seemed interesting, but I did not have all the parts for it to make the best version of it. Also if I remember correctly I believe my friend Mitch was trying to build them for the tourney so whatever cards I did have probably went to Mitch that day. So as you might have figured out I decided to go with Good Guys as it seemed to be the best deck for me, and plus win or lose I should have fun playing the deck no matter what.
When I began testing for the tourney, my main goal was to try and find a way to make the Secret Society match better. I felt like Good guys were consistent enough that I would have a decent enough time against the rest of field. Call it good draws or just plain good luck I always found Maxwell Lord to be useless in the deck since I always seemed to hit my team up, and would usually want Booster on two anyways, so the first thing I decided to do was replace Maxwell with Elongated man at my two drop. My feeling being that I could get him out on two and try to blow up their Fate’s Tower as quick as possible so they couldn’t switch it to their higher drop each turn. I want to say some Multiverse Power Batteries were thrown into the deck as well to try and Ko the fate set once they got it out.

Other than that I didn’t change much to the deck, Good Guys does what it does and hopefully you come out on top, you start to make too many changes and you mess up the consistency of the deck. I tested with a friend of mine that used to be big into VS but didn’t play much anymore, after testing I was still fearful of the Society match up but pretty confident with the rest.

As for the tournament I remember my losses better than I remember my wins. I know that I played against Secret Society twice, and went 0-2. Even though I lost both matches they were hard fought, and it didn’t help that in one match I had the most horrible luck of successfully replacing his Fate’s Tower with Elongated Man into another Fate’s tower, that proved to be back breaking as he was able to move it over to his bigger drop and smash face.

The other highlight of the tourney was a local group that built their own concoction of JSA JLI good guys, which really abused the identity mechanic to do some Ally shenanigans. The first time I played against it I got some bad draws and lost the match the next time against a different opponent but from the same team I got the win. Those matches there accounted for a 1-3 record I believe I finished 4-3 with wins over a JSA deck and JLA somewhat trinity deck and not sure who else.

So when top 8 was called I did not make it, though I was very close I believe I finished 10th. The story does have a happy ending though as I was the highest person without pc points, and won the top amateur prize. That earned me a Heralds of galactus tin and mat, and I believe some EA’s

It was nice to walk away from my first major tournament with some prize, even better to do it with a deck that I really liked and not just some deck that I picked cause it was good.(I realize the irony of Good guys being a good deck, but this was after its heyday)

I had a lot of fun and I wish I could have attending more tournaments like that, but as we all know, the money was pulled out of Vs not too long after that.
I hope you enjoyed my retelling of my tournament experience.

OSM Responds - Your hatred for Checkmate is something we have in common; Ahmed Samsarra, why couldn't your name be Batman?? I like how you evaluated the metagame and adjusted appropriately; Multiverse Power Battery was really good back then. Elongated Man seems a little janky, but considering what was available to Good Guys during DCMA DJL/DCR, Elongated Man sounds like a solid play. Do you regret losing Maxwell for the Team-Up? I know many builds run 1 copy because of Sue Dibny being able to search him out. As for the swag, that's awesome. I wish UDE ran more events, but at least we've had some of these experiences. I'll remember what I've experienced from VS for the rest of my life. I'll be sending you 3 Art Cards, 12 Modern Rares and 4 Subset Cards.

That brings Day 2 to a close - be sure to send in those addresses. Stop by tomorrow and I'll have two more stories up.
- OSM