The air is heavy and thick with smoke and debris. The sun setting on the horizon bathes the streets in a blood-red glow. Everywhere you look there are people exhausted, battered and beaten, and slumped over deck boxes in utter defeat. One who is still capable of speech sits in a corner of the conference center, rocking back and forth, mumbling to himself: “We didn’t see him coming, we didn’t see him coming. The sniper, the sniper!”
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That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, this scene before you was wrought by one man and a relatively inconsequential card from Marvel Legends. Brian Eugenio is the first ever Vs. System World Champion, and he fought his way to the top with the help of his very impressive Sniper Shot deck. Worlds took place at the Origins game convention in Columbus, Ohio, and Vs. System players from as far afield as Japan made the journey to test their prowess in a weekend of Vs. System action. All of them thinking, hoping even, that they would have what it takes to make it to the top of the pile. In the end, there can be only one, and that one is someone who I’ve raved about in the past. Brian Eugenio has built some of the most innovative (janky?) decks I’ve seen in this game. But where most of us have our creations fall apart under the competitive microscope, Brian’s decks seem to excel. The World Championship was absolute proof of this. The twenty-two-year-old player from San Jose, California, has not had the headline success of some of the great players like Patrick Yapjoco and Michael Barnes, but I would say that he is absolutely their equal when it comes to deck design. His Wolverine legend deck that took the Last Man Standing top honor was genius, and other lists of his that I’ve seen have been equally as compelling. Why not take a look at the deck for yourself.
Brian Eugenio
Characters
4 Captain America, The Patriot ◊ Secret Avenger
4 Punisher, Suicide Run
4 Professor Emil Hamilton ◊ Ruin, Power Suit
4 The Captain, Can’t Remember His Real Name
1 Captain Atom, Quantum Energy
1 Scarecrow, Chiroptophobic
1 Air-Walker, Herald
1 Black Manta, Underwater Marauder
1 Human Torch, Fiery Friend
1 Spider-Man, Outlaw
1 Punisher, Angel of Death
1 Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch
Plot Twists
4 Carrying the Torch
4 Sniper Shot
3 Have a Blast!
4 Mobilize
4 Wild Ride
3 Pathetic Attempt
3 Superhuman Registration Act
3 Omnipotence
2 Neighborhood Watch
1 Stars and Stripes
1 My Name Is Peter Parker . . .
Equipment
4 Captain America’s Shield
When I see a Eugenio decklist, it usually takes a little time to sink in, and sometimes I have to play the deck a few times to get a real feel for it. For the most part, this one seems ingeniously straightforward. Professor Emil Hamilton ◊ Ruin, Power Suit can grab you whatever plot twist you need, be it Sniper Shot, Carrying the Torch, Superhuman Registration Act, etc., and The Captain, Can’t Remember His Real Name can be whatever character you need. He can put an additional AIM counter on the Sniper Shot, or use Captain America’s Shield to lock down your opponent’s offensive capabilities. You have at your disposal swarm hate and stall effects designed to maintain the game state until you’re able to start killing people. All in all, it’s a brilliant idea that seemed to fly under the radar of everyone—except Brian, that is.
The World Championship isn’t over yet though. Sure, the champion has been crowned, the matches completed, and everyone’s made it safely back home; however, the event that is the Vs. System inaugural World Championship is still living and breathing. The effect this tournament has had on the community is amazing and harkens back to the days of the Pro Circuit. The Internet is buzzing with enthusiasm, bulging with ideas, and overflowing with commentary. Because the net is rife with so much awesome content relating to our beloved Vs. System World Championship, I’m going to shut up now and hand the article over to the community.
I guess the best place to start would be with the World Champion himself—Brian Eugenio. Brian has posted a deck deconstruction article over on Patrick Yapjoco’s Vs. System Strategy site.
Brian writes:
“The deck is a struggle to play because it takes a long time to get set up, but the rewards are big. Playing the deck takes a while to get used to because of Ruin and what you set, such as Punisher or Captain America, so you can Carrying the Torch or set up ahead of time when you set search cards. Remembering Sniper Shot counter adds got me the first few times I played the deck, since if you lay a resource, you can’t go back to the Draw Phase.”
Brian takes you through a card-by-card explanation of the choices behind his deck and the conclusions he drew for several Modern Age matchups. Be sure to check it out.
http://www.geocities.com/majesticno10/Articles/DD_Sniper_Shot.html
You’d think that after scooping the World Champion’s deck article, Patrick would be happy enough to just sit back and watch what the rest of the Internet came up with for its post-Worlds coverage. But no, it seems that Mr. Yapjoco is as competitive with his Internet site as he is with his Vs play. If you spend a little time browsing Magestic’s site, you’ll also find reports from the World Championship runner up—Matthew Ross—as well as fellow Top 8 finishers Mike Jiles and Michael Robinson.
Next, we jump over to vsrealms.com, where Cameron “Gator7870” Robinson runs through his tournament experience with a match-by-match breakdown.
Cameron writes:
Round 1. Travis MKKO
“I knew this was the worst matchup for us, but if we survive turn three with RMan intact, we usually win. I win the dice roll 11-8 and take odds. He drops Black Cat on 1 to my nothing. Turn 2 is Daredevil to my Joystick. Turn 3 is RMan with a Heroic Effort to his Blade. I realise that one counter isn’t enough to stop the Quick Kill if he has it, so I swing to the face. He swings back with Blade to Joystick and Cat and Ddevil team on RMan and he has the Quick Kill. I stick with it and drop Bullseye on 4 and Green Goblin on 5. I put a Heroic Effort on Green Goblin and attack around Punisher so he doesn’t get the free stun back. He then sends Black Cat into Green Goblin and activates Punisher. I re-read Punisher 3 times. I didn’t pull any of him in my boxes, so I hadn’t even noticed how sick he was. Goblin is stunned by Black Cat. He plays Finishing Move, and I play Pathetic. He plays Finishing Move again. It’s his initiative on turn 6 with more Black Cat/Punisher shenanigans, and he wins. 0-1”
Cameron came back from the round 1 loss to move through to Day 2, but you’ll have to go to Realms to read his report.
Next, we visit Miguel Rodriguez’s VS-Blog.com. While Miguel was providing tournament coverage for this very site, his regular contributor, Paul “The Deranged Bear” Sung, posted the first part of his World Championship review.
Paul posted the following:
“A lot of people told me how bad the Illuminati were in testing. I was very aware of this, but I chose to play them just the same. A big part of it was sentimental; Kevin liked the deck and lent me the cards, and Mike "RanmaSolo” Malaspina, D-Block354, and CaptainSpud all helped me test the deck, so I felt like I should play it one way or another. The other was that I genuinely felt they were good. Iron Man, Protector of the Reality Gem, and Clandestine Operations are just insane.”
Paul wasn’t too happy with the way the Illuminati performed on the big day—I guess that’s the problem with secret organizations that don’t really trust each other too much. You can read his match rundown on VS-Blog.com.
Okay, you’ve got a couple of seconds for a bathroom break before we move onto the next leg of the journey. Ready? No? Tough.
Scott Thompson also added a Worlds recap to his blog at http://vscorps.wordpress.com/.
Scott writes:
Round 1 Vs. Curtis Brown with Secret Avengers
“Curtis Brown is better known by the Vs. community as T’Challa over on vsrealms.com. He is an incredibly cool cat that gave everyone he played against a Wonder Woman counter. Apparently, his lady friend works in graphic design, so he has a great connection to awesome things like this. For the rest of the day, I used this counter to show when Barbara Gordon had used her free ability. Curtis won the die roll and took odds. After we both passed on turn one, I recruited Huntress and Curtis recruited Dr. Strange or Hawkeye on turn two. I can’t remember which one. I know it was a hidden Avenger two-drop that rallied for a card, but it was not Captain America. On three, Curtis put down Punisher, Secret Avenger, and I started to worry that perhaps his deck was an MKKO variant. I threw down Babs and flipped The Hook-Up to get my card draw on. On four, I hit Batman, Twilight Vigilante, but Mr. Brown was forced to under-drop. Captain America
, Secret Avenger and his shield hit the table and successfully rallied to give everyone +1/+1 counters. Essentially this meant that six attack had been recruited on turn four and Barbara Gordon would not be attacking ever again, so it was hardly an under-drop. I looked at a couple of SKREEEEEEE!s in my hand and decided to take out a couple of characters from his side. I also wanted the burn effect from Batman, so I swung him into Captain America as his Punisher was a power-up from stunning Batman back. It was a futile effort anyway since Curtis flipped a Nasty Surprise from the row and Batman turned dirt-side. I then swung Huntress into Punisher for another two-way stun. Curtis must have thought trading stuns was more valuable that using Punisher’s ability on my stunned Batman, because that’s what he opted to do. At the end of the turn, he lost Punisher and I lost Huntress. On five, I dropped Kate Kane, totally forgetting to use her ability (first game jitters I guess), but it did not seem to matter. Curtis hit Black Panther (of course!) and swung with his board into my face. I swung back with all my plots into his equally open board and when the dust settled the final score was -10 to -19. (1-0)”
Scott’s report makes for some very interesting reading, and I suggest you pick it up over on his blog:
I could go on forever listing all the awesome tournament reports that have given the World Championship an added dimension after the fact, but for now, I’ll just recommend that you explore the blogosphere for yourself. Head over the Vs Network to check out the list of all the blogs out there. You can also keep track of recently updated posts by clicking on vsrealms.com’s new section, The Syndicate, where blog feeds are posted.
Before I depart, I want to give a massive shout out to Shane “Fatalsync” Wendel over at vsrealms.com who came up with the idea of posting live updates from Worlds via Twitter. It was a superb way to keep the community in touch with the tournament on a minute–by-minute basis. If you’re interested, you can check out the reports here.
Well, that’s it from me this week. See you next time.
Steve