My choices failed miserably, but I’m still very eager to see what happens in the next round. Great stuff guys.

Interesting stuff.

-Mike

**************

Doom/Fan4: Thanks to reusing the same Paralyses and Entangles something like six times, the Fan4 never got a full attack step… ever. Its turn 7 attack had 5-drop Reed swinging in, and that’s it.

TNB/Outsiders: Closer than I expected. Ultimately, on turn (5?), TNB swung in and put Outsiders on 4, which would was 1 endurance short of what the Outsiders needed to swing in, take a single stun on a 1-drop, and survive on 1 to finish the beats the next turn. As it stands, TNB went into 6 with too many guys and the Outsiders just couldn’t finish them off.

Anti-Matter/X-Men: I expected to sit down and play Gday’s old “random hidden curve dudes” Anti-Matter deck, which sucks, so I gave Gamerette the X-Men deck, figuring she could use a win to cheer her up. I sat down, and drew… Chomin and an AGL. @_@ Yeah, it was an utter hosing.

Mockeries/Titans: The cosmic Titans were able to cause a lot of havoc, and were almost completely derailed on their turn 4 due to Darkseid having a completely concealed board. When I had 2 TTGs and a Connor Kent. IT’S JUST NOT FAIR. Ultimately, a thrice-attacking Kid Marvel was just enough to sweep their visible area on 6, which let the rest pile in to the face.

Secret Six/X-Statix: The biggest heartbreak of this contest for me was seeing X-Statix, which doesn’t lose that much to the no-rares clause, matched up in ROUND FREAKING ONE against a combo deck that it has no hope of disrupting. I think I managed to put the Six down under 20 in the end, but it didn’t matter. X-Statix just can’t pump out the damage fast enough to stop the combo.

Marvel Knights/BPRD: Punisher with 2 equips KOed Hellboy on 4. ‘Nuff said.

Kree/Morlocks: I drew two Improper Burials and stuffed his 3 and 4 into the dirt. It’s hard to recover from that.

Inhumans/Horsemen: Probably the biggest upset of the round (lots of people had the Inhumans sweeping the pudding bracket in their bets), the Horsemen just had an insane draw, topdecking 3 drops (Dark Beast, Apoc, and Mikhail) and presenting walls that were simply too big to beat through. Ultimately, not drawing any survivals probably saved the game, as I definitely would have (stupidly) flipped them and lost Apoc.

League/Unaffiliated: The Unaffs put up a surprisingly good fight– until turn 6, I was pretty sure they had the game. But she missed her 7, I hit mine, and I just barely clinched it.

Birds/Thunderbolts: One hundred and four attack. There’s only so much a concealed deck can do against that. He Aeried Blackhawk out to reinforce, but I had a pair of Lost in Translations to shut down those shenanigans. I was ready to write the TBolts off, but now it seems clear that any deck that can’t beat them up before 6 is probably going to get shotgunned into the wall.

Skrulls/Morlocks: The score was really close on this one. Ultimately though, three Skrull teamups in the row let Ethan and a Warrior crawl over a Last Standing Callisto, which put him at -4 or so and let the Skrulls win it out. Lesson learned: No amount of DEF pump can resist a Skrull attacker.

Crime Lords: This should’ve been a blowout for the SinSyn, but the deck fizzled and gave her nothing but characters after turn 2. She just didn’t have the pumps, or even just the flight, to break up Kingpin’s stun shunt network, and she got smushed.

Revenge Squad/JLI: Revenge Squad missed on 5, and JLI got an Embassy up that stopped it from losing characters. Like Gday said, this match was one pump away from going to the underdog. Star of the match: Metallo, who burned for 16 endurance over the course of the game, and was ultimately what put Gday in the negatives.

**************

It’s been a great bunch of matches so far… we’ve hit a bit of a snag on getting Pablo’s decks (he’s having a busy week and couldn’t come into town), so we’ll be borrowing some of his deckbuild assignments to get a few more decks built and rounds finished on the weekend.

Hope you’re enjoying it so far. If there are any deck checks you’re interested in seeing us write up, drop a comment and we’ll see what we can do. I’m already planning to do Horsemen and Titans, and Gday’s going to handle Anti-Matter and Crime Lords. If you’d like to know how any of the others are set up, just let us know.