VS PCQ - April 2006 (Marvel Modern)

I arrived at Suntec on the dot at 12:55 pm today. There was only five minutes left to registration but I felt lazy to join since I have not written my decklist. Danny told me that I could play the first round and be granted some time to write my decklist later but I felt lazy. Besides, I didn't have much confidence with my Hellfire Club deck. CKTeacher and Jess were both in Sealed. Most of the rest played in the Modern Age Constructed.

Here is the breakdown for 26 Constructed players:
10 Squadron Supreme, 4 X-Mental, 3 Avengers Reservist, 3 Brotherhood Reservist
2 X-Faces, 2 Hellfire Club, 1 Morlocks, 1 Thunderbolts/Avengers

From the sheer number of Squadron decks, I feel that if I had joined the PCQ, I would be in for a really rough time. I went around to check out the different matches; I was mainly interested to see how Hellfire Club was doing and I was quite sad that they all lost their games against Squadron (strangely, they both managed to top-8).

There was one particular match (Morlocks vs. Hellfire Club) that was very intense. It was turn 7 and the Hellfire Club player had stolen the initiative with Power Play. He had his early drops plus Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce and a sick-looking Shinobi Shaw with 6 tokens that garnered a lot of attention. The Morlocks player, Michael Chew, had Storm, Marrow & Callisto plus 4 other weenies. Anyway, Chew managed to stun-back Shinobi Shadow with a Shrapnel Blast, Sebastian Shaw with Retribution and eventually held back Donald Pierce with a Good Samaritan recovering Callisto. Everyone applauded at the remarkable turnabout when the match was over.

All our friends were doing well (JingYong, Himura, Edward) with their early wins and it looked like they would be in the finals. It was real nice to see everyone make it in.

The top 8 consisted of the following matches and results:
- Squadron (Jingyong) def. Avengers Reservist (Edward)
- Hellfire Club (Yuan Grey) def. Morlocks (Michael Chew)
- Squadron (CCK guy) def. X-Mental (Yap JY)
- Squadron (Himura) def. Hellfire Club (Friend of the Hokuto no Ken player)

The top 4 are the players to the left (def. means defeated by the way). Edward, Himura & his CCK friend (all 3 Squadron players) wanted to negotiate for a prize split with Grey and he refused (much to everyone's amazement). Needless to say, the Hellfire Club deck had a extremely very difficult time against Squadron and lost. The finalists then split prizes after that. I kinda wished I joined today to support the Hellfire Club.