About 150 people invaded the Marshall Reddick Conference Center in Irvine, California, for the 2008 SoCal (or should that be L.A.?) Mega Weekend. As the sun shone brightly in the February sky—this is Southern California, after all—casual players and high-profile players alike tested their skills in a somewhat unfamiliar metagame due to the introduction of Marvel Legends and DC Comics Legends, two sets that highlight a new Legends deck concept focusing on a single character.
Though Silver Age was thought to be a known format based on previous City Championships and Elite Series, there were quite a few decks that were played for the first time. In a field of 105 players, there were forty-nine different deck archetypes using many of the teams in the Silver Age format. However, there was a new archetype on the scene that was predicted to win the tournament—Bizarro, the character with many names. Although there was plenty of anti-Bizarro tech, Team EdgeWorld’s Patrick Yapjoco and Joe Bryan took first and second place with highly tested Bizarro builds that used ingenious equipment tech for the mirror match in Steel Girder. Congratulations to Patrick Yapjoco for becoming the Silver Age Mega Weekend Champion and taking home a Playstation 3 along with the very rare Extended Art Savage Beatdown.
 
SuperCrossover Sealed was the second event on Saturday. Fifty-two players tried this new version of Limited Vs. Not to be outdone by a Bizarro with all names, the affiliated characters in SuperCrossover had all affiliations. Since there was no need to worry about team-stamped effects, very powerful Sealed decks that could mix different archetypes were created to make an interesting tournament format. Cards like Titans Tower and The New Brotherhood became even better because this format was more about combat and pumps. William Baldwin of Seattle, Washington, went 9-0 and walked away the first-ever SuperCrossover winner. He also received a complete foil set of Marvel Legends.
 Door prizes were one of the most exciting things about the Mega Weekend. UDE gave out several uncut foil and nonfoil sheets of Marvel Legends and original art. Two lucky recipients also received complete nonfoil sets of Marvel Legends.
For those not playing in the two tournaments on Saturday, UDE’s face of Vs. System, Ben Seck (“The” Ben Seck, or TBS for short) sat down for numerous games of Vs. against all challengers. Each challenger picked one of four decks that Ben brought, and if the challenger won, he or she took home an exclusive Vs. card. After about seven hours straight of gunslinging, TBS’s stack of cards was almost depleted due to him losing most of his games. Perhaps he lost on purpose, for the benefit of the players. Billy Zonos and Patrick Sullivan, who started coaching him in the afternoon, would probably disagree.
Speaking of Billy Zonos, another side event was the Giant-Size VS: The Coming of Galactus multiplayer game. Billy’s first run as the Big G was unsuccessful as he was turned away by Curtis “tchalla” Brown and his crew. They returned two more times that Saturday afternoon only to find their worlds devoured—that first loss made Billy quite hungry for some planets. TBZ (Billy’s version of TBS’s nickname, as he idolizes him so) brought the same type of record to Sunday: losing the first challenge, and then summarily eating the worlds of the next six Alliance teams. He finished the weekend with an 8-2 Hunger record.
During the “Willy Bonos” run of Galactus on Sunday, there were two more main events. The first was Modern Age. The format was entirely new because the last time we saw it, Marvel Legends and DC Legends had not yet been released. With half the format consisting of new sets, it turned out to be an interesting tournament. Sixty-two players came out to test their Modern decks, and although World’s Finest Superman/Batman had the most decks in the format, it was a diverse field in the Top 8 with IG concealed, Fantastic Four, Spider-Friends, Revenge Squad, and a multi-team deck that used the 9-cost Darkseid Legend plot twist Endgame as the finisher. The finalists were Revenge Squad beatdown player Ludin “Rocketgurl” Romero and Cliff Flaschenhor, who piloted an Injustice Gang beatdown deck.
The last event of the day was Bring Your Own Set with a twist. The Top 8 was reserved for the Top 4 Marvel decks and the Top 4 DC decks at the end of Swiss rounds. The field of nineteen players was balanced, as it consisted of eleven Marvel decks and eight DC decks. After the 6 rounds of Swiss, the Top 8 had five Marvel decks and three DC decks. A lower-placed DC deck got called up from the ranks, and in the end; the last two decks standing were a DWF Superman/Batman deck and an MVL Fantastic Four build. Brad Smith beat Daisuke Hanaoka to become the BYOS: Marvel vs. DC Champion—another first for Vs.!
Once the dust settled, there were many happy and satisfied faces at the Mega Weekend. Almost half the players were from out of town, coming from as far as Texas and Florida. With many having to face long drives or flights home, we bid adieu to a very successful Vs. tournament event and encourage all of you to attend the Chicago and New York Mega Weekends! |