Sunday the 11th of November. A big day for Vs in Maidstone as we had got ourselves an Elite Series tournament. I headed down to the venue, accompanied by Garry 'HappyMoog' Hewitt and Holly 'Scorcese' Humphrey (who was filming the event for us). I was lugging folders of all the Silver Age legal sets down with me for people to borrow.

At our previous event at the Style and Winch I had succeeded in taking the wrong deck, which is how I'd discovered an interest in playing the Hellboy Lone Visible deck. On this particular day I went one better, forgetting to bring a deck altogether. A quick run, OK a brisk walk, home and back and I was ready to play.

The turnout was a little dissapointing, only 14, although this turned out to be the biggest Elite Series turnout in the UK. Eleven of the players were from our local playgroup, whilst three, Amit, Roy and Garry had travelled for the event. It was great to catch up with all three of these guys as I hadn't played any of them since early in 2006.

Round 1 saw me up against my chief rival within our local playgroup, James. His IG Burn deck had been proving to be incredibly consistent although it was prone to struggle against my deck of choice for the day. Some funky shenanigans on turn 3 had me a little worried as he shut down my stun with Liz ploy for turn 4, although the deck came through in the end and I won comfortably on turn 8. Some coverage of James turn 3 plays can be seen on our Youtube vid of the event which should go live tomorrow, hopefully.
1-0

Round 2 and I was playing Cameron, a regular opponent and an employee of our shop. He was running a Shadowpact Curve deck which had been seriously diluted with the loss of DGL cards from his decklist. To be honest the game wasn't that close.
2-0

Round 3 found me up against Amit, a great builder of original decks who today was running an X-Men team attack deck, which came out of the starting blocks like a rocket. Pancakes was all that kept me in the game through turns 4 and 5 but on turn 6 Liz started to make hay. Double playing her on turns 6, 7 and 8 decimated his board for Hellboy to cause some serious damage. I'm pleased that he wasn't running Finishing Move as that would have won the game for him early on. I felt good having come back from a 38 point deficit for the win.
3-0

Unbeaten going into round four paired me up against the tournament top-ranked player, also unbeaten, Roy Raftery. Piloting a JSA/Checkmate build I was apprehensive, but Liz once again proved to be a star in the later turns. Power Girl did prove to be problematic, but a timely JLA Satellite allowed me to get at his lesser hidden characters for big breakthrough with the big red dude.
4-0

Round 5 saw Garry and his Family of Four deck pitted against my BPRD guys. Early turns were fairly even, then the big changing point came on turn 5. We exchanged plot twists and power ups on an attack being made by Hellboy, which I came out the better of. I then proceeded to forget to attack with Abe, an additional stun which probably would have sealed victory. I dropped the big dudes on turn 7 and 8 but couldn't quite finish him off, reducing him to 5 END with me on 18. When Onslaught was droppped on turn 9 it was all over, game Garrry. Garry most definitely deserved the win as he had played the match flawlessly whereas I should have won, but snatched defeat due to play errors. I also forgot to activate a BPRD HQ to fetch another Hellboy for powering up, which may or may not have been significant.
4-1

Having played all three of the other players with 4-1 records my tie-breaks were enough to secure 1st place and the beautiful playmat.

The deck is incredibly consistent and also went 3-0 for a tourney win two days later. The lack of stun to KO effects in peoples decks at present definitely helps though.

 All in all a great day was had by all and everyone here is looking forward to our City Champs on the 26th.

Keep checking the blogs as we should soon have a link up for our Youtube coverage.