Gabe, however, looks me straight in the eyes, noting “I’m not a good person.” I smile and nod, “Fair enough.” We get to the work at hand. He’s on Andy / Blue Sun. I am not too worried, as I feel like a strong favorite versus Blue Sun so long as he doesn’t rush too fast on me, and I’m just confident in SYNC in general. My only concerns are Networking / tag removal / New Angeles City Hall, which, admittedly, are big concerns. I end up getting the sweep, close to going to time. I had maybe 100+ credits at the end of the BS / Kate game, couldn’t hit an agenda, and I had Vamped him three times for massive values. I then needed to keep tempo with his fourth round of Weyland fortune; it was insane. Next to me, Scott throws himself off the lifeboat, and grins on the way down. They say drowning is the most peaceful way to die, it’s like going home. Only I heard somebody lied about that…

Round eight is versus some unknown UK guy named Chris Dyer. Scott asks me who I drew this round, I calmly say Dyer, knowing Scott’s a big believer in English Power. If you’ve never seen Spags give someone the “It’s serious” face, you are missing out on one of the world’s true experiences. I’ve been in the foxholes with him enough to see it. I knew it was time. At X-4, I wasn’t sure five losses would work for me, and thought my tiebreakers were fair at best. He was coming down from X-2. I believe there was an offer to split that was turned down in his previous round, which made getting swept a bit rude. Credit to Chris: zero tilt, zero concern. I asked him if he thought five losses would get anyone in, and he said he thought he would. There would be no lifeboat for either of us, just two games. I start on SYNC. I know my line, and I land a Breaking News (BN) to Closed Accounts for a 16 credit swing. I lack the cards to follow it up with a score that could seal the game. Chris is unbelievably patient, he’s playing around everything. He’s keeping four credits on Liberated Accounts to minimize damage, and he’s running with the money to make Hard-Hitting pointless. He’s also attacking the weakest server, or the one with the most accesses; everything is perfect and tight. It’s back and forth, a perfect dance, and I’m watching and thinking of someplace I can gain another advantage, but I’m not seeing it. He gets an NRE and Ice Carver up, and runs through my Little Engine on HQ. It takes me a bit to get the ICE to get rid of it, as it’s now a liability, but I finally do. Hard to overdraw for ICE when he’s on Medium. I risk a Jackson Howard in a remote to see if he’ll run a face down and risk the Rumor Mill, but he doesn’t let anything slide and runs. In the end he gets close to winning, my CVS is finally not under every agenda in my deck, and I get a virus wipe for HUGE value on a Datasucker/Medium combo. In this game I must have wiped viruses 5-7 times. Great game that I manage to pull away with. At the end of a turn Chris is discarding and hits his deck and flips up an Employee Strike (ES). My instincts are to quickly admit I know what the card is. Chris is such a respectable upright player that he immediately asks for us to call the judge. He gets a warning and shuffles the deck, but I would have rather he kept the ES, which is total garbage in the game; we laugh about it, as we both lose on that one. His Corp game is terrible for me. At this point I know what the British CtM looks like, and I know it’s a horrible situation for my Kate, as they are going to go way, way, way too fast for me. Immediate Sensie and Bankers has Chris way ahead of a fair-to-meh draw on my end. Chris forces me to Clot, maybe probing to see if I even run it, or if I want to go broke to get it. It works and I get an agenda; that’s about my only victory as Chris just cruises to an easy victory #noWhizznoproblems. Great player and a wonderful Champion for the game we love. Cheers, Chris!