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Most $10K events that take place a week or two prior to the Pro Circuit generally end up yielding nothing new. The reason for this lack of “ingenuity” is that any players who have stumbled upon an amazing deck always opt to save it for the PC, where the prize payout is significantly larger. Players stick to the tried and true and don’t reveal any of the good decks they’ve prepared for the PC. As a result, the metagame remains fairly similar to the last few $10K events, with only a few small splashes being made by decks that haven’t been seen before.

Even though there were six different archetypes in the Top 8 at $10K Chicago, five of them were already very well known: Fantasticars, Common Enemy, Big Brotherhood, Mutant Nation, and The New Brotherhood had all made Top 8 before. But there was one big surprise—Israel Quiroz’s Fearsome Five / Doom deck, “Psimon Says.” It relied on exhausting opposing characters to control the game and usually won by playing a boosted Dr. Light, Arthur Light or Gamma Bomb. Israel’s deck was a great example of metagaming; he saw that the majority of players were playing decks that relied on combat to win, so he took advantage of that and played a deck meant to avoid combat. He took away his opponents’ only method of winning, and by doing so, he could easily plow through other players who didn’t have a back-up plan if their characters couldn’t attack.

Still, at the end of the day, Big Brotherhood reigned supreme, and many players felt discouraged that nothing seemed to beat the power offered by that deck. At the time, nothing seemed better than powering-up and getting +3 ATK / +3 DEF, especially when it was so easy to reuse power-ups with Avalon Space Station. Child Lock didn’t make a big stand at this event, either, but that was mainly because anyone who had found a solid strategy was saving it for the PC. DC Origins offered many new search effects to aid Child Lock’s consistency issues and also gave the strategy a new, faster win condition. Few people realized it, but Child Lock was about to explode onto the scene and post its highest finish on the Pro Circuit to date.

Ah yes, the game’s first Pro Circuit. The air was ripe with anticipation, both for Big Brotherhood’s downfall and one of the biggest TCG tournaments in history. Everyone had a fair shot at winning $40,000 and the trophy, and a solid 5-2 record on Day 1 combined with a good amount of Draft experience could propel anyone to the Top 8. The top three decks were Fantastic Four beatdown, Big Brotherhood, and Common Enemy, but there were still a wide variety of strategies being played. Teen Titans made a really strong appearance, proving that teamwork and synergy can be more important than raw stats and power. Also, old favorites like Wild Vomit and The New Brotherhood showed up in respectable numbers.

We can’t forget about Child Lock, though. DC Origins was the gift Child Lock was waiting for, delivering the best consistency-enabler in combo/control decks to date in the form of Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred functions exactly the same way that Boris does; he increases consistency by allowing you to search your deck for vital pieces of your combo or staple plot twists. But Alfred’s ability to be reused turn after turn after turn gave him an extreme advantage over Boris, as did his ability to grab equipment cards if necessary. Alfred now allowed Child Lock to search out A Child Named Valeria every single turn it needed a copy at the simple cost (more of an advantage) of teaming-up Fantastic Four and Gotham Knights. That team-up opened up even more possibilities to enhance the deck, including GCPD Officers to prevent breakthrough endurance loss, Bat-Signal as another character searcher, and Fizzle to negate the ever-so-problematic Reign of Terror. It seemed like the perfect combination, but there was still the problem of how the deck would win the game. It would have to stall until turn 8 or 9 and then drop a huge character had it not been for one overlooked Arkham Inmates–stamped plot twist . . .

Yes, I’m talking about Rigged Elections, the second alternate win condition to be printed in Vs. System. Many players wrote the card off as a joke, because amassing twenty-five counters would take four or five committed turns of exhausting your characters and a single piece of resource disruption would lose you the game. With the right combination of cards, though, you could win the game during your build phase with Rigged Elections on a single turn. You no longer needed to stall until the later turns and win through oversized characters; you could save some time and end the game on turn 5 or even 4 with a good draw. All it required was an extra Team-Up with Arkham Inmates, who had until that point been the DC equivalent of X-Men—popular but unplayable.

For those who don’t know, the Rigged Elections win works like this: You have Gotham Knights, Arkham Inmates, and Fantastic Four all teamed-up. You have five ready characters in play, Rigged Elections in your resource row, a ready Alfred, and 3 resource points. You activate Alfred and search out a copy of Cosmic Radiation. You flip Rigged Elections, exhaust your five characters for its effect, and recruit Alfred again. You play Cosmic Radiation, ready all of your characters, and use Alfred’s effect to get another Cosmic Radiation. You exhaust your five characters to Rigged Elections, wash rinse repeat, and after your fourth copy of Radiation, you should have exactly twenty-five counters on Rigged Elections.

Unfortunately, with Big Brotherhood still popular, many players were packing multiple copies of Have a Blast! to deal with Lost City and Avalon Space Station. This meant big trouble for Rigged Elections, as well. If your opponent plays Have a Blast! in response to your last copy of Cosmic Radiation, you’re going to lose the game because it will be nearly impossible to exhaust twenty-five characters again for a second copy of Rigged Elections. This problem made Fizzle one of the highest priority search targets, because no matter how many Cosmic Radiations you could play, one Have a Blast! would instantly wreck you. Luckily, though, few players figured out how to stop the deck from winning before it was too late because they had never seen the concept before.

Craig Edwards ended up taking Rigged Elections to an extremely respectable 2nd place finish at the inaugural Pro Circuit. During the quarterfinals, his deck pretty much steamrolled Matt Boccio’s Fantastic Four / X-Men deck, which had very few tricks to get around A Child Named Valeria. In the semifinals, Edwards got extremely lucky when Neil Reeves missed Dr. Doom, Diabolical Genius on turn 4 during game 1, as Dr. Doom interferes with the Rigged player’s ability to play Cosmic Radiation from his or her hand. During game 2, Reeves managed to recruit Doom and prevent Edwards from playing plot twists from his hand, but Edwards began flipping Radiations from his resource row to just barely reach twenty-five counters at the beginning of turn 7. In the finals, Edwards fell victim to Dr. Doom and Reign of Terror, which was to be expected from Brian Kibler’s Common Enemy deck. Common Enemy’s victory was bad news for Child Lock, because the rise of Common Enemy meant the rise of Reign of Terror. Although Fizzle can deal with Reign, it’s usually more important to save them for opposing copies of Have a Blast!, and of course you need to have an extremely good draw to be able to negate both cards. Here is a copy of the list Edwards played:

Rigged Elections was already at a major disadvantage after the PC, mainly because the surprise factor had been completely eliminated. Many of the games that Rigged won on Day 1 were because players simply didn’t see it coming. Now, everyone knew about it, and specifically how to beat it. It wouldn’t be easy for Rigged to succeed in the next few tournaments, but after the hype died down, maybe it could make a stand again.

Aside from Rigged Elections, Teen Titans also made a huge splash at PC: Indy, winning the $10K event there in the hands of Tim Willoughby. The archetype that Titans fit into has been debated since their inception, with some players arguing that they’re a simple beatdown deck with tricks and others arguing that they are an aggro-control deck that tries to limit what its opponents can do on their initiatives. Either way, $10K Indy put Teen Titans on the map forever, and as that particular deck evolved, it would present more and more of a threat to Child Lock. For the time being, though, the deck was just like any other that relied on combat to win games—as long as Child Lock could consistently hit its characters and get its combo out on turn 5, things would go well against Titans.

Whew! That looks like a lot of material to cover in just one section, but not a lot went on for Child Lock during these events. That’s not to say that the deck dropped off the face of the Earth immediately after PC: Indy, but rather that many people were reluctant to play it due to the lack of surprise factor. And, as I said before, Rigged Elections has a hard time dealing with Dr. Doom on turn 4, so for the time being, the deck would take a back seat and wait for the metagame to shift back to favorable conditions. Specifically, a metagame without resource hate or Doom decks.

As the DC Origins set settled into the Golden Age environment, the metagame began to shift away from Big Brotherhood. Obviously, Common Enemy became an instant success because of Kibler’s victory at PC: Indy, but Teen Titans was right behind it in terms of popularity. $10K Atlanta was won by Wes Victory’s Titans deck, which at the time was still considered pretty rogue. The early Titans builds played many cards that are considered extremely unconventional by today’s standards, including Twin Firearms and few or no copies of Terra, Tara Markov. At $10K Sydney, Titans managed to make the finals in the hands of Alex Brown, and it was apparent that the deck was solid and not something players should ignore. An interesting Fearsome Five / Gotham Knights deck ended up taking the trophy, proving that a boosted Dr. Light was one of the best late-game plays available.

To stir things up a bit, Web of Spider-Man hit the shelves just in time for $10K Gen Con UK. Although the final consisted of two Common Enemy decks, the new Spider-Man cards made an impact in the form of the dreaded Curve Sentinels, as well as other decks based around Aerial Supremacy and the new X-Men cards. Overall, the metagame itself didn’t shift too much during this tournament, but that was primarily because many players hadn’t really had enough time to get a feel for the Web of Spider-Man set. There was a remarkable change in how decks were being built, because as the game itself got older, players became more experienced with deckbuilding. Teen Titans decks began to look more and more like their modern day counterparts, and any new decks that showed up were well constructed and no longer playing obscure, un-searchable one-ofs. $10K Mexico City was (unsurprisingly) won by another Common Enemy deck, but this time the final matchup between Teen Titans and the reigning champion was extremely close. Still, it looked like Titans was here to stay.

For those who still didn’t believe in the power of Teen Titans, Rob Leander proved them wrong by winning $10K Wizard World Texas. However, the finals of that event also yielded another interesting deck—Dave Spears’s Curve Sentinels build. At the time, many players were excited that Sentinels no longer had to be played in the “vomit” fashion, but three PCs later, they wouldn’t be so happy about the purple robots’ dominance. $10K Austria reflected players’ excitement over the new Curve Sentinels build, with Sentinels the second most-played deck behind Big Brotherhood. In the end, though, straight Fantastic Four still prevailed, sporting new Unmasked tech to shut down Big Brotherhood completely. With the conclusion of the final $10K event before Pro Circuit Los Angeles, the decks to beat were Common Enemy, Teen Titans, and the increasingly popular Curve Sentinels.

Unfortunately, Child Lock gained next to nothing from the Web of Spider-Man set, and with Titans developing into a bad matchup and Common Enemy still popular, it wasn’t a wise choice to play Child Lock at PC: LA. As Titans became more teched out for the mirror, it developed into a faster, more focused deck that also included more direct stun effects such as Terra. If Child Lock couldn’t set up quickly enough, Titans would just run it over. Or, if Child Lock did get set up, Titans could easily disrupt the lock by chaining A Child Named Valeria’s effect with Terra and Finishing Move on Mr. Fantastic. Without Mr. Fantastic in play, Child resolves and does nothing, which isn’t good for the Child Lock player. When Ryan Jones raised his trophy and $40,000 check aloft at the end of the day, it was evident that Child Lock was still going to be unable to compete among the metagame’s abundance of Titans and Common Enemy. Curve Sentinels failed to make Top 8 at the PC, but the Top 8 isn’t always reflective of the best decks in the format because Draft factors in to who makes the cut and who doesn’t. And Sentinels did have strong showings on Day 1 and in the $10K event, which was actually beneficial for Child Lock. The difference between Sentinels, Common Enemy, and Teen Titans is that Sentinels just plays big characters who all have combat-based abilities (aside from Sentinel Mark II), while Titans and Common Enemy have tons of non-combat effects that can wreck Child Lock. The more popular Sentinels became, the better off Child Lock would be, so what Child Lock players were hoping for was the decline of Titans and Common Enemy and the rise of Sentinels.

Man of Steel didn’t really help Child Lock out that much, either. Roy Harper ◊ Speedy gave Teen Titans another tool that was a thorn in Child Lock’s side, although Speedy wasn’t included in Titans to combat Child Lock specifically. But it didn’t really matter what Man of Steel brought to the table, because Child Lock had flown under the radar long enough for players to forget about it and stop over-teching for the matchup. “The” Ben Seck’s Gotham Knights / Fantastic Four deck, commonly known as “Fat Bat,” took home the $10K Melbourne trophy, tearing through a Top 8 that consisted of four Curve Sentinels decks. Seck’s deck took a drastic turn from Edwards’s Rigged Elections build and opted to win via Batman, The Dark Knight. The Fat Bat deck likes to do what Child Lock does best during the early game—set up Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and Alfred Pennyworth to get a continuous stream of protection through A Child Named Valeria. But instead of using Cosmic Radiation to ready all of your characters to put counters on Rigged Elections, your win condition is drawing as many cards as you can via Batman’s effect. What you aim to do on turn 7 is recruit Batman, play as many Cosmic Radiations as you can, draw lots of cards, play Blind Sided on one of your opponent’s characters, and swing in with Batman for massive breakthrough. Then, you can play Press the Attack and do it all over again! Seck’s deck took the disadvantage of Rigged Elections (its vulnerability to Have a Blast!) and eliminated it, creating a stronger version of Child Lock that had fewer weaknesses and was better prepared for the metagame. Here is the list Ben Seck played at the Melbourne $10K:

The growing number of Sentinel decks was also a plus for Child Lock, because as long as the robots weren’t packing Search and Destroy, they couldn’t do anything to disrupt your lock. But Titans were still a major problem, and their victory at $10K New Jersey only increased their popularity. At the same tournament, though, Child Lock made another stand in the Top 8 in the hands of Roy St. Clair, using a slightly different strategy than Seck’s Fat Bat deck. St. Clair called his deck Cosmic Cops because he used Harvey Bullock, GCPD Officers, and Cosmic Radiation to exhaust his opponent’s characters. At the end of the day, Teen Titans still prevailed, and although St. Clair made a few play mistakes during the finals, the lethal combo of Terra and Finishing Move is what beat Cosmic Cops. In addition, Leander’s winning Titans build wasn’t even playing any copies of Roy Harper ◊ Speedy, which to date is one of the most problematic cards for Child Lock. At this point in time, Child Lock had reached the status of what I like to call an established rogue deck. By “established rogue deck,” I mean that it had proven to be a strong contender but wasn’t played at every event. It wasn’t a solid powerhouse deck like Common Enemy or Curve Sentinels that didn’t have any specific weakness, but it could hold its own and decimate unprepared opponents. Nearly all combo decks fall into the category of established rogue; you know they’re there, but you can’t always prepare for them because they may or may not show up.

For the next few $10K events, Common Enemy began to fall out of favor, and the classic combo of Titans and Sentinels was found at the top tables again. Tim Batow broke the mold and won $10K Las Vegas with his My Beloved deck, which tried to thwart Titan tricks with Tower of Babel and outdo Sentinels in straight combat. Although Gabe Walls managed to win $10K Columbus with Teen Titans, Jason Hager burst onto the scene with one of his complex control decks, this time Evil Medical School. EMS was a Fearsome Five / Doom / Gotham Knigths team-up that aimed to control the board by exhausting characters and win through either a boosted Dr. Light or Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria and Press the Attack. $10K Bologna was more of the same; Sentinels were victorious and lots of Titans inhabited the Top 8. $10K Orlando was pretty similar too, except X-Stall made another appearance in the hands of Antonio De Rosa and Julius Haywood. Everyone was looking forward to the release of Marvel Knights; some hoping Sentinels would finally meet their downfall and some hoping that the deck would become powerful enough to nudge Teen Titans out of the metagame.

Last week, I said I would be able to get through Pro Circuit: New York by the end of this article, but apparently, I overestimated. There’s just so much information that I need to cover, and to prevent this article from getting unbearably long, I’m going to have to wrap it up for now. Stay tuned for Part 3, where I’ll start with what the Marvel Knights expansion added to Child Lock, and the long and absolute reign of Curve Sentinels!

Graham Van Leeuwen is a fourteen-year-old high school student who lives in Chapel Hill, NC. He has seen a small amount of tournament success, including 5th place at $10K Charlotte 2006 and 50th place at Pro Circuit Atlanta, but has yet to land a big money finish. Graham is a member of Team No Quarter Given, a team based throughout North Carolina and Virginia. He can be contacted with questions, comments, complaints, or requests at gvl@nc.rr.com.