Two weeks ago, I asked you to tell me how you would have built the deck that I played recently in a Sealed Pack Pro Circuit Qualifier. I want to thank everyone who replied. Each submission opened new dimensions for building the deck. Also, some very subtle yet ingenious inclusions really blew my mind. Due to the volume of replies, I will not be able to share every build submitted, but I would like to put the spotlight on three of the lists while giving a few shout-outs to others, as well. By the way, if you have not been following this series, this card pool presented a number of powerful options. You can reference the original card pool here.
Before getting down to business, I thought I’d take a moment to mention this upcoming Pro Circuit. By the time you read this article, the PC will be upon us. I have always enjoyed reading other writers’ predictions for upcoming PCs, so for PC Indy, I thought I’d take a crack at a few predictions of my own. Here goes . . .
1. A player will go undefeated on Day 1—a feat accomplished only by Aaron Weil thus far. That player will post at least a slightly better performance on Day 2 than Aaron did.
2. A member of The Donkey Club will claim the top prize.
3. Vidi will make yet another Top 8.
4. Dr. Fate will attack twice in one turn.
5. A player will win a game with eight green face-up resources in his or her resource row.
6. Ian Vincent will not replace his Ahmed Samsarra.
7. Along with two friends to be announced at a later time, I will win the Team Sealed $10K. This, of course, means that I am predicting that I will not make the cut to Day 2 of the Pro Circuit . . . but at least I get to make a bold prediction that I hope will come true if Day 1 of the PC goes sour for me.
8. David Spears will trade for your Extended Art foil cards.
9. Adam Prosak will give advice on over a dozen fledgling deck ideas. You may not know this, but as an ambassador of this wonderful game, Adam really does enjoy sharing sound advice with new deckbuilders. I encourage you to share your decks with him. He will be happy to take a look.
10. Tillman Bragg will solve the mystery of who stole his shoes in San Francisco.
Now, let’s take a look at a few of the deck submissions that I found most interesting. The first submission comes from Squire Kershner. I found it a little interesting to see how each participant of this portion of The Study grouped their cards, so to share, I will group each submission’s cards as they were sent to me.
The Calculator, Noah Kuttler
Ragman, Patchmonger
Blue Devil, Dan Cassidy
Sasha Bordeaux, Knight
Prince Khufu ◊ Hawkman, Eternal Warrior *Can search for the 5-drop.
Ted Grant ◊ Wildcat, Golden Age Pugilist
Dr. Polaris, Force of Nature
Rose Psychic, Ghost Detective
Zazzala ◊ Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive
Dr. Occult, Richard Occult
Richard Tyler ◊ Hourman, Man of the Hour
Sinestro, Villain Reborn
Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, Army
Carter Hall ◊ Hawkman, Eternal Champion
Blue Devil, Big Blue
Superman, Earth 2
June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Bad Witch
Black Adam, Ruthless Hero
Coercion, Team-Up
Forbidden Loyalties, Team-Up
Baddest of the Bad
Defend Yourself!
No Mercy
Watch the Birdie!
Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity
Thanagar
The Science Spire
Amulet of Nabu
Cloak of Nabu
T-Spheres
This list contains six Shadowpact characters, two Checkmate characters, four Villains United characters, and six JSA characters. I’d call this a JSA / Shadopact deck that splashes Villains and a few Checkmates based strictly on those numbers.
In the comments explaining their decisions, a number of players shared my indecisiveness on whether to play JSA characters and/or T-Spheres. With a curve of strong JSA characters at drops 1 through 7, Squire felt that this was the way to go. T-Spheres can be a very powerful card that nearly warrants heavy JSA consideration by itself.
Most of the locations from my build are gone along with the Checkmate characters. Beginning with the 2-drops, Squire opted to splash a Checkmate character to strengthen his early curve. This seems like a fine decision.
Something that surprised me a little bit, though, was that Squire chose to play Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, Army over Cheshire, Jade, saying that the OMAC was just too good not to play. While I do agree that the OMAC is a powerful card in any deck, I would suggest playing a few more Villains United characters, including Cheshire, to try to focus on a solid three-team deck. The Calculator, Crime Broker is one of my favorite cards in the set for a good reason. The card wins games. Since Squire is playing the little Calculator along with Coercion, playing the big Calculator makes good sense to me.
One of those subtle ingenious inclusions I mentioned above is in Squire’s submission. Did you notice that Amadeus Arkham was listed among the plot twists that Squire played? He grouped the character with the plot twists, saying, “Play this as a plot twist to search for Thanagar or The Science Spire.” I often get so focused on teams that a card like Amadeus doesn’t even get a second look. Thank you, Squire, for showing me something new.
Next up is a submission from Mags Rivera. Mags sorts his characters first by team and then by cost. Take a look at his Checkmate / Shadowpact build that splashes a few JSA characters.
Connie Webb
Surveillance Pawn
Sasha Bordeaux
Christopher Smith
Arthur Kendrick
Valentina Vostok
Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Knight
Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot
Prince Khufu
Ted Grant ◊ Wildcat
Richard Tyler
Superman, Earth 2
Ragman
Blue Devil
Rose Psychic
Dr. Occult
Blue Devil
June Moon
Knight Armor
Laser Watch
T-Spheres
Brother I Satellite
Thanagar
Checkmate Armory
Secret Checkmate HQ
Watch the Birdie!
Forbidden Loyalties
Defend Yourself!
Burning Gaze
Mystical Binding
I’m not sure that I agree, but Mags says, “The Villains United (in this card pool) just don’t offer much. Many of their premier characters are missing.” I’m sure that the Villains United team has a few more optimal characters to offer than this card pool represents, but I’m also pretty sure that I disagree that the team doesn’t have much to offer in this pool. But comments like these are just what I was looking for; Mags shares a perspective that is true to him. This list looks highly competitive to me. If I favored cards like the 7-drop Calculator less, then I might have arrived at a similar build. Mags also mentioned that playing the T-Spheres was a difficult choice, especially since his build was a little light on the JSA characters.
Finally, here is a submission from David Fitzgerald. At first glance, I thought David Fitzgerald’s list closely resembled the list that I played, but then after a closer look, I noticed a number of subtle differences. David also sorted his characters by cost within team.
Connie Webb, Knight
Surveillance Pawn, Knight
Sasha Bordeaux, Knight
Christopher Smith ◊ Peacemaker, Obsessed Outlaw
Arthur Kendrick, Knight
Valentina Vostok ◊ Negative Woman, Bishop
Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Knight
Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, Army
Ragdoll, Resilient Rogue
The Calculator, Noah Kuttler
Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint
Dr. Polaris, Force of Nature
Zazzala ◊ Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive
Sinestro, Villain Reborn
Deathstroke the Terminator, Lethal Weapon
Alexander Luthor, Diabolical Double
The Calculator, Crime Broker
Black Adam, Lord of Kahndaq
Ragman, Patchmonger
Coercion, Team-Up
Forbidden Loyalties, Team-Up
Brother I Satellite
Checkmate Armory
Secret Checkmate HQ
Thanagar
The Science Spire
Amulet of Nabu
Cloak of Nabu
Laser Watch
Tricked-Out Sports Car
To me, the characters in this build could use a little work. First off, David’s 2-drop count is a little low for my taste. Connie Webb might be enough to make up for the lack of depth in 2-drops (David played only two). As I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, I really felt that playing the 8-drop Black Adam, Lord of Kahndaq was unnecessary also. And Cheshire, Jade seems to just be missing from this list.
I didn’t select this submission to point out areas where the character mix might be slightly suboptimal. What really interested me was David’s mix of blue, green, and gray cards. David opted to go with a location- and equipment-heavy build and I commend him for seeing it. The five equipment cards in this pool were all pretty exceptional. Well, I guess all of the equipment cards in Infinite Crisis are pretty exceptional. But with two of the equipment cards in this pool benefiting from having a location, this build looks to capitalize on that equipment with as much consistency as possible. David’s only two blue cards were both Team-Ups, which I find to be a wise decision. By choosing to be aggressive with his equipment cards, David was able to cut out the below-average, one-time plot twist pumps. Team-Ups are always very important in Sealed Pack, so David was right on track to play both of them.
Although I only shared three examples of deck lists submitted, I really got a kick out of reading all of the emails and wish I could share them all here today. I noticed a few trends when reading over the submissions and thought that you might find my observations interesting.
1. Almost everyone who submitted a deck mentioned their hesitance to include the T-Spheres.
2. Few players consider Cheshire to be a Villain, or at least don’t think she is a good enough 5-drop.
3. Although the examples above don’t reflect this, almost everyone included Rose Psychic and Dr. Occult regardless of the mix of teams.
4. Almost everyone concurs that you have to play Blue Devil and Ragman at the 2-cost slot. This, along with observation #3, made me rethink playing Shadowpact as a main team. One submission coming from a reader known only as Rob F. showed me a very aggressive Shadowpact-heavy build that included Mystical Binding and ten of the eleven Shadowpact characters.
5. As I was having the revelation described above in observation #4, I thought to myself, “I don’t remember seeing many decklists that included Mystical Binding.” I went back through the emails I received and noted this. Mags Rivera (submission above) also played Mystical Binding with a total count of six characters, which seems like plenty. Squire Kershner (submission above) also played six Shadowpact characters but opted not to play the Mystical Binding. It seems to me that a count of six or more Shadowpact characters should be plenty to warrant the inclusion of Mystical Binding, especially since its only requirement is that you control a Shadowpact character rather than a Shadowpact attacker or defender. As it turns out, of the players submitting decks with at least five or more Shadowpact characters, the Mystical Binding appears in exactly half of their decklists.
6. Not a single submission included Threat Neutralized. How embarrassing for me? Last week, I noted that I thought I should have played Threat Neutralized. I think I was wrong. The masses can’t all be wrong. As I’m thinking about it now, even though I played only three characters from the Shadowpact team, I did play two Team-Ups and a card or two to search my deck for them. Maybe I should have tried out the Mystical Binding myself.
I look forward to conducting another study. I think I have a fun idea for the next one. As soon as I can get my hands on five packs of Heralds of Galactus, I would like to begin the next study. I’ll save most of the details as a surprise. After covering the same card pool at length and then some more, I think I will keep future releases of “The Study” down to a two-part article series. If you see me at the Pro Circuit, please wish me luck. Here’s hoping that most of my predictions come true.