Firstly, let me congratulate you on finding this first (of what may be many) secret bonus article on Metagame.com. Nate Price has a special brand of puzzling wit that I cannot hope to match, but I do like to have my own little webs of intrigue, and you have just stumbled upon one.

I would urge you not to tell everyone you know about my little bonus section just yet. I will let people in on what’s going on soon enough, and in the meantime, I have the opportunity to revel in being able to communicate in both a public and a private medium at the same time. I often worry that it is very hard for me to talk about what I believe to be tech, because as soon as I do, it is out there in the open for everyone to read, and thus it rapidly ceases to be tech. In my little hidey-hole on Metagame.com, though, I have every opportunity to spill a few more magic beans.

Originally, this section was going to have a cunning, nefarious, underhanded, overpowered, unseen, unheard of decklist. While I don’t play in tournaments a whole lot these days (having been lured by Darth Toby over to the dark side as a reporter), I am still a keen player and deckbuilder. While I’m not quite as good as various other players within the loose circle of friends that constitutes my “team,” I do from time to time come up with the odd nifty little idea.

The problem, though, is that my decks tend to fall into one of two categories: the fun but ultimately uncompetitive, and the tournament-tuned machine of destruction. The former I am happy to donate to the interweb as part of its ongoing quest to fill up the world with random pieces of information shuffled together, pushed, pulled, tweaked, and ultimately pieced into a dam that forevermore stops brains from coming up with original thoughts. I am one of those beavers. With decks that I think have the potential to rock various tournament Kasbahs, though, I’m a little more hesitant. Not for myself, you understand. The rewards of the dark side are many, and in terms of winning product and PC slots in local tournaments, I am these days fairly well sated. However, the little Skywalker within me is still hesitant to sell out my friends and give up to the masses what I could be passing on first to compatriots.

Being on a team is an altogether joyous experience. Whether it’s living vicariously by watching teammates do well, having great people to test and travel with, or simply having a fairly sympathetic ear to tell one’s bad beat story to, I can’t recommend being on a team enough. It will strengthen your game immensely. However, it does require a little bit of secrecy from time to time, and it can also be the medium for some fun little mind games.

For every Pro Circuit, one of my favorite times is the couple of weeks prior to the event itself. This is when various rumors and leaks regarding each team’s hot new tech begin to bubble up. Players show up at events with their “second choice deck,” trying to throw the metagame in one direction or the other. All too often, if they do well, they make that deck their first choice as a result. Periodically, the most bizarre of cards gets catapulted into public consciousness so strongly that whoever remembers to bring them to the PC can end up making a pretty penny in good trades. At PC New York, the card traders were busting packs of Web of Spider-Man just looking for Mojoverse, which had all of a sudden been deemed the “must have” card for Sentinels. In Indianapolis this year, people were suddenly looking for Trial by Sword all over the place, and Roy Harper ◊ Speedy was fixing his place in the Pro Circuit for some to come at the very last minute.

So it is today. The Golden Age format is far from settled, and there are good decks cropping up all over the place. There are rumors knocking about that Josh Wiitanen has been smashing all comers with a version of the Anti-Green Lantern deck that first showed up in Bremen. Ripples are starting to appear on the single card market that suggest a lot of cunning things being done with JLA cards around the globe.

I know that I have had some pretty hot deck ideas this week. Those particular cards will be held close to my chest for now. I have much testing to do over the holiday period, and perhaps I will have a late Christmas present for you when I get back to writing in the new year. In the meantime, let me present to you my favorite plays using JLA, in the hope that I can spark off a few ideas for everyone else.

1. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose and Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch

You only have to remove a single “t” from the Mad Hatter’s surname to realize that the little guy with a big gun is in fact tech. Arkham Inmates as a whole got a big boost from JLA, but my overall favorite things about the team now are these two 2-drops. On turn 3, stealing an opposing 2-drop, attacking with said 2-drop into an opponent’s 3-drop with a pump, KO’ing your latest acquisition to fetch a handy location, and then playing Kidnapping on your opponent’s 3-drop seems horrendously abusive to me. A bit of a slam dunk to start things off

2. Turn 7 Guy Gardner, Egomaniac followed by turn 8 Mogo, The Living Planet

Personally, I was a little surprised when the Green Lantern stall deck basically went nowhere in Golden Age. Whether or not this was a function of being too slow to play or being not especially good I cannot really say, but there’s just something magical for me about the new late game it can pull out. No messing about with Kyle Rayner, Ion anymore. Getting to turn 9 is pretty neatly locked up by forcing your opponent to try to beat up a planet. As anyone who has ever fallen over can attest, it tends to hurt you a lot more than it does the planet when you land hard on it. And Earth doesn’t have a Green Lantern ring or a bad attitude (that I know of).

3. Straight to the Grave and Avalon Space Station/Slaughter Swamp

Wow! When I first saw this, it looked good, but in actuality, it’s completely insane! This is the almost universal character search effect that everyone has been looking for. Brutally effective in general, it becomes completely savage if you can actually make the most of the Secret Society synergies in here. My favorite Straight to the Grave/Slaughter Swamp play is as follows:

Turn 4: Play Straight to the Grave to put Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius and a decent plot twist into the KO’d pile (Doom is teamed up). Activate Slaughter Swamp to get Doom back. Play Doom, flipping the Straight to the Grave face down again and readying Slaughter Swamp. Use Straight to the Grave again to fetch Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century and another relevant plot twist, setting up turns and turns of beatings for a rather unhappy opponent.

4. Mobius Chair on Takion ◊ Highfather

Orion, Dog of War has always been a personal favorite of mine, but around my way, it’s pretty tough to get to turn 8 a lot of the time. For those of you looking to ensure that you can use Takion to accelerate things a little, Mobius Chair is exactly the sort of answer you need.

5. Club Dead with Dr. Sivana

Want to ensure that your characters will simply not die? This seems like a ridiculously powerful way to do so. As long as you have Underworld characters in the KO’d pile, it doesn’t even matter if you’re teamed up on the board or not. This trick can get very out of hand very quickly.

Justice League as a set has so many great legacy options along with all of the new content that it seems as if nobody has any excuse but to re-evaluate their decks and add a few clever maneuvers to their existing grooves. I know that I have enough to think about to get me to New Year’s and beyond.

Have fun and be lucky!

Tim “Not Quite as Lazy as He First Appeared” Willoughby

timwilloughby@hotmail.com