Pretend you are an invisible bird. Fly ahead in time into the hall that holds Pro Circuit Atlanta. Quietly soar above the tables as hundreds of Vs. System players start their quest for the top prize of $40,000. Tell me everything. What cards do you see in play? Which team affiliations are most of the contestants using? How many turns do the matches take to determine a winner? Whose deck looks like it will end up on top?

Whatever your imaginary bird’s eyes exposed, it is the new Marvel Modern Age metagame. And with just a little over two months to go, nobody really knows exactly what it will look like.

That thrills me to no end. There has been a bit of concern on the message boards about the short testing time between the X-Men Sneak Preview tournaments on February 11 and Pro Circuit Atlanta on March 24. While I understand the difficulty of the situation completely, I see it as an exhilarating challenge. I can’t wait to dive into the new card list and see the delicious goodies we’ll have for trying to beat all of the established Avengers favorites.

We do have three proven deck archetypes to practice with while we wait. , and it is still as strong as ever. Niles Rowland showed us the undeniable strength of Squadron Supreme at the same tournament, and the world has never been the same. Lately, we have been seeing some wicked fast victories from the Faces of Evil deck that came up from Australia, and it may actually be the best of the three. Only time will tell.

With regard to the big picture of any given tournament environment, one phenomenon usually occurs. It is most often referred to as Rock-Paper-Scissors. Ryan “WalterKovacs” Alarie, from beautiful Ottawa, Canada, put it this way:

“Rock-Paper-Scissors works like this in an environment with one deck that is clearly better than all the others: If the ‘rock’ deck is proven best through playtesting, then most people will choose rock. That makes paper a smart metagame choice. Eventually, as the environment grows savvier, players will tech scissors decks to go after the increasing number of paper decks . . . and then rock will be able to make a comeback.”

If we apply this concept to the upcoming Pro Circuit Atlanta metagame, we might be able to say that all three of the established archetypes are rocks. They are all aggressive beatdown strategies, a method commonly called “aggro.” There is extensive debate about which deck beats the other two, but none of them could be considered control-oriented, anti-rush decks. Kang is legal for the upcoming metagame, but his time-traveling, non-unique arsenal of abilities doesn’t seem fast enough to beat the big boys. Surely, the X-Men set will contain more than a few methods of stalling or stunning its way to the top, and that’s what paper and scissors do.

Tom “Draconis” Reeve is one of an outstanding stable of writers at StarCityVs.com. He lives in London, England, and he can help us understand the situation even more clearly:

“One of the general rules of TCGs is that, in an undefined metagame (particularly in an environment with a completely new set recently released), aggro decks will be the archetype to go with. The primary reason is testing time; you can put together the shells of most of the potentially competitive beatdown decks within a day or two of seeing the X-Men spoiler, then bash them into each other and tweak. By contrast, doing that and then also going into the much more time- and work-intensive process of looking for a control deck with good matchups against most of that gauntlet is generally a losing proposition. There just won’t be enough time both to work out what the best builds of the aggro decks are and to find something that reliably beats them.”

So, what is a Marvel Modern Age metagamer to do with such a short time to test the new cards before the big day? Look to the past for trends. We have been graced by one truly spectacular Marvel Modern Age Pro Circuit to date; let’s see what happened back then.

The first Marvel Modern Age PC saw Adam Horvath win $40,000 with this aggro beauty:

Adam Horvath, Pro Circuit Amsterdam Champion

“Rock”

Characters
3 Carnage, Cletus Kasady
3 Chameleon, Dmitri Smerdyakov
4 Cobra, Klaus Vorhees
4 Hammerhead, Gangster
2 Masked Marauder, Frank Farnum
3 Mendel Stromm, Robot Master
1 Mr. Hyde, Calvin Zabo
4 Mysterio, Quentin Beck
1 Owl, Leland Owlsley
4 Rhino, Alex O’Hirn
4 Stilt-Man, Wilbur Day
4 Vulture, Adrian Toomes

Plot Twists
3 Blown to Pieces
4 Crime and Punishment
4 Honor Among Thieves
4 No Fear
4 Uprising

Locations
4 Doc Ock’s Lab

Although the final match of that tournament with Michael Dalton included two similar strategies, there were plenty of outstanding examples of paper and scissors to be found in Holland that weekend. Here is the best deck that no one ever talked about. It is truly an unheralded masterpiece:

Adam Prosak, 5th place, Pro Circuit Amsterdam

“Paper”

Characters
3 Asmodeus, Duke of Hell
1 Bullseye, Master of Murder
4 Deathwatch, Unrepentant Killer
4 Kingpin, Wilson Fisk
1 Kirigi, Master Assassin
1 Lacuna, Media Darling
1 Masked Marauder, Frank Farnum
1 Mephisto, Soulstealer
4 Morbius, The Living Vampire
1 Owl, Leland Owlsley
4 Roscoe Sweeny, Fixer
1 Saracen, Muzzafar Lambert
4 Steel Wind, Cyborg Cyclist
1 Typhoid Mary, Mary Walker
4 Werewolf by Night, Jack Russell

Plot Twists
4 Black Magic
4 Blown to Pieces
4 Face the Master
1 Hypnotic Charms
1 Marvel Team-Up
4 Mist Form

Locations
3 Club Dead
2 Dracula’s Castle
2 Geraci Family Estate

Finally, we turn to my personal favorite. Wild Pack decks were actually very well represented in the Netherlands. It’s a crying shame that none of them made it to Day 3; someone really could have won the whole thing with 1-cost Army characters:

Vince Greco, 8th place after Day 1, Pro Circuit Amsterdam

“Scissors”

Characters
4 Mary Jane Watson
3 Mikado and Mosha
4 Scarlet Spider, Ben Reilly
4 Silver Sable, Silver Sablinovia
2 Spider-Man, Alien Symbiote
3 Spider-Man, Cosmic Spider-Man
4 Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
4 Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
16 Wild Pack

Plot Twists
2 Costume Change
3 Fun and Games
4 Nice Try!
4 Twist of Fate

Locations
4 ESU Science Lab

I hope we see at least three decks as fun as those at the top of the standings in Atlanta. Each of them is truly a blast to play, and they are three very different strategies. Horvath’s aggressive beatdown deck simply smashes face. Prosak’s defensive powerhouse avoids massive breakthrough, stuns on defense, and then swings back like mad. Greco’s silvery scissor strategy swarms sweetly and then locks down the board for a Cosmic Spider-Man clearinghouse sweepstakes. Those three form a balanced triangle of glorious gaming that would not be possible without the Modern Age format. Pro Circuit Atlanta promises another weekend of triumph and glory for anyone with the foresight to predict the unpredictable.

I’d like to end this foray into the future by fulfilling my promise from last week. On December 17, 2005, there was a PCQ at B.R.A.D.S. Sportscards in Coral Springs. I got there early to chill with friends and to make sure I made it in time for the Sealed Pack format. About five minutes before we started, I noticed a giant flash of orange brilliance enter the room. It was none other than Niles Rowland in an Aquaman shirt. I was almost blinded.

Niles is one of the truly outstanding people on the Pro Circuit, but he lives in Las Vegas, so his appearance here was a big surprise. He was visiting family for the holidays and was crashing our party for the cash card. As we cracked our packs and built our decks, we shared a laugh over Guy Gardner, Egomaniac. A few days earlier on VsRealms.com, Gabe “profparm” Schmidt had accused me of being the model for Guy’s arrogant version, as I can be a bit full of myself. Niles and I decided to say “Rian Fike, Egomaniac” every time we recruited him during the tournament. Sure enough, we both made the finals and had ourselves a good old-fashioned egomaniac mirror match. I learned a great deal while being thoroughly thrashed, and it was just about the coolest final board of my career. It went like this:

Turn 7. Niles had Guy Gardner, Egomaniac flanked by Darkseid, Heart of Darkness and Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius. Those twin paintings are exceptionally beautiful when in play together, but they were really ugly for my chances. I had Guy Gardner, Egomaniac standing alone beside Gorilla Grodd. As I twitched my fingers over my new namesake, wondering if I should feed him to the monkey in an attempt to steal Darkseid, I saw the gleam in Niles’s eye that said, “Yes, I have a Die for Darkseid! in my resource row so the big lug can indeed die for himself if you even try it.” The gleam was right, and I lost to a much better player. Here’s hoping for a rematch in Atlanta, Niles . . . but let’s make it Day 3 this time.

Rian Fike is also known as stubarnes, and if you can really see into the future Marvel Modern metagame, he wants to know about it. Send your findings to rianfike@hattch.com.