Vs. System is a game that encompasses an astounding number of skills. To master it, you must perfect the art of making the innumerable minor decisions of which each turn is composed. This inherent complexity allows players with strengths in different areas to compete in an interesting way, and it rewards those who take the time to hone their skills.

Unfortunately, though, the complexity of the game can make it difficult to grasp some of its more advanced aspects. The general way that people learn a new skill is through practice and feedback, but the feedback that you get from a game of Vs. has a way of obscuring your errors. For example, let’s say that there’s a card in your deck that you play incorrectly each and every time you draw it. You play a game, draw the card, misplay it, and lose the game. Now, that misplay was only one of literally hundreds of decisions you made throughout the course of the game. It can often be very difficult to look back at a game, pinpoint a specific play, and say, “That’s why I lost.” It might take dozens of experiences before you finally notice your recurring error. Worse still, there will be games where you’ll misplay and win anyway. This hampers the learning process even more—winning is positive feedback, and you’ll be inclined to repeat plays that you made in games you won, even if those plays were fundamentally incorrect. The end result of all this is that many players will make the same minor errors in every game they play, completely oblivious to them because of the number and complexity of the other decisions they have to make.

One such error, which virtually every Vs. System player seems to make profusely, is that of formation. It is by far the most complicated aspect of the game, especially in Sealed Pack, to which this discussion primarily applies. However, the importance of formation can vary dramatically depending on the circumstances of a given turn. If one player has more characters than the other one does, formation often matters very little. When it’s your initiative, formation matters even less. But if the strength of each player’s characters is roughly the same and you’re on the defensive, your choice of formation will often win or lose you the game.

You might wonder how often this situation comes up. I would venture to say that about once in every other Sealed Pack game, you’ll be faced with a make-or-break formation decision. That doesn’t give you a lot of opportunities to practice formation, especially if you only play Sealed Pack or Booster Draft games at the local Hobby League or PCQ tournaments. When these make-or-break decisions do come up, you don’t have much time to reflect on their aftermath. In a tournament environment, you have to get on with the game you’re playing rather than look back and analyze a possible formation error. Mistakes in formation are, in general, very difficult to spot, as four or five different characters can be arranged into literally hundreds of different formations.

To sum up, players often form their characters improperly; formation errors are among the most severe a player can make, and they are also among the most difficult for a player to detect. At this point, you’re probably expecting me to present a little tutorial on how to form your characters correctly. When I sat down to write this article, that’s what I had originally planned to do—present rules, examples, and general formation strategies. After several pages of that, though, I realized that I could never compose anything comprehensive. There are just too many ways to take a variable number of characters with variable traits and position them in two-dimensional space to defend against a random array of attackers. The possibilities are endless.

So, instead of an all-encompassing guide to character formation, I have instead designed a simple exercise to help Vs. players improve their skills in this particular area. To play this little game, you need a pile of random 2-drops, 3-drops, and 4-drops, as well as a pile of common combat plot twists from a recent expansion. If you haven’t played any Sealed Pack or Booster Draft games lately, you might not have these materials lying around. If that’s the case, dig through your collection and assemble generic cards as follows:

2-drops

1x 3 ATK / 2 DEF character with range and flight

2x 3 ATK / 2 DEF characters with range

1x 2 ATK / 3 DEF character with range and flight

3x 2 ATK / 3 DEF characters with range

3x 2 ATK / 3 DEF characters

3-drops

1x 5 ATK / 4 DEF character with range and flight

3x 5 ATK / 4 DEF characters

1x 5 ATK / 3 DEF character with range

1x 4 ATK / 5 DEF character with range

2x 4 ATK / 5 DEF characters

1x 4 ATK / 4 DEF character with range and flight

1x 4 ATK / 4 DEF character with range

4-drops

1x 8 ATK / 7 DEF character

2x 8 ATK / 6 DEF characters with range

3x 7 ATK / 7 DEF characters with range and flight

2x 7 ATK / 7 DEF characters with range

1x 7 ATK / 7 DEF character

1x 6 ATK / 9 DEF character with range

Plot Twists

1x +1 ATK to an attacker

3x +2 ATK to an attacker

2x +3 ATK to an attacker

2x +1 DEF to a defender

1x +2 DEF to a defender

2x +3 ATK to a defender

3x power-up effects

1x Finishing Move

15x blank cards

This mix does a good job of approximating the power level of cards you’re likely to see in a Sealed Pack tournament. Once these sixty cards are shuffled into four piles as indicated, sit down with a friend. Each of you should randomly pick one 2-drop, one 3-drop, one 4-drop, and three cards from the plot twist pile. Randomly choose who the defending player will be, and then put each character except for the defending player’s 4-drop into play. From this point forward, act as though you’re on the initiative player’s formation step during the fourth turn of a standard game. After the initiative player forms his or her characters, the defending player will reveal his or her 4-drop and move to the formation step.

This is the precise area that we’re trying to focus on—defensive formation in relatively balanced board positions. After the build phase is completed, go through combat and recovery normally with the following changes: treat the text boxes of characters as if they were blank (you can black them out with a marker), treat characters as if they could all reinforce each other, ignore the threshold costs of your plot twists, and ignore any effects of your plot twists besides the simple descriptions that I listed above.

A setup like this does an excellent job of emulating a very crucial turn in a typical Sealed Pack game. From start to finish, playing out this partial turn should take only a minute or two. When the turn is over, assign points to each player as follows:

• 1 point for each point of breakthrough or stun endurance loss inflicted on the opponent
• 5 points for forcing the opponent to KO his or her 2-drop
• 10 points for forcing the opponent to KO his or her 3-drop
• 15 points for forcing the opponent to KO his or her 4-drop

Shuffle up the cards and keep playing to a chosen number of points or games. Of course, the defending player is always at a massive disadvantage, so be sure to switch initiatives each time you play. Each time you run through this exercise, you will become a little more familiar with the difficult decisions associated with attacking and defending. I believe that the skills you’ll gain by doing this form the foundation of Sealed Pack. It may seem somewhat cumbersome to set up, but I absolutely guarantee that a few hours spent going through different combat situations in this way will dramatically improve the quality of your play. It’s a fine way to kill twenty minutes while waiting for a round to end or for a draft to start, and it will help you get better. Once you feel completely comfortable with every situation that comes up, you can start mixing things up; add in 5-drops, perhaps, or give one player a minor character advantage.

I need to wrap things up, but I honestly hope that you give this little exercise a try, no matter what your level of skill. As always, you can relay your questions or comments to me in person at any domestic event or via email at anand@metagame.com.