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With another Pro Circuit coming up, pro players are outfitted with a whole new collection of decks for the big event. And they aren’t telling what those decks are. Calling the Gen Con Indianapolis police will get you nothing. The pros need their tech. It helps them win, which helps make everyone else whine. Afterward, they can happily sip their wine; and why not? They earned it. But it is up to you to pack up your decks in your old Pro Circuit bag and smile, smile, smile, because there is still time to take that edge right back.

Back in San Fran, my old mate Ian Vincent got his check by virtue of being well prepared. A big part of this was picking the right team, both in terms of who to test with and what to play. Checkmate might have had a checkered past in the comics, but if you check the top tables these days, you may take note of more than a few Kings in every format working on their own Reign of Terror without ever playing with Doom. When I put together a list of things to look out for in DC Modern Age, right after birds and planes (and yes, snakes . . . you have to watch out for snakes, especially on planes), there was the good old Checkmate team.

While I could wax lyrical about the pawns of the team, I’m not sure how valuable my pawn wax could ever be. When you play chess, though every piece is important, the rules of the game ensure that your King will always be the most important of all.

This was the thinking during the preparation for San Fran, but rather interestingly, it’s less self evident for the latest Pro Circus. While Ahmed Samsarra, Black King was the ringmaster calling in all of the sauciest locations from around the world in Silver Age, the world of DC Modern is a little smaller and the rewards for having a demanding monarch around are rather outweighed by the risks.

The idea in San Francisco was that a stalemate was as good as a checkmate. Many of the best decks in Vs. historically have looked to steal the initiative by virtue of brickwalling attacks. Any attack your opponent makes where he or she fails to stun the would-be target is pretty disastrous. Giving up a big chunk of a turn really hurts in a game where games only go on for seven or eight turns. Keeping Ahmed Samsarra alive was really important, but fortunately enough, there were plenty of ways to do so. These ways were also great at brickwalling attacks in general. The Merlyn plan was just gravy—good with pretty much everything, if a little underwhelming on its own.

Indianapolis Checkmate has a few issues to deal with that are quite unlike the “Justice League of Arkham” problem. Principally, DC Modern Age has a rather refreshing dearth of character search compared to many recent formats. Deep Green was a really quite complicated puzzle that would rapidly cease to fit together if it couldn’t get to its 2- and 3-drops regularly or find appropriate shifty characters just in time. Not playing Ahmed on turn 3 wasn’t a tragedy of Greek proportions, but it was up there with trying to eat an ice cream cone, only to have it fall on the ground unexpectedly. Sad times.

It seems likely that Straight to the Grave and Slaughter Swamp will show up in previously unforeseen numbers at the next PC, more than likely aided and abetted by Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster. With some help from Brother I Satellite, some variant on Deep Green could realistically exist. But it seems likely that it would have to undergo some major alterations, as without Enemy of My Enemy or as many friendly characters to fetch at a moment’s notice for any situation, it needs a new plan.

What is more interesting to me are the options open to Checkmate that still haven’t been explored on the big stage. While Shadowpact decks are merrily recruiting massive men by paying down-payments in endurance, Checkmate decks are equipped to do some pretty dastardly maneuvers in the field of discounted dudes, too. Remember Sentinels? Well, it turns out that OMAC stands for “Oh Man! Aggro Checkmate?!?”

Playing with a whole mess of Army characters is a superb way of getting around traditional curve issues when there aren’t as many search effects as you might otherwise like. So is boost. Having both on offer allows the OMAC deck to be a far more versatile curve deck than traditional ones. It still gets to run most of the best Checkmate locations and equipment, but in more of an aggressive mold.

If you’re looking for a very effective beatdown deck, then you could do a lot worse than starting with a few OMAC daddies in something like this:

This deck is very straightforward both to put together and (in many respects) to play. Jacob Lee leads an army of Robots into battle, sacrificing himself as necessary to any of the OMAC crew in order to power out 5-drops a turn early or to recover any important characters. Sometimes he exhausts himself to KO an opposing threat, too. He has a nasty habit of returning, too, with Slaughter Swamp bringing him back to hand as necessary, often at the discard of a Robot who in turn comes back thanks to Brother Eye. While many decks that run a lot of equips can run out of cards in hand, team OMAC doesn’t like to ignore cards just because they have hit the KO’d pile.

Meanwhile, it really does like to try to end the game as quickly as possible by bringing out quite colossal characters as quickly as possible. This is in part the job of Neutralization Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, who is rather helped out in his dangerous mission by a very high number of equips. There is nothing quite as depressing as facing down a turn 2 Robot with a Tricked-Out Sports Car that got brought into play by exhausting a Checkmate Armory. Ask Ian Vincent. I did it to him in a draft at the Crisis Sneak Preview.

Over here, we have a little saying about good Vs. decks. If they don’t feel like they are breaking the rules by virtue of just how powerful they are, then they probably aren’t powerful enough.

The Robots feel like they are over-dropping virtually every turn of the game. Think of them like Speed Chess. Only replace the clocks with Laser Watches and the old men in jumpers with flying robots of doom. They really are a lot of fun.

As Willoughby typed his signoff, he wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead. Lappy2’s keyboard was slick with sweat. The article hadn’t been the toughest he’d ever written; it was simply bloody hot—an unseasonable English summer heat wave. It was time for Tim to do what he did best . . . never let them see him sweat.

The year before, he had learned from a guru that the way to remain cool while those around you are unable to was simply to keep moving. Moving very slowly. If you stand still, you get hot. If you run around, you get hot. Tim was on fire at the best of times, so he really didn’t need to get any warmer. Instead, he went with the wind chill of traveling from A to B at a glacial pace.

With a small shrug, he walked in what could be any direction. The sunset could not be avoided. He could not help but be overtaken.