One of the keys to success in any Constructed format is correctly predicting the metagame that you will face and then choosing the deck that will give you the greatest expected value for that metagame. In less technical terms, pick the best deck that you think will have the most good matchups over the course of the day, and as long as you play well, you should meet with success. This is what the deck archetypes looked like for today’s $10K tournament:

Brotherhood (Big and Little) – 37
Common Enemy (Fantastic Four and Doom) – 28
Fantastic Four – 24
Teen Titans – 16
The Brave and the Bold (Gotham Knights and Teen Titans) – 12
Mutant Nation (X-Men/Brotherhood) – 8
Wild Vomit (Sentinels) – 7
Doom – 6
Gotham Knights – 5
Hardware Combo – 4
League of Assassins – 3
Arkham – 2
Heroes United (Fantastic Four/X-Men) – 2

The success of the Brotherhood decks continues to be a major factor in what decks players are choosing to play. Players in general like to run beatdown decks, particularly when they are consistent, and that’s exactly what The New Brotherhood has to offer. These decks tend to be easier to play, so are generally better decks for new players to play. Brotherhood, Teen Titans, The Brave and the Bold, Mutant Nation, and Wild Vomit are all pretty beatdown-oriented decks, interested in limiting the number of turns the opponent lives to as few as possible.

On the other end of the spectrum are the full-on control decks. These decks try to blunt the opponent’s early offense in order to play superior characters and plot twists in the late game, when the control decks typically take over the board and grind out victories through the swings of big men. Common Enemy is by far the most popular control deck in the field and is the favored deck to play among many of the more experienced Vs. System players. Doom (represented by only six decks in today’s field) was the original control deck, and Fantastic Four has plenty of controlling elements but is generally considered to be a mid-game beatdown or lock deck.

Last but not least, we have the combo decks like Hardware Combo and Israel Quiroz’s Psimon Says deck from Chicago. These decks generally have a lot of whiz-bang factor to them that make them very cool decks to play, but unfortunately they just have awful matchups against certain decks and can be very inconsistent at times.

With the overwhelming amount of beatdown in the field, it will be interesting to see how many of the control and combo decks wind up at the top tables at the end of the day. Regardless of the outcome, however, previous $10Ks have shown that the Vs. System metagame is vibrant and healthy, with any number of decks capable of taking the top slot in the end.