Right now, I am stuck in a car about four hours away from my house. Normally, taking road trips is not a bad thing, but only if they’re relatively short. Tim Batow, John Hall, and I decided to make the trek out to $10K Columbus a couple of weeks ago, and while that normally wouldn’t be a big issue, it turned out to be over a thirteen hour drive. When people heard of our earnestness in the face of such a long traveling distance, they assumed we had a busted good deck. In actuality, that was far from the truth. We had a deck that we were confident in, but as we soon learned, we had grossly mispredicted the metagame for the event. Which brings us to this week’s topic.

I have previously written articles about metagames and what may or may not show up at a given event. This week, I am going to take you through my team’s thought process as we developed a deck, predicted a metagame, and struggled to keep up in an environment that took us completely by surprise.

Track and Cheesecake

On the night of $10K Columbus, many of the pros got together to have a nice community dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It was an impressive assembly of some of the game’s top players, including Jason Hager, Tilman Bragg, Karl Horn, Adam Prosak, and others. Just as a side note, I think it is a great thing when competing players from different teams and backgrounds can actually be friendly outside of a match. Many times, I have referred to matches where individuals yell and scream at each other, creating rivalries that go well beyond the table. Thankfully, this game has some of the most gracious professional players of any game I have seen.

Our party had to be split into two groups, with Michael Barnes, Tim Batow, John Hall, Adam Prosak, and one of Adam’s friends (Sorry I don’t remember; I am horrible with names!) at my table. Mike and Adam both ordered appetizers, which turned out to be a ton of food. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone who has actually seen me that I love food, and considering that we’d played in the $10K all day, my stomach was seriously craving some sustenance. As I was stuffing my face, our waitress came over and noticed the TAWC shirts that my teammates and I were wearing. She asked, “What does T-A-W-C mean?” Before we could answer, she looked directly at me and asked, “Are you running in the marathon tomorrow?” This probably wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if she hadn’t been so dead serious. There was a moment where the table became eerily quiet. Then it erupted in laughter and everyone made their own reference to how slow and uncoordinated I was. Michael Barnes even went so far as to explain to the waitress that I was a noob and could barely run around the block, let alone a marathon. I thought about rebuffing that statement, but what could I do? When Mike’s right, he’s right. It was one of the high points of that weekend, which culminated with several of my friends making the Top 8 the next day. Even so, I am sure they will carry the image of me running in a marathon with them for some time to come.

Metagames Again?

I have visited this topic on other occasions. The reason I am revisiting it today is very important, though. As I’ve mentioned before, determining which decks will show up at any given event is not an exact science. Generally, one will get some right and some wrong, but at $10K Columbus I was blown away. A deck that I had thought long dead showed up and dominated. I am, of course, speaking of the many Faces of Evil decks that appeared. What follows is my team’s thought process on the deck, why we decided to take what we took, and how we actually fared at the event.

Decision Time

The Columbus $10K was a very interesting one. It was just a month before the next Pro Circuit, so there would be issues about attending. By that, I mean that players had to ask themselves if it was worth it to stop testing for the Pro Circuit to attend a $10K that was not the same format. It seemed that the answer to that question was “yes” for many pros. I honestly believe that this was because most players who were testing for Pro Circuit Los Angeles were getting tired of losing on turn 4. Golden Age is such a fast format that the $10K’s offer of a forum where a player could play a completely different type of deck and still be successful was attractive. As the $10K approached, it became clear that I wanted to attend.

I had been dealing with the ramifications of sub-par performances at $10K Indy and PC: Indy, and needed to prove to myself that I could still be competitive in a professional setting. Tim Batow was immediately in, mainly because for him, even a regular car is like a limo.* With the two of us going, Tim and I decided to tackle the daunting task of testing for a format about two to three weeks before the tournament.

Initial Thoughts

We analyzed the data that was presented to us—which was ostensibly communicated to you via my Silver Age analysis—and came to several conclusions. Given how dramatically Billy Postlethwait’s Deep Green deck dominated at the previous Silver Age $10K, we felt that the deck would show up in record numbers. We also thought that Good Guys would get a good deal of play, as it seems that the deck is successful in every format. Essentially, that is how we crafted our testing. It was a two-pronged test: could the deck we were testing beat Good Guys and Deep Green consistently?

The Testing Game

At first, we gravitated toward the Human Torch, The Invisible Man / Barry Allen ◊ The Flash combo, which allowed you to attack for infinite endurance. After a little testing, we determined that the deck lacked the necessary punch to be a contender, so we shelved the idea with the thought that we might revisit it sometime in the future. Unfortunately, someone at our local shop heard us talking about the combo and put it online in one of the many popular Vs. forums. It was nearly four days later that UDE responded with an erratum on the fastest man alive that killed the combo. I am not naïve enough to think that UDE made the move just because of the post, nor do I believe that we were the only individuals with that deck idea, but we had spent a good week and a half testing and developing a strong version of the deck, and then had to scrap it.

At this point, we were in a bind. We had less than two weeks until the event and no real answer for our deck choice. We next turned to a Kree-based deck, which actually was a deck design that I had questioned in one of my previous articles. Specifically, Tim saw the deck teaming-up Brotherhood to make use of the many synergistic reservist characters on the team (such as Amelia Voght and Senyaka). We started testing this deck against Deep Green with very favorable results, but when we turned to the Good Guys matchup, the deck faltered. It struggled to attack on its initiative against the power-ups that Good Guys could provide and the extra DEF that Booster Gold and Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Eternal Hero could provide.

The deck continued to struggle until we decided to see how much of a swing would happen if we put in one copy of Kang, Kang Cobra. The matchup went from a near auto-loss to a viable option. Obviously, Kang hurts Good Guys, but we were unsure of his impact because we were often underdropping with this deck, which allowed for the Good Guys player to build up his or her field. The addition of Kang let us make it to turn 6, where the Kree / Brotherhood deck could press out nearly 16 resource points worth of characters if the draw was ideal.

At this point, we thought that we might have had our deck. I had spoken with Jason Hager about attending the $10K, and he told me that he was also developing something Kree but did not commit to taking the deck. This information made me confident that we were on the right path. Unfortunately, as we continued to play the deck, we found that it suffered from consistency issues. Consistency—if you saw my article a couple of weeks ago—is key to developing a good deck. We would often find ourselves not pressing out the full amount of characters possible; we would drop perhaps just 1 resource point above the curve or simply just replace characters.

Now What?

It was very disheartening to learn that the Kree deck would not work. We were really too close to the event to develop a new deck concept and test its viability, so we turned to the deck that we always turn to in a bind: Good Guys. As a team, we had plenty of experience with this deck and felt that we could adequately build it to deal with mirror matches. We went to work, trying to alter the version we played at Pro Circuit Indy. We added copies of Enemy of My Enemy to improve the consistency of hitting Shayera Thal ◊ Hawkwoman, as the deck often lived and died by hitting her. We also added Light Armor, as it was a pump searchable via Shayera and Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle. Trying to envision what other decks would show up, we decided Null Time Zone would be a good addition. The card could essentially shut down the defensive aspects that Deep Green could provide if we named Knightmare Scenario in conjunction with Magical Lobotomy. Also, the card is decent against random decks if you can recognize what is being played and what cards would be key inclusions. We also decided to change Trial by Fire to No Man Escapes the Manhunters in an attempt to deal with decks that tried tech using Kang. We were feeling pretty confident with the deck because it was running smoother than it did at Indy.

Last-second Changes

I don’t know how many times I have warned against last-second changes to a deck. It is generally bad to change a deck on a whim. On our long trip to the event we were discussing the idea that we might have had an unreal fear of Kang, Kang Cobra. Specifically, we were worried about the targeting that No Man Escapes the Manhunters required. We feared that Deep Green would be everywhere, and did not want Huntress, Reluctant Queen to negate a very essential effect. We also considered the fact that Fate Squad decks could show up and make No Man Escapes the Manhunters useless against the one character for which we would likely need ATK pumps.

By the time we’d made it to Columbus, we had convinced ourselves that playing one The Uni-Power was a better call than four No Man Escapes the Manhunters. We picked up Michael Barnes at the airport (he brought us those all-important Uni-Powers), and prepared for a long day of competitive play.

The $10K and the Big Surprise

As the $10K began, I noticed one very important thing: no one near me was playing Deep Green. I actually got paired up with a mirror match round 1 and hit Magical Lobotomy so I was in good shape, but not everyone in my group was so lucky. We had completely missed the metagame. Faces of Evil was dominating. There were new decks that focused on abusing Frankie Raye; Sinister Citadel; and The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero that turned out to be a bad matchup for our deck. In the end, Tim and I had a shot at the Top 8 as late as the ninth round, but we ended up missing out with records of 7-3 and 6-4 respectively.

So, What Would Have Changed?

After speaking with Tim and John about this, we all came to a consensus that the deck itself was not a bad metagame choice. The card we’d teched against was not present (Tim and I saw Kang a combined twice in twenty rounds), and if we had predicted the metagame correctly, we could have had a better matchup against decks that took us by surprise.

Specifically, we were really lamenting the decision not to include Mikado and Mosha. Many of the Faces of Evil decks were leaning heavily on Detective Chimp, Bobo T. Chimpanzee and his ability to turn on key locations like The Kent Farm and Kandor. If we could have stunned both Bobo and Dr. Light, Master of Holograms in the same turn, then we could have forced our opponents to recur the Chimp instead of bringing back someone like Kyle Rayner, The Last Green Lantern, who would then fetch Hard Sound Construct and help to build a huge board—not to mention break up important team attacks. Also, had we known that Faces was going to show up and dominate like it did, playing Hawkeye, Clinton Barton would have been a good call. But his inclusion would likely have meant adjusting the number of copies of Enemy of My Enemy that we were running in order to hit him consistently.

So What Have We Learned?

Predicting any given metagame is never easy. More than anything, I learned not to count out older decks. Personally, I seem to forget decks if they are not fresh in the metagame. Over the last couple of $10K events we have seen, decks like Faces of Evil and Curve Sentinels have proven that they still have some fight left in them. What we need to do as competitive players is to try to be prepared for anything. Just because a deck dominated one tournament does not mean that the same thing will happen in the next, especially if the format has changed (even if that change is as slight as losing an expansion that did not seem to impact competitive play that much). If you keep this important thought in mind when you are preparing for an event, it will enable you to make wise choices about which tech cards to include and how to deal with decks for which you may not have teched.

In the End

I hope you enjoyed this brief look into my testing process for a $10K. Obviously, I did not include every deck that we considered, as that would take up several articles. I know that some of you may look at this article and think that it is an example of how to test for any event; you can definitely look at it with that slant, and if you did, I hope that you learned something. But the goal of this article was also to show you how difficult it is to predict metagames and how you can potentially suffer if you base your testing on a faulty prediction. If we all try to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, when the best comes along we will be pleasantly surprised. Until next time, take care!

Shane Wiggans, one of the nicest guys with a tattoo sleeve, is also a member of Team Alternate Win Condition and plans to get in shape so that running a marathon won’t be such a funny idea. If you have any questions or comments for him, feel free to say hey at any event or email him at piercedlawyer@yahoo.com.

*Sorry Tim, it’s just been so long that I needed to get in another short joke.