This week I'll be presenting ways to build a deck from a Sealed Pack pool, using the card pool I presented last week as an example. If you'd like to try to build the pool yourself without the bias presented here, I refer you back to the end of my previous week's article.


The Readers vs. UDE

I received twelve decklists from readers. These lists and some comments that were included about decision-making processes were invaluable to the following analysis. Many thanks to all of you who sent in lists. I also received decklists from the five folks here at UDE who have been very successful in our in-house games. For anyone curious, the in-house lists were submitted by Eric Bess, Omeed Dariani, Matt Hyra, Danny Mandel, and Patrick Swift. The following is a list of the cards sorted by popularity among the readers for the given Sealed Pack pool. A couple of cards were present in duplicates, so they appear twice in the table. I did not include my personal build in either of the totals, but I've bold-faced the cards in the table I would use for my build.

There were eight cards played in each of the seventeen builds. These were the two copies of Flying Kick and the six characters that all have very good ATK and DEF values for their costs, with the exception of Quicksilver, who has an annoying ability. Furthermore, none of these characters requires a team-affiliated character to play, and only Blob requires a teammate for his ability to be in full force. The only two cards deemed unsuitable for this pool by all the deck constructors were Four Freedoms Plaza, which didn't have the necessary characters present in the pool, and Frankie Raye, who doesn't do much without Dark Phoenix, and if that condition were met, would you really need any further help?

I think it is also interesting to note which cards show a disparity in the amount of love they received here at UDE versus "the world at large." On the whole, the cards seemed to be given similar respect by both groups. The big winners with the readers relative to UDE (ordered by the difference in percentage chosen) were Negative Zone, Avalanche, Yancy Street, Advanced Hardware, Phantazia, Dark Phoenix, Random Punks, and Skrull Soldier. At the other end of the spectrum, the hometown heroes were Nimrod, Unstable Molecules, Destiny, Cover Fire, Micro-Size, and Burn Rubber.

This table encompasses a number of deck type and strategies, so the numbers can be a bit misleading in that you can't take the averages and come up with a "best" deck. For example, players who decided that The New Brotherhood was worthwhile might select a much different set of characters than those who didn't.

Another slight difference between the builds submitted by the readers and UDE can be seen in the character curves, where the UDE employees placed a greater emphasis on the middle part of the curve and less on the 1 and 2 cost characters. These differences may not be statistically significant, however, and there is agreement between both groups on the general character cost curve. Listed in the table below is the number of characters per deck at a given cost amongst each group.

My Take on the Build

The Characters:

As for my particular take on the build, I've decided to forgo any 1-cost characters, although Destiny could easily have made the cut. She was probably the last character card that I would cut from my deck. Nothing else at a cost of 1 was exciting enough for me, although there are some reasonable choices for use with The New Brotherhood. This card pool has plenty of late-game options, however, so I'd prefer to focus on cards that are especially effective even if I don't see them in the top six. I went with three 2-cost characters that I think stand out. Pyro and Human Torch, Johnny Storm are both excellent plays, and Archangel provides a starting place for getting Rogue, Powerhouse out later in the game. I omitted Avalanche—while he's a fine choice in The New Brotherhood–focused builds, he doesn't make the cut for me since locations don't appear enough in Limited play, or if they do, they've taken their toll before you can disable them. I can't see playing Skrull Soldier to give +1 ATK to an attacker. It just isn't enough given your other options, and while they would work well in multiples, it isn't that likely that you'll see both or want to play the second rather than a character higher in the curve.

At a cost of 3, I dissent from most of the rest of the group by passing on Medusa. She's a fine character, but she is a minority amongst the teams and you have four other solid 3-cost characters to include. Quicksilver has plenty of teammates, and benefits from The New Brotherhood. Sentinel Mark II has decent stats, flight, and range and gives you an outside shot at getting a precious counter on Nimrod. Thing, Ben Grimm is just big, and Iceman helps again in playing Rogue. There wasn't too much controversy at a cost of 4 through 7—I say play them all. They are all very strong characters, and I've tried to include adequate earlier plays to get Rogue out. Nimrod is fine even without a counter and is amazing if he manages to get one. Your chances of getting to turn 10 don't warrant the inclusion of Dark Phoenix. Once in a while, both players may get slow enough draws for her to see play, but it just won't be frequent enough to plan for that scenario.


Non-Characters:

While there was definitely debate over some of the characters, the choice of the non-character cards was much more varied. I'm going to place myself in the "No to the Negative Zone" camp. Its effect is powerful, and you will often have three cards that you can spare in a bind, but that's not enough to win me over. I'm willing to concede that I may be wrong on this one, but I think there are cards available that will be useful more frequently. Overload is extremely devastating if it works, but that is a pretty big "if." People aren't likely to blow their offensive combat tricks early when there isn't much to be gained from them. That's the time Overload is most likely to be of use, though, and I can't see it coming up enough once characters with double-digit printed ATKs start hitting the board. Sure, you might be able to add your own Flying Kick onto a character of theirs that has already received a bonus, but I'm still not feeling it. Tech Upgrade is a close call, but I think it's worthy of being the last card to make the cut. You should have plenty of time to play it when you don't have the initiative, especially as you have a bunch of team affiliations and won't always be able to exhaust to reinforce. Furthermore, you have several nice equipment cards to search for, including two at a cost of 0. Not So Fast negates a lot of powerful cards, and you won't miss the worst card in your hand. Cover Fire is harder to make good use of than it seems it will, but it is still worth including as you have a decent number of characters with range and it is amazing when it does something at all. Burn Rubber amounts to an endurance gain card. You have lots of nice big characters, so it's worthwhile to take all available measures to survive into the late game. I've never been a huge fan of Entangle but its proponents here at the office are starting to sway me. It's effective when you don't have the initiative and also helps you get to the late game. Most decklists I saw with The New Brotherhood tried to make the most of the card, but I've included it because you can still get some really strong draws with it even if you only have a few Brotherhood characters in your deck.

Unlike most people, I decided to include Doomstadt. By turn 6, you should see Dr. Doom more than 50 percent of the time. In games you do, Doomstadt should prove invaluable. In the event that you don't draw him, you will at least be improving the quality of your Micro-Size.

Surprise Attack was another card on the bubble for me. Direct endurance loss is fine especially when it frequently reads "take 5." Sure, it doesn't do much for the board, but this type of effect will often take its toll. It should likely be included in a build that focuses more on speed than my particular build. Yancy Street, you say? Well, Finishing Move is a common, but I don't think you should take measures to counter that type of effect. Children of the Atom is a hard call. It's one of the best cards in the set, but you don't quite have the right card pool to include it. You need to have a stunned X-Men character on the board and one in your hand, and recovering the X-Men character has to mean something in and of itself. Furthermore, your best target for it is Rogue, who requires another X-Men character to have been in play. You could play Shadowcat to make this scenario come up more frequently, but I don't think it is worth the slots in this deck. I'm also not seeing the utility of Reconstruction Program, unless you are intending to get back characters to pay a cost, and even then I'm not so sure. The card is often useful to get back a character for a power-up, but that isn't going to come up much, if at all, in decks built from this pool.

I'm a pretty big fan of most equipment in Limited. You can usually find an opportune time to make your character just a little bit better than the biggest foe on the board with 0 cost equipment. And a cost of 1, you get an exciting option with Advanced Hardware for turns when you don't have a character that expends all of your resource points. Playing all three of the equipment in the pool seems fine, and I believe you want all the copies if you are running any Tech Upgrades.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of some of the issues involved in narrowing down your deck in Sealed. I didn't hit every card in the pool, so if you are still confused on the popularity (or lack thereof) of certain cards, please drop me a line at DHumpherys@metagame.com. Until next week . . .