The first day of competition at Pro Circuit Indianapolis coincided with the first official Metagame.com preview for the upcoming Heralds of Galactus expansion. If you aren’t one of the 359 Vs. System professionals who made the trip here, then you will doubtless already have seen Creation of a Herald, which was unveiled by Heralds of Galactus lead designer Andrew Yip on the front page today. You may even have started thinking of Golden Age decks in which you could use this card, perhaps getting a head start on the competition for the next Pro Circuit in So Cal where Heralds of Galactus will be tournament legal.
Most of the players at Indy, however, remain blissfully unaware of the card that heralds the arrival of a powerful new force in Vs. System. I took a printed copy around the gaming hall to get their first impressions.
Carl Perlas: Kinda choice! I like it because it’s heavily team-stamped and will provide an alternative to Enemy of My Enemy in mono-Heralds decks. Especially if Galactus has a stall theme, it means that playing multiple copies of a high-end character will not be a waste of space in your deck.
Warren Snider: It’s obviously powerful, but the Heralds team has to have good characters to make it very strong. Galactus in particular has to be playable for the card to maximize its potential in decks.
David Leader: That’s phenomenal! It has to be one of the power cards in the set. We already saw the 2-drop Silver Surfer in the Heralds of Galactus promotional material, so we know that the team has a way to fetch Galactus easily from the deck. It should see a lot of play; I know for sure I will be playing it!
Billy Postlethwait: It looks really, really good. It should see a lot of play.
David Bauer: (in reply) Yeah, but it’s no Enemy of My Enemy.
Graham Van Leeuwen: It will be particularly powerful in a stall theme, which Galactus should support, as it means you can run fewer copies of important cards. It is sub-par as a character search card, though, because it requires a specific character or high-cost character to hit your optimal drop for the turn.
Erik Cabanero: Obviously it looks amazing, but some cards that appear very powerful at first are let down by being matched with a team that is not strong enough to compete. So, exactly how good it is will depend on the rest of the cards in the set.
TJ Holman: (in disbelief) Bwaaaaauh!!!
The consensus seemed to be that, in comparison with other search engines in Vs. System, Creation of a Herald is unprecedented in terms of raw potential. However, its power in decks will depend on exactly what cards it can fetch, which will surely not be as infinite as the card boasts—this will be limited in practice to cards that could fit with the Galactus theme. A few players voiced disappointment that the card was rare but realized that anything else would surely make it overpowering if it could show up regularly in Draft or Sealed formats.
Today’s preview has certainly made these professional players eager to exercise their deckbuilding skills once DC Modern Age is out of their systems. The two weeks between Pro Circuit Indianapolis and the Heralds of Galactus Sneak Preview will showcase much more of the set, giving them and you a glimpse of what shall follow the Herald out of deep space and into Vs. System.