Historically, silver has gotten a pretty bad beat. It’s flashy, looks good, is rare enough to be valuable, and is un-reactive and malleable enough to be a good choice for jewelry. Everything would be perfect in the silver world . . . if it weren’t for gold. With gold around, silver has become associated with second place (or the “first loser” position). With the advent of white gold and the even more valuable platinum, silver has lost its key point of difference and been relegated to being the surname of the guy who makes all the action movies.

A Silver anniversary is twenty-five years. That’s pretty good. Unfortunately, it’s only half as good as a Golden anniversary. Vs. System is quite a long way from either of them (it’s probably at the Saran Wrap or Fruit Loops anniversary about now), but it has done a little something for silver.

It has given silver a whole new chance to shine.

The upcoming Silver Age Pro Circuit in San Francisco will be one of the most interesting formats in Pro Circuit history. While it might seem at first glance that not having access to the Origins sets limits the potential for creativity, I actually think that it might make for the most diverse Constructed format in the history of the game. Without the power cards of the first two sets hampering other decks or acting as crutches for the uncreative, it is little wonder that deckbuilders have been alive with anticipation and activity ever since the announcement in So Cal.

With various decks showing up in other formats over the last few months, things looked to be panning out nicely. In Atlanta, I even engaged in a little wager with Dave Humpherys on the total number of copies of Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox that would show up at the Pro Circuit. He just smiled and went with fewer than the number I suggested. When Crisis came out, I learned why.

Silver Age looks to be a pretty open format with a lot of tension between curve and off-curve decks. It’s been made all the more interesting by the various cards that came along in Crisis that were designed to put off-curve decks in their place. The previous hot performers (Faces of Evil and Squadron Supreme) look to have taken a bit of a hit from such beatings as Fatality, Flawless Victory and Absolute Dominance.

The aggro off-curve decks have to work a little harder now; there are plenty of good decks that curve out and either try to beat down or control the game. What excites me the most is that all of a sudden, various decks that were marginal before now have the potential to break out at the top level.

One deck that I’m very intrigued by is the Injustice Gang hand-fill build. Working on the idea that letting players draw a bunch of cards is fine if they then can’t actually play them is a ballsy strategy, but one that is potentially very powerful. The Joker, Permanent Vacation does vie with The Joker, Headline Stealer in terms of uniqueness, but each seems a worthy addition to the deck. The new 7-drop is a potential source of colossal endurance loss with Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist; All Too Easy; and (if you’re lucky) IQ, Ira Quimby in the mix. What I really like about the deck is that it has ample potential to beat down if need be, while essentially still being a control deck. Yes, it has to deal with an opponent hitting his or her best curve, but if it does face off against characters that look likely to win in a fair fight, it can get thoroughly unfair by burning straight to the face.

The deck can also get good value out of what remains my favorite card in any uncertain format—Latverian Embassy. With enough cards in the format for some combo decks to be lurking in the shadows, it’s great to have a versatile answer. Against decks like Faces of Evil, it also makes their best draw a fair bit weaker. Anything that stops opponents from getting too clever is good in my book.

Another deck that rather intrigues me is an Underworld / Secret Society build running Mephisto, Soulstealer for the potential for a very deadly turn 5. Secret Society has rather been in the ascendancy since Slaughter Swamp was pushed into the spotlight as the new Avalon Space Station. With Straight to the Grave and the Swamp, along with the new Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster to keep it fuelled, there seems to be a lot of mileage for the Society’s near future.

For more established decks in the format, there are a myriad of challenges. Enemy of My Enemy seems likely to be the search card of choice for the Pro Circuit, and as such, there is hardly a deck that can justify not looking for interesting off-team characters to play. FTN’s Vidi Wijaya won the last Pro Circuit with a build of Squadron Supreme that gained both consistency (hitting its curve) and versatility (hitting the right curve for the right matchup) from the X-Men plot twist. With a whole eight sets’ worth of characters to choose from, it seems likely that there are a few winners tucked away to be found at the right moment.

Here are my top picks for nifty splash characters to fetch with Enemy:

For 1- and 2-drops, things are a little thin, as one cannot naturally play Enemy of My Enemy until turn 3; whatever 1- or 2-drop is fetched needs to have a big impact on the game in spite of being an off-curve drop. But moving up, there are a lot of big choices for a big game.

For 3-drops, how about Man-Bull? If you’re planning to go off curve, your worst nightmare is losing out in fights because you can’t force your way around out-of-combat stun effects. Man-Bull is a way of doing so that’s a little more solid than Paul Ebersol ◊ Fixer and less susceptible to disruption than complicated Mob Mentality shenanigans.

Or perhaps Slipstream! He swings twice with an Image Inducer for hefty amounts of breakthrough and might be just the Whizzer that Squadron Supreme decks are looking for when their 5-drop is (rightly) full with Nuke.

At the 4-drop, Fatality, Flawless Victory seems like a good choice to get back into the action if the early game has been a little rough. Another interesting prospect is Pan, Manhunter Duplicate. This little fellow didn’t get a lot of play when he first hit the scene, but that was more a product of the fact that he was a character on a team without a lot of great support. This no longer matters. Between Pan and Removed from Continuity, there is a lot of potential to pull apart decks that focus too hard on a single card or combo. This forces decks to be generally powerful and synergistic—something I can really get behind in a big way.

At 5, there are a lot of powerful characters to choose from, but I rather like Battering Ram, Short-Lived Strongman as an unlikely hero. There are plenty of decks in the format that just love to stall out, and at the same time, there is a lot of tension between them and the decks looking to do the exact opposite. Being able to use Enemy of My Enemy to end virtually any turn in which you have the initiative seems pretty powerful to me. Until recently, I was all ready to sit in a corner and giggle about the potential to go nuts with Deathlok, who was, for me, the crowning glory in my team’s build of the deck that goes nuts with Fate Artifacts. Suiting up Deathlok with all three is still pretty good, but it’s far from the insanity that might have happened had DaHump not stepped in with his errata announcement. That is twice that Humpherys has trumped me in this article with his superior intellect. He hasn’t had to write a word, either. This is the way my life works.

At the 6-drop slot, I’m rather intrigued by Kanto, Darkseid’s Assassin. Sure, in some matchups he won’t do a whole lot. That is why you only run one to search for. In the matchups where Kanto can deliver, though—for example, against off-curve decks or (drools) against a reservist deck—he is simply sensational, serving up beats as a warm body while also removing whatever threat is most appropriate (which, in turn, probably breaks up an opponent’s formation). Woe betide a Checkmate deck that doesn’t have enough face-up cards in its resource row and controls a King. Kanto is a King-slayer.

I’m going to stop my little Enemy of My Enemy roundup a little short of Top 10, because frankly, I don’t think that any of the 10-drop options are very realistic for play in San Francisco. Instead, I’ll leave you with a 7-drop to ponder: Magneto, Enemy of Man. This guy was actually the first character to make my list, due both to the serendipitous synergy between his full title and Enemy of My Enemy itself, and to my initial thoughts that it was a shame not to be able to fetch Magneto, Master of Magnetism in Silver Age. As it happens, turning all your characters into Ra’s al Ghul, Immortal Villain (another contender for the list) is pretty good for cementing your lead in the late game, and a fair proportion of the time, the new Magneto will do much of what the old Magneto did—elicit the scoop from opponents who, in a single turn, lost much of their board position.

As I’m sure you’re beginning to become aware, Silver Age looks to be a format that will reward the type of out-of-the-box thinking that makes the most of the diverse options available. San Francisco will be the Pro Circuit with the largest Constructed card pool, as two sets have been released since So Cal. In actuality, though, I think that with the removal of two sets, various teams that could never quite compete in a format that featured Doom, Sentinels, and Teen Titans can now step up, making San Francisco the biggest Pro Circuit for Constructed ever.

These are big times for deckbuilders. It’s time to square up and go for silver!

Have fun and be lucky,

Tim “Still Dressed as a Ninja” Willoughby

timwilloughby@hotmail.com