When the designers ship me a new playtesting set, one of the first things I do is build a deck or two for every team that can effectively play one large character each turn. I try to optimize the deck’s ability to ensure that said characters are of maximum cost. In a deck where you want to play maximized characters all the way through turn 7 or higher, it’s challenging to find space for enough 1- or 2-cost characters to get them into play early with any consistency. Despite this, I still include some of the best of these characters, hoping that I get lucky and draw them from time to time. I also try to run a bunch of characters that cost 3 or more. In my first attempt at building a deck, I generally include eight characters that cost 3 and fewer characters at the higher costs, since I will have more turns with which to draw those characters.


Up the Ladder

Big Brotherhood is a good example of a successful deck with a “full curve.” It includes and plays characters in the above-mentioned fashion. I bring this up as the first example in part because it’s a particularly extreme one. It has absolutely no tools to improve its ability to play characters at all of its costs. It doesn’t have ways to search out specific characters (as with Signal Flare) or filter through cards (as with Cerebro). Without searching capabilities, a deck needs relatively high numbers of characters at each cost level to ensure smooth operation. Raffaele Lo Moro built the Big Brotherhood deck that placed the highest on Day 1 of the first Pro Circuit, and it featured the following character curve.
 

The huge raw numbers of characters in this deck are a little misleading, unexpected even in a deck without search capabilities. It overcompensates by adding additional characters, assuming that those extra copies can be used effectively as power-ups in a deck fueled by Lost City. Still, this isn’t too far off from what you might first put into a deck. I’d expect to see around seven characters at a cost of 4 and five or six at a cost of 5. I’d also probably trim some number of characters at a cost of 2 and sometimes have only three characters at a cost of 7, in favor of non-character cards in other non–Lost City decks.

Let’s contrast Lo Moro’s deck with another full curve deck that has access to several search mechanisms. This deck runs Signal Flare, Faces of Doom, and ways to find the search cards by using Boris. The curve for Brian Kibler’s Pro Circuit–winning deck was as follows.

You can see that this deck runs comparatively fewer copies of cards at the critical window between turns 3 and 6. A curve like this means it is unlikely that you’ll have the desired character in your hand on one of those critical turns, but with good fortune, you will have a search card to fetch you the appropriate character for that turn. Your search cards act a little like extra copies of cards at each cost level. In addition, the searching capabilities often have the added bonus of providing you with the best choice of several options when deciding which character to play on a given turn.

Do the best decks in Vs. System follow this pattern? There could be considerable debate on the topic. I think it’s more natural to build a deck that tries to meet this pattern of play. It’s also arguably easier, although there is a lot to be said for optimizing any such build. In design and development, we want to see decks that fit all patterns of play. We want it to be equally likely to play two 3-cost characters on turn 6 as it is to play one 6-cost character on that turn. We certainly want decks designed to make the former decision, and we want players to at least momentarily consider which is the correct play.


Personal Servants Come Cheap

It’s also easy to misjudge the power level of a card if you get stuck in a mindset of evaluating it within a particular frame of reference. Let’s use Alfred as an example in a deck that plays a full curve. In this instance, how good is Alfred? If he happens to be on the top of your deck, you can play him on turn 1. Then, if you’re lucky, you can play a 2-cost character on turn 2. On turn 3, would you really want to replay Alfred instead of a 3-cost character? Probably not.

Later in the game you might play Alfred when you don’t have that 5-cost character you want. Instead, let’s say you could play him and a different 4-cost character. But then what is the likelihood that he and another character of yours will be stunned? As you run through these scenarios for a full curve deck, Alfred just doesn’t seem very exciting. In your best-case scenario, he gets you a free plot twist or equipment and then sits in your hand, where his best use may be discarding him to a card like Fizzle. And that’s only if you drew him early. So how good is Alfred in this situation? I’d say he’s not that strong.

Now we jump ahead to reality! In case you haven’t seen any of the various decks sporting Alfred at the top tables, he is a very powerful card in decks that aren’t trying to play the largest character each turn. Let’s run through an example in a deck with a lot of effective small characters. You could play Alfred on turn 1, or if you didn’t draw him, you could play a GCPD Officer and maybe Bat-Signal for Alfred. Then, starting on turns 2 or 3, you can start using him and replaying him every turn. Each and every turn you can choose to return him to your hand and amass a pile of powerful plot twists you need for your deck. Then the only real question becomes whether you can support a bunch of small characters on the board, backed by the power of the cards you’re getting. In short, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes” based on the number of competitive decks using [Alfred], such as Rigged Elections, Fearsome Five/Gotham hybrids, and The Brave and the Bold decks.

I imagine the Rigged Elections deck, like the Pro Circuit runner-up deck in the hands of Craig Edwards, will be about as extreme a curve we will ever see in competitive play.

This deck, more so that most other future or present decks I can imagine, is all about getting out as many characters as fast as possible.

Prior to the emergence of these decks, there were at least a couple of popular decks that strayed from the typical curve, such as Longshot-based Sentinel (Wild Vomit) decks and (to a lesser extent) New Brotherhood decks. They have curves that focus on small characters.


Web of Spider-Man and the Little Guy

With Web of Spider-Man entering Constructed play, we are hoping to see more “off the curve” decks emerge. Not only that, we’re optimistic that people can play off the curve more frequently in Limited, as well.

While both teams are capable of playing off the curve, I think the Sinister Syndicate does so particularly well. For a quick rundown, you have an absolute powerhouse in Vulture. You can take your opponent off guard with Hammerhead. There are plenty of other solid and versatile low-cost characters, like Tombstone. Lions’ Den fits in well with these small characters for trying to use up every last resource point each turn. Cards like Carnage and Shriek also feed the swarm mentality.

Furthermore, there are direct rewards for playing multiple characters in a turn, with cards such as Goblin Glider and Hired Goons. And then there’s evasion for keeping your smaller characters alive.

There are so many options that I don’t even know the best version to build. I think Brian Hacker was on the verge of solving this riddle. However, we got sick of him cackling on and on about his third turn victories, so we shipped him off to his own room. Having removed him from the seat next to Danny Mandel, he soon regained his sanity—and in this transformative process lost all memories about his deck. Without Brian as a buffer against Danny, the rest of us here at R&D were left to defend ourselves with only a dwindling supply of Danny-Off.

Ever vigilant, we tried to ward off Danny and his turn 3 kills. Hopefully, we’ve succeeded in slowing down at least one of these two menaces. Only time will tell . . .

Comments welcome at DHumpherys@metagame.com.