A few weeks ago, I attended a San Diego Pro Circuit Qualifier to help judge and to get an idea of where the metagame was at first hand. I also wanted to see how sophisticated the Constructed decks were and the level of competition among the players.

First off, it was great to see a lot of different decks represented at the event. There were a few Sentinel, X-Men and Doom decks (no, not mixed) and a lot of different Fantastic Four and Brotherhood decks. There were not as many true hybrid decks as I expected, though lots of decks splashed a character or two for a particular strategy or metagame call. Wolverine, Berserker Rage seems like a great 7-drop in a Brotherhood-heavy field. Beast is a must for a control Doom deck. And Storm, Ororo Munroe is in some Fantastic Four control decks. Who would have thought that the X-Men would make such great guest stars?

But back to the point . . .

After observing and judging for a couple of hours it was evident that some players didn’t have any tournament experience. Furthermore, some players had just borrowed decks from friends at the last minute. I saw a host of errors being made during the day that all pretty much occurred for one reason: A lack of familiarity with the cards—sometimes even the ones in the player’s own deck!

Sure, the game is new, but most of the cards have around ten words on them, and most players use about 20 different cards by name in their decks. That’s not a heck of a lot to read before an event. Maybe it’s just the pressure of playing at a big event. Below are several errors that players made throughout the day. Hopefully you’ll see something below that will help out your own game and save you from making these same mistakes.

1. Rogue, Anna Raven does not have range. She has flight. I witnessed two different players making this fundamental error. What makes it worse is that they had the initiative at the time. Both were rather embarrassed when they tried to make attacks with her from the support row. They both had forgotten to move her to the front row after hiding behind Blob the previous turn.

2. When Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria comes into play, he counts as a Doom character you control for purposes of flipping resources face down. At least I don’t personally see any reason not to turn a Faces of Doom or Burn Rubber face down.

3. When a Wild Sentinel comes into play, it gets +1 ATK that turn. Some Sentinel players even put tokens on the new ones to distinguish them from the others. So why would you choose to attack the old ones? The attackers had nothing to fear, even a Nasty Surprise wouldn’t have stunned the attackers, so why not take out the bigger threat?

4. Puppet Master should have a big bullseye painted on him. Or maybe he should wear a cow bell so people are reminded that he will wreck your attack plans. On more than one occasion, I witnessed players attacking with their little characters first, leaving larger characters as Puppet bait. Leave a ready wimp to protect your big character from the puppet strings.

5. If you’re desperate for a 3-drop, check your hand first to make sure that you have another Fantastic Four character available to discard to your Signal Flare. Otherwise, all you did was thin out your deck and embarrass yourself. Fortunately, I only saw this happen once.

Play errors can sometimes be chalked up to nerves, but some errors are just fundamental errors that have applications to more than just card gaming. Here’s some advice for players of all skill levels:

1. Read your cards once, read your opponents’ cards twice. When an opponent plays a card and mumbles something about what it does, ask to have a look at it. Too many times, I witnessed players acting cool like they knew what a card did only to be surprised by it during combat. There’s no shame in asking to read a card, and it only takes a few seconds. This is especially important during Limited events when you might be playing, or playing against, a card for the first time.

2. When something weird is happening or something just doesn’t feel right, call a judge over immediately. Don’t wait until the turn or even the match is over. It usually takes fifteen seconds for a judge to clear up a misunderstanding or let the players know how a tricky situation resolves.

3. Don’t let your friends second-guess you after a match. If your match goes long, you’ll pick up some spectators who don’t know all the ins and out of the game and matchup. You know your opponent is playing with Overloads, so there’s a reason you didn’t activate your Savage Land. And be wary if a friend tells you that your opponent cheated or gave you incorrect information. At the PCQ, a player who had just lost a match was told by a friend that a massively boosted-up Sabretooth should have been taken down by his defender, causing enough stun endurance loss to win the game. The spectator, however, didn’t realize that two power-ups by way of Lost City put Sabretooth out of reach of the defender.

4. Speaking of losing gracefully . . . Some players like to flip up all their resources and show their hands at the end of a match and announce, “I would have won if I could’ve made just one more attack that turn.” This is unwise when spectators are around, as you shouldn’t give away the secrets of your deck to your potential next round opponents. It also comes across as desperate to show off your cards. It’s as weak as folding a poker hand and then looking at the top few cards of the deck to see “what would have happened.”
Gaining experience at high-level events comes only with playing in such events. After a while, you’ll be a seasoned veteran and can avoid making rookie mistakes. Instead, you’ll make veteran mistakes, but that sounds like a topic for another time . . .

Oh, and just so you know that I’m human too, during the PCQ I asked a player why his Wild Sentinel only had a 1 ATK after a Combat Protocols had been played.

The reply? “Uh, 'cuz I’m attacking the player directly.”

D’oh!

This column will periodically showcase PCQ, Convention Championship, and Pro Circuit records. Spectacular stuff only! I’m looking for plays, big numbers and tricks that are beyond belief, but true. If you think you’ve seen or played in a record setting game (like largest amount of breakthrough from a single attack, shortest game, highest life total, most plot twists played during a single attack, and so on) email me at mhyra@metagame.com.