Welcome to another edition of the Week in Review. This coming weekend is $10K Los Angeles, the debut of the X-Men Sealed Pack format. If you live in or near L.A., you should show up and try your hand at a format that no one’s ever seen before. If you can’t make it, there will be coverage up here on Metagame.com.

 

The week after Los Angeles is Pro Circuit Atlanta, where Upper Deck Entertainment will be giving away a quarter of a million dollars. By now, you should be aware of every detail of exactly where and when and how this bonanza of trading cards and American currency is going down. In case you’re new to this sort of thing, let me tell you that the next few weeks are going to be absolutely jam-packed with previews, warm-ups, and speculative articles of all kinds. This will all culminate in the event itself, which will be covered live, right here. This is the Big Game, folks. Keep your eye on the ball.

 

Turning back to the week that’s just gone by, you’ll notice that it began in the traditional way—on a Monday. (Was that a joke? My jokes are terrible, so I suppose you’ll never know. But I digress.) Rian Fike kicked things off with decklists and a discussion of a few new Golden Age builds he’s run across lately. Among the decks covered are Anti-Green Lantern, Injustice Gang/Thunderbolts, and a new brand of X-Stall.

 

Also on Monday, Ben Seck came back with the results from the first installment of the Fan Card Crossover. The votes are in, and Vs. System’s first-ever fan-designed card will be a League of Assassins character. The next choice for readers to make is exactly which character it will be. The choices are David Cain, Nyssa Raatko, Shrike, and another incarnation of Ra’s al Ghul. By the time you read this, the voting will be over. So, if this is the first time you’re hearing about this feature and you want to participate, make sure to check back today for results and the next vote.

 

On Tuesday, Mike Hummel brought us a discussion on the history of team-ups. He covered everything from Common Enemy to the fancy new crossover cards in X-Men. As always, it’s nice to step back and look at the mechanics of the game from a design and development perspective.

 

Wednesday brought another installment of Michael Barnes’s Breaking Ground. This week’s experiment is an interesting aggro-control strategy that started with Sticky Situation. The deck, which is primarily Masters of Evil and Spider-Friends, makes use of evasion and cards like Adhesive X to shut down opponents’ attacks. Michael provides thorough explanation and analysis of each and every card choice in this interesting new deck.

 

Nate Price, finally done with his Draft series, came back on Thursday with an article entitled “Confessions of an Aging Gamer.” Nate takes a step back from strategy and brings us a look at the PC. The evolution of a game and the professional players who master it is a very interesting, organic process, and Nate captures it well. If you’ve never played a TCG professionally, you should check this out to get a glimpse of the big picture.

 

Another item that came to light on Thursday: Upper Deck released word of its Demo Team program. If you want to help new players learn to play Vs., you can check out the Demo Team Policy Document here and the FAQ here.

 

On Friday, Tim Willoughby presented Two Turns Ahead. This week, he discusses the concept of luck . . . among other things. I won’t ruin it for you; read his article yourself. If you’ve never read one of Tim’s articles, by the way, you’re really missing out.

 

Finally, Ben Kalman again closed out the week with the final installment of his Dark Phoenix Saga. All the lore you could ever want is packed into these five articles, and you should read all of them if you’re interested in the plot that produced the characters in the X-Men set. By the time you get through this lengthy read, Ben’s PC preview article should be available for consumption. And by the time you get through with that, it should be time for another Week in Review. Until next time . . .