By the time you read this, there will have been three prior opportunities to attend the Kingpin’s School of Hard Knocks. We have covered statistically advanced ways to build and evaluate the character curve. Our last session focused on the gamer’s paradox: building a set of adaptive play skills and formulating “golden rules” that lead to consistency and success in the face of constant change.

This is the time of year in which I would typically yank your parents into a face-to-face conference and talk about your performance, motivation, and how well you have taken the theories presented in the lessons and applied them in real-world settings. Some of you have done well—I can see the promise in your play—while others of you have shown up late to class, spouting excuses and skipping important parts of the content.

In reality, you are a bunch of gamers; I don’t care if a donkey ate your homework or if you stayed up all night flipping cards and playing World of Warcraft. The fact of the matter is that this session is a sort of face-to-face. It will serve as an opportunity for you to get to know your “teacher,” while at the same time allowing you to reflect on the game as a whole.

On Becoming a Pro

I can make this real simple. To play this game, you need only two things: the right cards and tournament experience. Anything beyond that gets pretty complicated pretty quick. Many people start out by attending a couple of PCQs, local tournaments, or $10K events. This game has a pretty sharp learning curve. At the beginning levels, many players have only a cursory understanding of the game rules, make a tremendous amount of play errors, and often take sub-optimal builds into a competitive environment. Beginning players should take each of those areas and evaluate them. They should not evaluate them individually or with other beginning players because they often do not have all of the tools necessary for improvement. Self-critique and self-discovery are necessary for growth but not sufficient by themselves. Rules knowledge can be improved through studying, reading articles, following rules updates, and practice, but one of the most common ways of learning the game rules is tournament discovery. Players make a play, the play is called into question, and a judge’s ruling helps to improve both players’ understanding of the relevant rule. This is not optimal, but the complexity of this game often presents many of these learning opportunities.

I have been playing for three years and am still constantly looking up rules, asking questions, and learning how to play the game. The top players in this game have a commitment to continuous development. It becomes a necessity. The bad news? The rules are the easy part.

Cleaning up play errors and making efficient use of the game’s resources allows good players to become better players. Think back on your first competitive events. My memory is wrought with misplays and misunderstandings where I forgot to read cards, or I made attacks into defenders that would stun my character without stunning back. I forgot important effects and failed to trigger mandatory game effects. The more you can limit these mistakes, the more games you’ll have in your win column.

While rules knowledge and superior play are foundations for your successful endeavors, they are matters of science. The true art in the game of Vs. System comes in the form of deck and card slot evaluation. Select the best cards and take the best deck, and you have a huge advantage over the average professional player. While this seems intuitive, there are always hundreds of players strolling into a Pro Circuit with questionable decklists. I have fallen into that category on more than one occasion. In the beginning of my career, the blame for this folly lay in my desire to be innovative and different—to break the format with my homegrown blend of unique characters and plot twists.

Such innovation leads to the highest levels of success, but when attempted by a player who has not yet built a really solid foundation of play skill and theory, it often results in frustration. I took these builds into battle before I understood all of the “golden rules” of the game. Many new players follow the same path. They buy into a pet deck or unique invention while growing blind to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the build.

Many players want to force a certain favorite faction or have had success at smaller tournaments with a build. They then generalize that experience of success and make the assumption that the decklist will compete at higher levels. After obtaining 235th place or missing the prize card slots at the nearest $10K, many players then look for more effective means of achieving success.

It is never my intent to suppress individual expression or ingenuity, or to hold back the next great deckbuilding master, but it is reasonable to assume that there are hundreds of us and only a handful of them. I began making my greatest gains in this game by standing on the shoulders of giants. I have been a netdecker, I have been a list tweaker, and I have made thousands of dollars with a borrowed list and no feelings of guilt. After you break into the money, find your professional footing, and begin to grasp the higher concepts of the game, then is the time to innovate. It is rare in history to find an expert void of education and training experience.

Those First 10 Points

Rookie. Noob. Scrub. Whatever words you can imagine to describe my novice status applied to me. I missed out on other card games, never even opened a pack of any TCG until I was in my mid-twenties, and certainly had no connections with strong gamers. My first Pro Circuit Credits were usually earned at mid-sized PCQs; I ran some homemade version of the Fantastic Four packing twenty-three characters and too many locations. All of my misplays and tribulations still landed me in the Top 10. After earning the first 5 points, one by one, I found a bit of a break. Six to eight months into the game, I cracked some of my first PCQ wins and began moving up that learning curve.

The Game Surrounding the Game

There is an old adage that no person is an island. In Vs. System, the same holds true. While a solo player may break into the top money on occasion, this game appears to be dominated by groups of players that communicate information, critique deck ideas, and support each other in a quest for the check. Vs. System is an individual affair, but there is much more to this game than the two people sitting across from each other at a tournament table. Teams have been a key aspect of professional play from the start. From Realmworx and 3BG, to the Donkeys and FTN, the professional side of this game has always been supplemented by team collaboration.

While some teams seem quite close knit and bound for the ages, other teams have a revolving roster and seem to appear, fade, and be reborn like the phoenix from the ashes. In the end, most professional players who stay with the game begin to play “seven degrees of separation from Josh Wiitanen.” Just give it a try a couple of times; it is sure to work. I played on a local team called 3BG with players like Joe Carey, Matt Meyer, and Donnie Noland. After the team dissolved, Joe and Donnie collaborated with some folks from Tennessee, including Doug Tice and Tillman Bragg. Both of those guys help fill out the Donkey Roster. Wiitanen was a Donkey. Therefore, I am within seven teams of Josh Wiitanen.

Some teams are designed to last or keep a very exclusive membership. But even FTN has had players fall in and out of their ranks. Once Dave Spears made the exodus from Realms to FTN and then joined the Donkey Club, most professional Vs. players did not need to wait seven degrees to make their historical team links. In the end, some of our team bonds make us close friends, while others spur fierce rivalries. It’s all a benefit (or cost) of doing business.

I have the fortune of playing with one of the strongest group of Vs. professionals, but I am even more pleased with our team chemistry. Sometimes, all of the pieces fit together and the machine begins to run properly. At other times, you find yourself joined with a group of players with diverse personalities, goals, and work habits. Part of being a competitor in the social game surrounding this card game is finding that chemistry or cutting your losses when the engine starts spewing oil.

In my three short years playing this game, I have played on a local team, Team 3BG, ProTeamDecktech, and eventually TAWC. Many of my teammates have had similar journeys, and there is something about teams that lend themselves to short life spans. Ian Vincent wrote a recent article recounting his experience with teams and forming efficient player connections. From the best players to those just starting out, I would recommend forging such bonds. A player can usually accomplish a tremendous deal more in a team setting then while working alone.

Themes

If you read enough articles by various players and personalities associated with this game, you begin to see certain underlying themes. In some cases, the themes allow us to grow as players, and in other cases, they allow us to grow as people. My articles focus on advanced content and analysis for Vs. players, but there are likely small bits of information that will inform more than your card selections and next tournament deck.

Some players write about the state of the game. Some entertain, while others document amazing rises to championship status or horrific accounts of bad beatings. These articles offer both simplicity and complexity. Nothing I write is necessarily profound, but it may help players prepare for the greatest challenge this game offers—change.

In my prior articles, there were formulas for calculating probability and guidelines for strong play practices. However, you likely don’t read those selections for specific content about which deck to take to the coming week’s tournament. I’m not going to spoil any incredible secrets or spell out TAWC’s next hot decklist.

In turn, to make reading worth your time, my aim is to provide you with a process. The process of evaluation and preparation is a far more powerful gift then providing a specific secret. I want you to learn to generate your own secrets. This game will be stronger if we all become more than gamers. We must be scientists, philosophers, and engineers. We must play the roles of businessmen, teachers, and students.

Part of playing this game and achieving the coveted pro player status is realizing that our hobbies and endeavors can be more important in our lives than simply a diversion with which to pass some spare time. Some players may choose only to scratch the surface, but a student of the game is likely looking for more. After all the practice and tournament experience, you have to walk away with more than just sixty cards and some short-lived memories.

Class Dismissed.