Coming off of both a hot performance at GenCon Indy as well as the apparent announcement that he would be leaving Team Realmworx, Dave “Smilin’” Spears was an obvious choice to do a sealed profile with. Not only is he a veteran of Sealed Pack formats and an all-around spectacular human being, his name also allowed me to make that cute alliterative title to this article! Pretty snazzy, eh?
Well, to set the record straight on one issue, Dave Spears is no longer considering leaving Team Realmworx. “Rumors of some sort of conflict were basically wrong, and I’m staying with the team. We got everyone into Day 2 at Indy, and I really think we had the best deck there. It doesn’t make sense to break it up now.” It’s good to have the truth from the source.
In a sealed $10K, players open five packs of product, record all the cards in those packs, bundle them up, and return them to the Tournament Organizer. The TO then doles out these packages randomly to players, so there’s virtually no chance of you getting back the cards you opened. As I approached Dave to ask if he’d mind building his deck in front of me, he seemed highly confident: “As long as I don’t get my cards back, I’ll be fine! Man, those cards were horrible!” He smiled his signature smile and kicked back, putting his feet up on an adjacent and unoccupied chair. He waited to get his card package and for deck building to begin, and we chatted.
When the brown paper bag containing his cards arrived, he eagerly dove into it—it’s easy to tell who truly likes this game. He ducked his head in for a moment, popped out, and proclaimed “Well, that doesn’t look like my little handwriting.” Players sign their packets. He dug the cards out and unfolded his deck sheet.
“No way.” He blinked.
Then laughed.
“Ohhhhh, but it is!” I thought he had to be kidding—he wasn’t. Sure enough, Dave Spears had managed to get his own packs back from a random pool of 82. Wow.
“I was just thinkin’ that if I got it back, my only hope to win was to get out this guy,” he flashed a Black Panther, “with three reservists. Oh my god.” He facepalmed. “There’s Thunder Jet, and like . . .” he gestured to three Kang Krossroads, “these are totally unplayable for me. Ohhh my god.” He laughed, taking it in stride, but his work was clearly cut out for him.
He started to look at his options: “I do have a decent number of Avengers, so I’ll run them. I do have Avengers Assemble! and Call Down the Lightning . . . Legendary Battles, and two Repulsor Ray, that’s a pretty good spread of combat power, I guess.”
“I’ll playt Mr. Hyde in case I miss 5. I guess this guy gets the nod because he’s reservist?” He fingered a copy of Piledriver. “I really want to get that Black Panther out as a 7 ATK/6 DEF!” His devilish grin vouched for the truth of his intent. “I don’t know, I guess my characters are solid. I’m looking to have a really steady curve.”
“I’ll run this guy,” he said, showing me Helmut Zemo ◊ Citizen V, Tactician, “since any Leader can be used for Avengers Assemble!” He then discovered Nighthawk, a reservist and a leader, and considered running him too. Piledriver was quickly added, flying the reservist flag as well. He briefly debated rotating in Redstone or Scarlet Witch, but chose to stick with the reservist concept. She-Hulk, Gamma Bombshell rounded out his 5-drops. “I like her, ‘cause she cycles stuff. She’s like drawing a card. Ehh . . . but realistically, only two cards overall. And she is a reservist!” A few minutes passed and Spears tweaked away at a deck that was quickly starting to come together.
“This is actually pretty good . . . This is decent. I can’t believe I got it back, though! After all my complaining.” He laughed again.
Here’s what he ended up with . . .
Glad I’m Only Playing This For Three Rounds (named by Dave): 30 cards
1 Melter
1 Dane Whitman ◊ Black Knight, Heroic Paladin
1 Wasp
1 Inertia
1 Helmut Zemo ◊ Citizen V, Tactician
1 Lamprey
1 Black Panther
1 Piledriver
1 Mr. Hyde, Engine of Destruction
1 Iron Man, Tony Stark
1 Hawkeye, Clinton Barton
1 Amenhotep
1 Redstone
1 Nighthawk
1 She-Hulk, Gamma Bombshell
3 Skymax
1 Hank Pym ◊ Goliath
1 Kang, Lord of Limbo
1 Thor, God of Thunder
2 Repulsor Ray
1 Call Down The Lightning
1 Legendary Battles
1 Avengers Assemble!
1 United We Stand
1 Two Worlds
1 Behavior Modification Device
1 Thunder Jet
I asked him what he felt were the deck’s strengths. “Legendary Battles and Call Down The Lightning, maybe. Kang, Lord of Limbo is a pretty hot 7-drop. The characters are all decent, there’s not a guy I don’t mind playing aside from Piledriver at 4 and that’s about it.” His outlook for the deck had done a total 180 in under twenty minutes. “Hawkeye’s pretty sweet, it makes up for my possible lack of an early game. I have four combat pumps, one of them is a static one,” he tapped Thunder Jet, “but it’s pretty good. But as you can see there’s nothing left in here.” He passed me his rejected cards, and I wholeheartedly agreed. Spears had done an excellent job of smelting away the valuable cards while leaving behind the proverbial dirt and debris.
He left me with a classic Dave Spears line: “You know if I 3-0 with this, people are actually going to believe I know how to play this game!” He grinned his usual smile, shook my hand and thanked me, and walked off to prepare for the tournament’s first round.