In Greek and Roman mythology, the Golden Age was the first age of the world—an untroubled and prosperous era in which people lived in ideal happiness.

Clearly, when one ventures into a world of battling superheroes, just the fact that one could call on Hercules, the son of a Greek god, is not enough to make things all sweetness and light. However, looking at Golden Age after the first $10K that showcased the latest incarnation of that Vs. Constructed format, I am encouraged to think that we’ve got a really interesting metagame going on.

Stranded as I am an ocean away from Atlanta, I knew that I’d never play in the $10K, but there was nonetheless plenty to enjoy, even from as far away as WilloughbyTowers. Vidi Wijaya* had contacted me during the week prior to the event, looking for hot tech to take with him to Dragon Con. I, of course, pointed him in the direction of my last article on Golden Age tech, which included the rather hot deck that won $10K Munich. In an environment where it appeared that Titans would be on a downswing due to possible Null Time Zone issues, hidden attackers looked better than ever.

So, imagine my surprise when I see Vidi getting crushed by just that deck in round 2. The Sentinels that he was running were clearly still a powerful element in the field, but not so dominating a threat as to keep it from being an entertaining one. By the time that the Top 8 had rolled around, there had been more than enough diverse forms of beatdown to keep a gallery of rogues happy. Wess Victory was busily smashing faces with his X-Men (who have a fairly happy time against Sentinels with their collection of large men; some naughty tricks like Rogue, Powerhouse with which to KO Bastion; and Fastball Special to take some of the sting out of the robots’ offense), while others were running new creations that made the most of the Avengers set.

There were Avengers team-attacker decks in fair numbers, and though none of them managed to crack Top 8, this may well be because nobody’s yet had enough of a chance to test and tweak the deck sufficiently.

The hottest deck to come out of Avengers, though, was the Big Kang deck played by four players that smashed many a face. Patrick Yapjoco just missed out on Top 8 with the deck, while Jason Tassitano made the cut with the following list:

Characters

2 Kang, Immortus (the Fizzle Kang)

2 Kang, Lord of Limbo (the Krona Kang)

3 Kang, Lord Kang (leader of lots of unstunnable Kangs)

3 Kang, Ultimate Kang (the Heroic Sacrifice Kang)

4 Kang, Master of Time (the Birthing Chamberish Kang)

4 Kang, Kang Ransom (the Kang who replaces your resources)

3 Kang, Kang Cobra (the Unmasked Kang)

4 Kang, Kang Kong (the Kang that gets you what you want when you need it)

3 Kang, Rama Tut (the baby Kang who you can use to make your other Kangs bigger)

4 Dagger, Child of Light

3 Mikado and Mosha

Locations

2 Psychoville

4 Avalon Space Station

4 Lost City

Plot Twists

4 Psyche-Globe

4 Midnight Sons

4 Reconstruction Program

4 Wild Ride

That’s a lot of Kang. The deck can curve out a pretty impressive board and is pretty likely to have both the team-ups it requires to start pretending to be a Big Brotherhood deck and the odd power-up. It seems like a strong deck in a beatdown metagame, though it may well cause various Metagame.com reporters to implode if they have to cover a mirror match. If you like watching implosions, then I suggest that you start going to every Golden Age $10K you can in the near future. It will happen at some point.

Of course, it wasn’t all about the new decks. Adam Prosak once again demonstrated that he is more than worthy of being referred to as simply “The Pro” after taking home the trophy with Teen Titans, a deck that some commentators suggested had seen better days. Much of this commentary was in response to the new threat of Null Time Zone. It’s been suggested that this powerful plot twist, which is just barely team stamped, can dominate games against Teen Titans to such an extent that it makes Titans a poor choice for today’s metagame. In Atlanta, Prosak managed to navigate his way to the Top 8 in relative safety, and once there, he found himself in a land before Null Time Zone. It’s too early to say whether or not this will be representative of the format as the season goes on, but it is surely a sign that it’s too early just yet to declare that the sky is falling.

Regardless of how much NTZ showed up in the Top 8, it seems that it already may have distorted the metagame—control decks were somewhat less prevalent in Georgia than one might have expected. This may be due to the fact that beatdown historically prevails in unknown formats, but it could also be a reaction to the fact that trying to do anything too clever with specific plot twists isn’t a great idea when the beatdown decks can shut them down. Nick Little, as always, put up a strong finish with Common Enemy as his weapon of choice, but his performance appeared to be the exception rather than the rule. It seems likely that as the format settles down and people get a clearer idea of what the big threats are and how best to attack them, we will see more control decks.

Going forward, Golden Age looks pretty healthy. Large contingents of pros are now working on the format in preparation for PC LA. It will be interesting to see which groups elect to reveal their top decks prior to the PC in the hopes of scooping up some extra cash at $10K events and which groups keep their cards rather closer to their chests in the hopes of riding the power of surprise to a much bigger prize at the Pro Circuit.

It seems pretty likely that we will see more Null Time Zone naughtiness in coming weeks, and potentially something more from the concealed deck. Sentinels with No Man Escapes the Manhunters looks to be a solid choice for the field, and Titans might move to more of a curve strategy if it is genuinely concerned about having its Teen Titans Go! turned off.

One way or another, it is an exciting time to be playing Golden Age.

Have fun and be lucky,

Tim Willoughby

timwilloughby@hotmail.com

* The Team Realmworx prodigy who is the mortal enemy of my spellchecker. I have decided that his name probably deserves to be underlined in red, though, so it’s fine.