There are many ways to approach deck design in Vs. The majority of deck designs are built around making the most of your attackers and defenders each turn. In Sealed Pack, this is almost certainly the approach that decks will take. However, there have been a number of Constructed decks that have taken a different approach to things.
Combo Decks
Combo decks can take on a variety of forms, and what qualifies as one can be a bit of a gray area. On the whole, they are characterized by a very quick win requiring several pieces to come together. They typically are very reliant on that combination of cards to win and struggle if those pieces don't come together or are interfered with. Assuming there is space in the deck, they traditionally try to fill out their lists with ways to combat the most likely foils to their combo. Traditionally they aren't playing the game in the way other decks typically do, and as a result, many of their opponents' cards can wind up being dead cards—for example, they aren't likely to be too worried about an opposing
Acrobatic Dodge. Let's take a quick look at some of these combo decks:
Rigged ElectionsRigged Elections finished second at our very first PC. It could win consistently on turn 5 and occasionally earlier. It wasn't a particularly interactive deck. Yet it vanished. Not a single person played it in the very next PC! Much of this can be attributed to the success of
Common Enemy in that event, since it possessed a nemesis for the deck in
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. It was argued the deck had good matchups against almost any deck without Dr. Doom, although it had some troubles with
The Brave and the Bold as well. However, when these problematic decks became scarce, the deck never really regained popularity. Part of this may have been the challenge in playing this deck optimally. Since then, it has only occasionally popped up here and there at events such as at $10K: Chicago, where Tim Batow incorporated
Midnight Sons into the build.
Team Tactics
Meaghan Hoffmann and Matthew Hoffman - PC #4, New York
4
Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom4
Darkoth, Major Desmund Pitt4
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius1
Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom1
Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four4
Human Torch, Johnny Storm1
Robot Destroyer, Army2
She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters1
Thing, Heavy Hitter4
Wolverine, New Fantastic Four2
Blind Sided4
Common Enemy4
Cosmic Radiation1
Flying Kick4
Not So Fast1
Reign of Terror4
Savage Beatdown4
Signal Flare4
Team Tactics4
Doom's Throne Room2
Doomstadt I've seen the Hoffmans running this deck all the way back to the DC Modern vs. Marvel Modern $10K at PC #2. Each pair of
Cosmic Radiation and
Team Tactics can double your attackers' ATK, and multiple pairs will likely get crazy, especially when one or more
Savage Beatdown has been used before things get exponential. The deck is susceptible to
Overload, for which it packs
Not So Fast; to reinforcement effects, for which it has
Blind Sided; and to
Heroic Sacrifice, for which it doesn't have much of an answer other than trapping the card in the “wrong spot” with
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius or
Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom in the deck. Fortunately, this deck has some chance of just fighting it out with a number of other decks if they just have a mediocre draw.
Intergang
The deck needs to have three
Intergang and a
Punisher's Armory in play early in the game. While it should have no problem meeting the first requirement, it has absolutely no way of getting to the Armory reliably, although
Base of Operations and aggressive mulliganing can help some. This represents the epitome of a combo deck, although not necessarily a good combo deck, mind you. It can win as early as turn 2 but has virtually no chance of beating any deck in the metagame after turn 4. In other words, it has virtually no contingency plan. It isn't particularly robust, since it can fall apart to an off-curve deck or to an
Overload if it doesn't have a
Not So Fast. It is a prime example of a lightning-fast combo deck that can exist within our game without too many headaches.
Fantastic Fun
This deck only marginally fits in as a combo deck in my mind. I believe it qualifies via its reliance on
Cosmic Radiation;
Mr. Fantastic, Stretch; and
Advanced Hardware. Then again, this is another deck that has a lot of game without all of the pieces coming together. It can do quite a lot of endurance loss in other non-combat oriented ways while holding the fort with
A Child Named Valeria.
Xavier's Dream
Like some of the other combo decks, this deck puts all of its eggs in one basket. It tries to set a turn 6 win into motion starting on turn 4 via
Beast and
Xavier's Dream. It has search for the setup with
Alfred Pennyworth and
Bat-Signal (following a
Marvel Team-Up). Since its plans are foiled by a stunned character, the deck runs
Total Anarchy to help keep the board clean, which works remarkably well, since all of its characters cost 3 or less and it prevents an opponent from getting off the hook by stunning one of his or her own small characters.
Fizzle makes sure a single card isn't going to get an opponent out of trouble.
Rama-Tut Recursion
And finally, we reach the hot topic of the day. We have a deck that can create many arbitrarily large guys as early as turn 3 and consistently on turn 4. This is the core goal of the deck, but it can also draw its entire deck with Valeria Richards if need be to get to another insurance policy like
Hornet for endless endurance loss in the recruit step. Silverman's version can also gain as much endurance as desired with
Gone But Not Forgotten. Not considering those cute little touches, the deck is effectively a six-piece combo deck. It is quite amazing that it is able to pull off all six parts of the puzzle with enough consistency and speed to finish first and second in a $10K. Its strength resides largely in its speed and its ability to still go off in any recruit step on later turns, without the setup time required for other combo decks, like
Xavier's Dream, that need to build up over time.
While not present in these versions, there has also been exploration by deckbuilders into different ways to fulfill the final two conditions with:
It would be interesting to know what happened with the other eight copies of the deck in the field at Philly, and it will prove interesting how well the deck does once players understand how to combat the deck with deckbuilding and proper play. The fact that there are six points of attack in the deck could prove to be its downfall. Then again, who knows what innovations will be made on these two initial attempts? $10K: Sydney will hopefully shed a lot of light on the subject.
Metagame Adaptation
There has been quite a bit of alarm in the community at the success of the
Rama-Tut Recursion deck in the $10K this past weekend. At various point in the history of our still young game, there has been uproar over the power of certain cards. First it was
The New Brotherhood, then
Lost City, and later
Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal. There has always been murmuring about any number of other cards, including
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius;
Cosmic Radiation; and
Longshot. Ultimately, each of these “problems” was fixed by a natural evolution of the metagame. Creative deckbuilders found solutions to each of the decks by including key cards against those decks, improving upon a deck with strengths against those decks, or by finding a deck that was yet more powerful. Combo decks have yet to dominate a metagame, and have proven no different than combat-oriented decks in overcoming a natural tuning of the metagame. In many ways, it is the combo decks that have been the check on the curve-based decks. For example, note that none of the 24 Curve Sentinel decks made the Top 8 of the $10K this weekend.
Assuming that
Rama-Tut Recursion is even the deck to beat, is there a deck that can take care of it and at the same time hold up versus the rest of the field? I like to think that most of the top decks can keep the deck in check by tuning against it with cards like
Have a Blast! For example, if Teen Titans includes
Have a Blast! instead of
Foiled! and
Ka-Boom!, it is quite a challenge given the difficulties that
Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal and
Terra already pose. Curve Sentinels can switch back to
Total Anarchy instead of
Micro-Sentinels and give further consideration to
Have a Blast! to beat decks like
Xavier's Dream that it already struggled against. We already know
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius is a huge obstacle, especially given an even initiative for the Doom player (requiring a
Robot Destroyer for the combo player to escape), so it is just a matter of surviving until Doom enters the fray.
And this is just the top established decks. There are teams with much better answers, including some that can be easily splashed, like
Black Cat, Master Thief. Besides Spider-Friends, Revenge Squad and Team Superman are likely candidates to see some more action thanks to
Phantom Zone. However, these teams would need to prove themselves against the rest of the field as well.
We are Watching and Testing
We are closely monitoring the current metagame. That has been, and forever will be, a part of our responsibilities as developers. While most of our playtesting is months ahead with unreleased sets, we regularly test the current metagame as well. Most of our Vs. development staff is also at each PC judging or doing coverage. We are in touch with what is going on at the tournament scene.
Be assured that when Curve Sentinels comprised 42% of the field at PC #4 and then outperformed that representation by ending with 10 of the Top 16 places at the end of Day 1, we took note. While a number of factors could have contributed to this, including a strong set of players selecting that deck, these numbers are something we cannot ignore.
Following on the heels of that event, we had a $10K with no Curve Sentinels decks in the Top 8 and a wicked fast combo deck!
So where does it leave us?
Can the metagame fix the problem? Is that enough?
Does there need to be a fix?
First of all, banning or errata is a last resort for us. Banning leaves us with unplayable cards. Errata leave us with cards that don't work as written, which is especially problematic when players have learned to play them a different way. Nevertheless, we are willing to do what we have to in order to improve the quality of our game. We need to determine where our changes will leave the subsequent state of the game, so our current priority in-house is examining all of our options. We don't want a prominent deck in our metagame that is too fast and is opposed by only a very few and narrow answers, but we believe we need more information to determine whether or not this will be the case.
We will weigh the results of our testing and the results of this coming weekend's tournaments before coming to a final decision. We want to ensure an enjoyable Golden Age PCQ season, and for this reason, we will announce our decision early next week. To give the public a chance to adjust, any changes we announce won't go into effect immediately, but will take effect July 1. We want to make sure players have a reasonable amount of time to prepare for upcoming events.