I simultaneously love and hate Pro Circuits. On the one hand, they are a great chance to meet up with friends and test your skills with the best in the world. On the other hand, a serious competitor only has about three days when he or she is not preparing for the next Pro Circuit—those are the three days spent competing in the previous one. It’s no coincidence that the same players keep winning. Except, of course, for Vidi Wijaya, who I recently found out was a robot sent back in time to conquer the Vs. world. Despite my lame attempts at humor, I am going to take this opportunity and share with you what is necessary to prepare for a premier level event.
Timing is Everything
When is a good time to start preparing for a premier level event? Well, to be honest, I can’t give you a start date. The earlier you begin to prepare, the more prepared you will be. For example, I didn’t begin to test for Pro Circuit Atlanta until the end of January. That gave me a month and a half to prepare. I would not recommend this; sometimes, that is just all the time you are given, such as the time between Pro Circuit Atlanta and Pro Circuit San Francisco. While I still performed remarkably well at Atlanta, I dropped off significantly at San Francisco. Even though 30th place isn’t bad, I don’t have to inform you of the difference between that and 2nd place. I think that if I’d had more time to practice, I would have performed better. After all, I did lose twice to Ahmed Samsarra hitting the KO’d pile. I would encourage any of you who are even thinking of participating in an event of any level to start preparing as soon as possible. Sure, you can rock the house with a small amount of preparation, but starting earlier gives you more confidence in your deck, your matchups, and, ultimately, your performance at the event you plan on attending.
Tests? I Hated School
You often hear other players talk about how they have to test for the next big tournament. Well, for all of you beginners, let me tell you exactly what that means. Testing is essentially practicing, but dressed up in a fancy little name. You do remember the old saying, practice makes perfect, right? Whoever uttered that memorable line knew what they were talking about. Every major team tests in some manner or another.
Testing generally consists of practicing with your deck against what you expect to see at the event. This list of decks is often referred to as a team’s “gauntlet.” This is not as simple as it sounds. Imagine trying to figure out a completely new format for each event that you attend. That describes Pro Circuit preparation every season. Both Modern Age formats are completely new. With the success of Silver Age, you now have three unexplored formats to practice. Four, actually, adding in a Golden Age format that sees play about once every two months.
All of this serves to illustrate one simple but very important point: each Pro Circuit event offers a completely new format that needs to be explored.
Exploration: Silver Style
Now that we know what testing is and why it’s so important, let’s go through a brief overview of a testing season. When Team Alternate Win Condition began preparing for Pro Circuit San Francisco, we had three specific deck types in mind: off-curve, short-curve, and stall. I will address each category and briefly discuss our testing results.
Off-Curve Craziness
When we first began assembling our gauntlet, we immediately mentioned some sort of Faces of Evil build. Coming straight off of Marvel Modern Age, a Faces of Evil variant seemed very likely to appear at the PC. The deck lost very little in the transition to Silver Age, and in fact, it gained quite a bit, such as Dr. Light, Master of Holograms. So, initially, we felt that this deck was an auto inclusion into our gauntlet.
Another off-curve deck that was immediately on our radar was the Anti-Green Lantern deck. The AGL deck had seen moderate success at Golden Age $10K Championships, and, much like Faces of Evil, lost very little when translated to Silver Age. The only important card lost here was Savage Beatdown, and it was easily replaced by the far more efficient (at least for this deck’s purposes) Blinding Rage.
What we didn’t immediately understand was how much weenie hate would cripple these two decks. Mikado and Mosha greatly hurt both of them, for example. When combined with the recursion available through cards like Slaughter Swamp, these decks lost a lot of their viability. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but with the advent of Enemy of My Enemy, tech cards like Mikado were easily searched out.
Needless to say, both of these decks fell to the bottom of our gauntlet. We kept them around just for something to practice against, and also just in case someone who didn’t test for Silver Age picked up a successful deck from a previous format.
Short-Curve Mania
This deck was a fan favorite on my team. Affectionately named “Good Guys,” the JLA/JLI team-up deck was a constant thorn in our sides. It had great game against the low curve decks mentioned above, and also performed very well against the stall decks that will be mentioned below. Its quality is shown by the fact that the Your Move Games players all took this deck to the PC. In fact, this deck was our number two deck all the way up until the Pro Circuit, and it was the alternative of choice if the deck we chose to take was leaked or compromised in some way.
Why didn’t we take this deck? Unfortunately, the draws were not as consistent as what we chose to take, a Checkmate/Villains United team-up. I am sure that sounds very odd, as the hallmark of Good Guys is its ability to hit its drops. It does hit its drops—just not the ones we prefer. Sue Dibny would always net you Booster Gold, as would Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle. The problem was, if you hit Dibny, you might have trouble getting out Nth Metal, which was necessary to get things rolling. While it may seem likely that you would be able to hit Shayera Thal ◊ Hawkwoman with four copies of her and four of Enemy of My Enemy, we found that you still missed her from time to time. Those inconsistencies moved us off of this deck and onto the incredibly consistent Checkmate deck.
Stall
I hope that when I say G’Lock, everyone knows to what I am referring. This deck was a force in Golden Age, and we owe Patrick Yapjoco a lot of thanks for it. He built this deck along with his group of playtesters, and let me tell you, it’s a force. However, it lost an important card moving over to Silver Age. Specifically, that card was Cover Fire. This deck prided itself on making attacks fail. Losing such a huge boon to that goal was crippling. G’Lock players didn’t weep for long, though, as Infinite Crisis opened up a far more interesting way to win. Instead of making attacks fail and then beating you down late, this deck opted to stall you, gain endurance, and then use Captain Marvel, Champion of Magic to win the game. This switch made it very difficult to practice against.
Before we had an Infinite Crisis card list, we had an aggressive version of G’Lock that abused Oa, played Sweeping Up, and was very in-your-face. This version had a good game against the Checkmate deck that we chose to play, mainly because it pumped out characters with high DEF such as Malvolio or Katma Tui, and it utilized the pump from Oa and Arisia. At this time, though, we had no concept of Checkmate, and we were looking hard at Good Guys.
After the card list was released, our G’Lock deck changed dramatically. It became much more focused, not caring what was going on as long as it had the 25 endurance to pay for the good Captain. Suddenly, it was not nearly as formidable as before, but it was clear that this was the direction the deck would go. This made it very easy to tech against (see Bizarro World), and it helped frame the Checkmate deck.
What Testing Showed
That was our gauntlet starting point. We hit it hard and often. Many times we would play mock conditions, running a ten game marathon, hitting each deck evenly, and rotating which deck would get the short end of the stick. Late in testing, it became evident that deck would always be AGL, as it just could not overcome the anti-weenie cards that would inevitably be present. In the end, the decks that were in our gauntlet were present at the event. I played two G’Lock matchups and one Good Guys match, and I know that one of my teammates played Faces of Evil twice. It was the testing that made those matches mental breaks for us. We knew those matchups so well that we were able to catch our breath and fall back on preparation rather than scramble to come up with a game plan against a new deck. I do want to say that testing doesn’t just prepare you for the matchup that you are playing against. The more time spent with a particular deck, the more familiar you become with it, and thus the more you learn what it is capable of, allowing you to adapt to new situations more easily.
What About DC Modern?
I realize that I have now spent the better part of this article talking about Silver Age, when the next PC is DC Modern Age format. Do not despair, my friends, as I plan to share with you the deck types that I expect to be present. I would provide decklists, but I have been on sabbatical from testing since Pro Circuit San Francisco, using this time to get ready for my impending nuptials. I’m going to talk about several archetypes that I would urge you to consider adding to your gauntlet as you prepare for Pro Circuit Indianapolis 2006.
Short-Curve, a.k.a., Good Guys
This deck will inevitably show up. It was very strong in Silver Age, and to a lesser extent in Golden Age, and it loses only Light Armor coming into the DC Modern format.
Fate Artifacts
This deck was largely believed to be dead after the round of changes that came out affecting equipment uniqueness. Let me tell you something: you need to have a game plan against this deck. This deck alone will be sufficient reason to be packing KO effects, such as Removed from Continuity or even Death Trap, in an attempt to remove the character that is loaded up with the equipment.
Checkmate Toolbox
Obviously, I am partial to this deck, as I took it to Pro Circuit San Francisco. While it does lose some key cards like Bizarro World, Merlyn, Deadly Archer, and Phantom Zone, the need for techy cards like that may be gone as well. This deck should definitely be considered due to its incredible search potential, as well as its ability to make attacks fail.
In the End
I truly hope that this article has given you a little bit of insight into testing for an event. It’s a lot to take in, but everything I’ve just told you is only the beginning. As you continue testing, your gauntlet will evolve, change, and sometimes be eliminated from contention. I would urge you to take time to practice, and make sure to have fun while you are doing it. If you can do that, you have already won half the battle. Until next time!