What a week this has been! For those of you who didn’t read the last couple of articles I’ve written, I’m currently away from my home in Indianapolis and staying with one of my friends in Los Angeles. I flew into town on the 25th and met up with a bunch of other gamers, looking forward to a week of excessive fun.

The first stop on this magical mystery ride was a trip to The Price Is Right. Yeah, I said it. Me and fifteen or so other gamers hopped into a cab that met us right outside our hotel room and took the most entertaining cab ride I’ve ever been on. Our driver was an ex-LAPD bodyguard who had just written a book about her adventures in LA. She had a ridiculous story for us at nearly every turn on the way to the studio.

After finally traversing the city and arriving at the studio, we were ready for the show to begin. Our motley crew was a mish-mash of gamers from across the globe, including a few of my friends from the Netherlands. The ringleader of this group was a gamer by the name of Gerard Fabiano. Gerard’s a really cool guy, and this was the first time I’d ever hung out with him. When we finally got in line for the reserved seats, he got this bewildered look on his face that made me know what it must be like to see heaven. He was blown away.

We had gone in with a split for the group—we would split the price of anything won by any of us straight down the middle. After they interviewed us, which they do for all potential contestants, I was sure I didn’t want to be the one chosen. First of all, I have no idea how much a loaf of bread costs, let alone a china set. I would probably just pray to go last so I could always bid $1.00. I did want to see either Gerard or one of the other guys, particularly Mark Herberholz, go up. When Mark gets around people, he turns into a human Muppet. Every motion is exaggerated and every word he says is in this weird, far-off voice. He’s one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. And I felt so sorry for Bob Barker when they called his name.

Mark heard his name and ran like a bat out of hell toward the stage, waving his arms over his head like a lunatic. What a master. He ended up guessing his first object right and got to go on stage to battle for more money. He got lucky and got to play one of the easier games, the “higher or lower” game. After correctly guessing all four items, he put on an Ali-esque performance as he bobbed, weaved, and ultimately punched out four holes in a wall full of money. Bob pulled out the first card, which was worth $100. Since that averages out to about $6.50 a head for our split, he decided to try again. The next one Bob chose was another disappointing $100. We were starting to get a little depressed when Mr. Barker pulled out the third card, and without revealing the number, asked Mark what it would take to get him to stop. We knew we’d hit something big. Mark, being the confident person he is, shot back a quick, “$10,000, Bob.”

“How about $5,000?” Bob asked. Without letting Bob finish his sentence, Mark said, “I’ll take it,” and he started hooting and hollering all over the stage. We made a cool $370 or so a piece after taxes, and that was the end of our The Price Is Right adventure. I really wish I could have gotten some pictures for my column, but they threatened us with death for taking photos. Maybe next time.

Over the course of the week, I also got a chance to hang out with many of Vs. System’s developers, including Patrick Sullivan, Antonino DeRosa, and “The” Ben Seck. Those guys were giddier than I’d ever seen them when I showed up to dinner one night with my Sneak Preview deck. They really love getting feedback on what they worked really hard on. It’s different for them; for us, this is just a game, but for them, each card and each set is theirs, something they helped to create. I also got to meet Kate Sullivan, who was my editor for a while after I got started writing for Metagame.com. I knew Patrick was married. I knew he was married to someone named Kate. I even think that I’d met his Kate before. For some reason, I never did the obvious math that the Kate that worked for Metagame was the same as Patrick’s Kate. I’m not the smartest guy in the world.

Anyway, my adventures during the week had me all over the Los Angeles Convention Center. There was always something to do, and I was never quite sure what I was going to be doing next. Until Saturday, that is. I had a Sneak Preview to attend. Up until that weekend, I had never attended a Sneak Preview tournament away from my home store. It’s just one of those little comforts that I kind of took for granted until then. It was certainly a different Sneak Preview than I was used to.

First off, it was kind of cool to see that there were a number of Japanese players at the event. For those of you who don’t know, Vs. System was recently released in Japan. There was a major tournament for one of those Other Games™ going on, and many of the Japanese players who had flown in for it and hadn’t done too well were suiting up to play some Vs. System. Most of the Japanese players spoke no English, which was a little disconcerting for many players who weren’t used to it. It takes a little patience, but the language barrier really isn’t that big of a problem. I love playing against Japanese players. In my experience, they are the ultimate in politeness. I actually can’t stand playing against someone who acts like a jerk while you’re playing. Secondly, despite having limited experience with the game, they are very up to date on the rules. In neither of my matches against Japanese players did they try something shady or against the rules. They were both fun, relaxed matches.

Another thing that I really liked was the presence of good, upper-level players at the event. Sneak Previews aren’t really on par with $10K events, PCs, or even PCQs in terms of competition and prize support. They mostly serve the purpose of allowing players to see the new cards before they come out and to have a good time. It was good to see players such as Vidi Wijaya, Ryan Jones, and Bulk Lao battling it up with their Justice League of America cards. It’s a good reminder to everyone who plays the game that pros like to have fun too.

Now it’s time to share a little bit about what I learned during the Sneak Preview. I’ll start with the teams and what makes them unique. JLA, the set’s namesake, is built around powering-up and the ally mechanic. It finds a way to bleed into the other teams a little bit, but the majority of the ally abilities fall on the trusty JLA members. JLI is about teamwork too, but in a different way. Their major theme is resource control. Many of their cooler abilities fall on cards that require you to have a limited number of resources. They also favor an off-curve strategy, hence the teamwork aspect. Injustice Gang is kind of a new strategy. Everyone who plays a lot of Vs. System understands that drawing cards is good. The more cards you draw, the more options you have. The Injustice Gang actually punishes you for drawing extra cards. Their major theme is to deny opponents the opportunity to do things when their hand sizes are large. To facilitate this, they also have a number of effects that force opponents to draw cards. It’s kind of a cool catch-22. Lastly, the Secret Society is all about control of the KO’d pile. They have many effects that put cards from the top of a player’s deck into the KO’d pile, and they have complementing abilities that put cards from the KO’d pile into a player’s hand. This can be a tremendously powerful strategy, since it effectively increases your hand size and deck consistency.

With all of this in mind, I present you with the card pool I opened in my Sealed Pack.

Characters

1 Snapper Carr

1 Connor Hawke ◊ Green Arrow

1 Shayera Thal ◊ Hawkwoman

1 John Stewart, Emerald Architect

1 John Henry Irons ◊ Steel, Steel-Drivin’ Man

1 Batman, Avatar of Justice

1 Hal Jordan, Hard-Traveling Hero

1 Plastic Man

1 Blue Jay

1 Fire

1 Maxwell Lord

1 Booster Gold

1 Kimoyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light

1 Captain Atom

1 Guy Gardner, Egomaniac

1 Rocket Red #4

1 Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz

1 Dr. Sivana

1 Hector Hammond, Mind Over Matter

1 Darkseid, Heart of Darkness

1 Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute

1 James Jesse ◊ Trickster

1 Henry King ◊ Brainwave

1 Crystal Frost ◊ Killer Frost

1 Remoni-Notra ◊ Star Sapphire, Zamoran Champion

1 Manhunter Clone

1 Gorilla Grodd

2 Ocean Master

1 Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist

1 Abra Kadabra

1 Insectoid Troopers

1 IQ

1 The Shark, Karshon

1 The Joker, Headline Stealer

2 Maxima

1 Valkyra

1 Professor Ivo

1 Rama Khan

1 Queen of Fables

Plot Twists

1 Justice League of Arkham

1 Justice League Task Force

1 Funky’s Big Rat Code

1 Token Resistance

1 Wall of Will

1 Magnificent Seven

1 Plasma Blast

1 UN Recognition

1 Attend or Die

1 The Plunder Plan

1 Mysterious Benefactor

1 All Too Easy

1 World War III

1 Secret Files

2 Not on My Watch

1 Lead by Example

1 Midnight Cravings

2 Membership Drive

1 Death Times Five

1 Counterterrorism

Locations

1 Field of Honor

1 JLI Embassy

1 Slaughter Swamp

1 Royal Egg Matrix

1 Lair of the Mastermind

Equipment

1 High-Tech Flare Gun

1 Nth Metal

Alright guys, this is what I had. I’ll tell you now that I made a few mistakes while building it, mostly because of my unfamiliarity with the main themes of each team and how powerful some abilities are. I’ll tell you next week how I built it. For now, I want you to take a crack at building it yourselves. Send your submissions to the_priceis_right@yahoo.com. I’ll pick any that I feel warrant special attention to put up next week along with my build and the changes I would make.