Hello Metagame.com readers! My name is Patrick Sullivan, and I'll be writing a column about Pro Circuit Qualifier–level play for the Marvel TCG, both for Limited and Constructed. For many new players, the idea of playing in a Pro Circuit event is more of a dream than a reality that they expect to achieve. At least, I know that's how I felt when I started PTQing several years ago for Magic Pro Tours. After taking my share of lumps, I gained the experience and skill necessary to start qualifying for Pro Tours on a pretty regular basis. I've never really played any TCG besides Magic, since no other game combined the challenge and popular appeal to be worth my time and energy—that is, until Marvel came along. Not only do I finally have another game worth playing, I get to play in PCQ-level tournaments again! Seriously, it is my hope that in my articles, I can impart some of my experience and wisdom (if it can be called that) to readers trying hard to qualify for the Pro Circuit, as well as share some stories about the struggle to qualify for the Marvel Pro Circuit.

In fact, the first PCQ I will be attending will be this Sunday, in Edison, New Jersey. Although many players, myself included, don't yet have the card collections needed to put together a Constructed deck, UDE has come up with the excellent idea of having both Sealed Pack and Constructed PTQs on the same day. Even if you don't have any cards of your own, or even if you've only played with the Starter Set decks, I suggest just showing up and playing in the PCQ closest to you and giving Sealed Pack a whirl, even if it means you have to come up with some lame excuse to give your mom about why you won't be stopping by for Mother's Day. To prepare for this event, I've built a few practice Sealed Packs with some friends of mine and played quite a few matches. Although I can hardly call myself an expert in this field, I've noticed a couple of tendencies in deck construction and play. I wouldn't go so far as to call these tendencies rules to be set in stone, but they offer a few guidelines for people just learning to build their own Sealed Packs.


Guideline #1: Pay Very Close Attention to Your Curve

Ideally, in a game of Marvel, you would like to make a play every turn of the game that uses all of your resource points available for that turn. What this means is, a 1-cost character on turn 1, a 2-cost on turn 2, and so on. As such you want to have a higher number of lower cost (1-4) characters in your deck than higher cost (5 and up) characters. Since you are drawing 2 cards a turn out of a 30 card deck, it is likely that you will have a 5-cost character by turn 5 if you have two or three of them. Unfortunately, these cards amount to dead draws before the fifth turn, so you want to minimize the number of them you could possibly draw early on in the game. On the other hand, with the cheaper characters, not only do you have fewer draws to find the character by the turn you would ideally like to play it, but also a lower cost character spends less time in your hand being unplayable.


Guideline #2: Try to Keep it to Two Teams

While it's well worth it to play any highly powerful creature you get regardless of team affiliation, it is important to try to keep the bulk of your creatures within the same two team affiliations. Team attacking and reinforcement are two very powerful effects when you're playing a game of Limited, since decks are much less streamlined than they are in Constructed. Spreading your affiliations too thin minimizes your chances of taking advantage of team attacking and reinforcement. Also, many of the more powerful characters require you to either control a character of the same affiliation or have one in your hand (Wolverine: Logan, Thing: Heavy Hitter, and Rogue: Powerhouse, just to name a few). Like I said, many of the more powerful, expensive characters are worth playing regardless of team affiliation, but the majority of your characters should come from the same one or two teams.


Guideline #3: Cap it at 7

You want to avoid having characters in your deck that cost 8 or more to play. One problem is that most of the characters at this cost are simply underpowered for the investment. The second, more major, problem is that in my experience, most games of Sealed Pack do not go past turn 7. In the vast majority of the games you play, you will simply never get a chance to play down Apocalypse or his 8-cost buddies. Most of the 7-cost characters have game-breaking effects and are very likely to devastate your opponent if you have initiative the turn you play it, so having one, or possibly two, such cards in your deck is generally well worth it. But past that, ignore the really expensive characters.


Guideline #4: Play Somewhere Around 19–21 Characters

It is really important to have a reasonable (9–11) number of plot twists and locations in your deck, even if some of them seem weaker than some of the characters you could potentially play. There are several reasons for this. The most important reason is that if you are filling up your resource row with extra characters, and your opponent is filling up his or her resource row with plot twists and locations, you are at a serious disadvantage. Secondly, if your deck is curving out properly, any character you draw of cost X past turn X (for example, drawing a 3-cost creature on turn 4) will be a worthless draw. As such, if you have too many characters of a certain cost, it is generally a wise move to cut the weaker of those characters to fit more plot twists and locations into your deck, even if those plot twists and locations seem weaker than the characters you are replacing them with in the abstract.


Guideline #5: Play Free Equipment, and Use the Rest to Fill Out Your Curve

I know there will be various opinions on the subject of equipment, but I personally dislike any equipment with a resource cost greater than 0. Since the characters that cost X+1 are generally so much larger than the characters that cost X (for example, a 5-cost character is much larger than a 4-cost character), playing equipment with a cost generally puts you at a disadvantage if your opponent plays a creature with cost X on turn X. Unfortunately, not every Sealed Pack pool will lend itself to a solid curve. If this is the case with your specific card pool, feel free to fill in the gaps in your curve with equipment. For example, if your card pool is lacking 5 drops, feel free to play more 4-drops and 1-cost equipment cards, with the hope that your fifth turn will involve playing a 4-drop and equipping it. Obviously, this has no bearing on what you do with your 0-cost equipment, which I believe you should just generally play (up to about two or three equipment cards per deck). Most of them offer a slight upgrade to a character, which is well worth the cost of one card. Once again, I know that equipment is going to be the subject of much debate as it relates to Sealed Pack, but for now, I am of the opinion that the equipment with a cost 1 or greater is generally not worth playing if you have a solid curve.


The above guidelines are by no means all-inclusive, nor are they a substitute for playing and practicing Sealed Pack yourself. What they are is a good starting point for people who haven't had any experience building and playing a Sealed Pack, which will be the boat that many people playing in the Marvel PCQs for the first few weeks will find themselves in. Next week, I'll be writing about the Edison Limited PCQ, as well as discussing the decks that did well in the Constructed PCQs. As a last point, I can't encourage people enough to go out and try their hand in a PCQ. Even if you feel your skills or even rules knowledge isn't up to par, there's no better way to get a better grasp for both than playing in a competitive environment. The first few PCQs are going to be a learning experience for everyone, and I believe that the people who dive right into the PCQs are going to be the first people who qualify for the Pro Circuit. The full PCQ schedule can be found here. If you have any comments or questions about anything in this article, feel free to write me at patrickonmetagame@yahoo.com. Good luck to everyone trying to qualify in the upcoming weeks!