Another week has gone by, and what an exciting week it’s been! The Vs. System community got a collective wake-up call this week when the very first Infinite Crisis card was previewed right here on Metagame.com. “Already?” I’ve heard people ask. You bet! The worldwide Sneak Preview is less than two weeks away, and you can look forward to a number of new previews, both here on Metagame and on various fan sites, every day during the interim.

A scant month after the Sneak Preview is Pro Circuit San Francisco, where the Silver Age format will finally debut. Players this weekend were already speculating about what the dominant archetypes in that format will be. Speaking of this weekend, if you weren’t paying attention, we just finished up the first domestic Golden Age $10K we’ve had in quite a while. The results were somewhat surprising and quite dramatic; I’ll discuss them before we go. For the moment, though, let’s take a look back at what you might have missed on Metagame this week.

On Monday, Rian Fike kicked us off with a bit of a retrospective. You see, Carl Perlas played an innovative Brotherhood deck in the very first event covered by Metagame.com. In the recent Pro Circuit Atlanta, he again played another innovative deck of a very innovative sort. Rian notes that as much as the game stays the same, the best players are getting younger and younger. Rian profiles some of the rising young stars of the game, every one of them a name you should get to know.

On Tuesday, Mike Hummel finally finished up Danny Mandel’s yearlong endeavor. The ninth and final installment of How to Make a Vs. Expansion in Nine Easy Steps covers all of the odds and ends that go into finalizing an expansion. Just because all of the cards are designed and tested doesn’t mean that the work is done! A surprising number of people and a surprising amount of time go into putting the finishing touches on a set.

On Wednesday, Ben Seck brought us up to date on the Fan Card Crossover feature. This week’s vote, one of the most critical in the card’s entire design, determines the game text that Nyssa Raatko will have. Check in at the same time this week to discover the outcome, and you’ll have a good idea of what the final card will look like!

Also on Wednesday, Michael Barnes submitted a new issue of Breaking Ground. The card he attempted to break this week was already fairly broken, in my opinion. After all, Lady Shiva, Master Assassin activates to KO absolutely any character. Still, she needs Ra’s Al Ghul in play, and she’s a little on the small side. Michael constructs an innovative League / Hellfire crossover that tries to overcome these shortfalls.

Alex Brown returned on Thursday with a rather extraordinary article. He analyzed an entire draft, putting each and every pick under a microscope. If you don’t know how to draft, his in-depth analysis will point you in the right direction for how to handle X-Men. Even if you’re an experienced drafter, Alex provides enough insight into each pick that you’ll at least have something to talk about.

Friday might as well have been your birthday, because the first card from the new Infinite Crisis set was previewed. I won’t spoil it; if you haven’t seen it yet, you can see Justin Gary’s write-up here.

This week, Tim Willoughby moved to Saturday, where he wrote about the difficulties of TCG design. Like everyone else, Tim got a little bit of firsthand experience with this endeavor while coming up with submissions for the Fan Card Crossover contest. Designing anything can be difficult, and designing a Vs. System expansion amidst such a large pool of pre-existing cards is a truly impressive task. Tim discusses some of the specific difficulties that come with the territory.

Our very own Kergillian closed out the week on Saturday with another extensive look into the role he played in JLA design. Ben covers a great number of cards—far too many to list—and goes in-depth into how each of them came to be. Like Tim’s article, this is a great read for anyone interested in the difficulties of designing a TCG.

And, of course, Saturday was also Day 1 of $10K Minneapolis. As I write this, I’m still at the tournament site, surveying a PCQ chock full of burn decks. Minneapolis was a great tournament for several reasons. First, the winner; a nice kid playing a new deck took home the trophy. Alec Ruden isn’t a household name, and it’s good to see that the professionals don’t have a lock on the tournament circuit. Another great feature of Minneapolis was the diversity of the metagame. The most played deck comprised only 13% of the field, which is an excellent sign of a healthy environment. There was a good mix of both old decks and new, including several that made heavy use of recent expansions. All in all, I was very pleased with the event early on in Day 1.

Sunday, though, defied my expectations. There were three control decks (two of them completely new), three curve decks (two of them completely new and all of them sporting utility), and two very aggressive burn decks (both of which debuted only two weeks ago). There were zero Teen Titans or Squadron Supreme decks in the Top 8, which indicates that the metagame is moving fast enough that un-innovative players are likely to get left in the dust. If that’s not healthy, I don’t know what is. With any luck, we’ll have similar variety and vitality at the upcoming Pro Circuit in San Francisco . . . only six weeks to go! It might be too soon to think about it now, but the professional teams will have begun serious testing by this time next week. It will be interesting to see how Minneapolis affects things. In fact, it’s given me some ideas, and I’m going to try my hand at building some Silver Age decks right now. So, that’s it for me this week. Remember, you can always drop me a line at anand@metagame.com. I’m always looking out for interesting stories and information about what’s going on in Vs. around the world to add to this column, and I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week!