Editor: Gabriel Wong. Saturday 16th July 2005.
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You are: Home -> Articles -> Columns -> Slipping on Spandex
Editor: Gabriel Wong. Saturday 16th July 2005.
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Generally I don't write too much about drafting strategy because, frankly, we don't draft often enough in my hometown of Canberra. I have only drafted Green Lantern a handful of times, but I thought I'd go ahead and share some of my early observations, if for no better reason than because I haven't seen many articles on the subject, particularly on VSParadise. During my first couple of drafts I set out to try to force Anti-Matter when possible. I like the flavour of the team and thought that they would generally be under-drafted. This has been proven largely correct, especially in Canberra, but in two drafts in a row I have had an AM drafter camping upstream from me with a similar idea. In the first of these drafts I was led into Emerald Enemies pretty early and ended up firmly entrenched in that team. I won that draft as the only player on 4-0. I was particularly pleased with the result because I had undergone a hospital procedure that morning and had been sedated…which might help explain why three of my four matches went to time. 
One of the cards I picked up about the middle of the first pack was the location Empire of Tears. My first thought on the card was that it could be huge, if for no other reason than because it worked on defense as well as attack. I figured there should be a turn where I would have a few weenies spare to KO to it (hopefully having been stunned in combat first) or I could always blow up a chunk of my row to help make Major Force more forceful. I wasn't sure how good it would be, but I wanted to test it out. The best Enemies kept flowing and I was able to pick up double Goldface and Major Force, as well as a few other goodies. I didn't have enough, though, to run mono-EE so I looked to the under-drafted Manhunters affiliation to help me out. In my first game I started blowing up my resources on turn five (having drawn and flipped my Empire of Tears) and won the game on turn seven with just four resources in play. Blowing up my resources would be a theme for the night and if anything, sometimes I was a bit over keen to employ the practice. I think I was hooked on EE in draft from that point on. After that draft I received an e-mail from local player Scott Ward asking me about pick orders and any other advice I might offer. This is what I wrote, edited for brevity (as if I'm ever brief)… Pick orders are tricky. I have my own ideas, but I'm sure more experienced drafters would disagree with at least some of them. Basic rules for me (in a GL context)…
Arguably first picks (in some kind of rough order of preference)…
NOTE - With the exception of Oa, you'll notice that none of these cards firmly put you into an affiliation. Two-Face and Sinestro are fine without other members of their team. These are cards that I value pretty highly (in no particular order), which I'll often agonise over passing…
NOTE - Obviously you wouldn't start taking GL guys willy-nilly unless you were getting a few of them. The G'Nort/Arisia/Olapet gambit is awesome if you can get the cards to support the strategy. A lot of these cards give excellent card advantage too, namely Dr. Light, Kyle Rayner and Tomar Re. Harlequin sometimes randomly wins games and you don't need to be Manhunters to use her (I love her…I want to have her babies). Emerald Dawn and The Ring Has Chosen are tricky to use, but can be really worth it. I had initially thought that Manhunters were pretty good because they have soooo many team-stamped twists…but on closer inspection, a lot of those twists just aren't worth it. They're still are very good support team. I just don't want them for the core of my decks. That is all the "wisdom" I have to impart. Many of my opinions have changed since then. Chopping Block is nuts and should be moved up the list considerably, while tons of my first picks should drop down into the lower list. Uppercut, Rain of Acorns, Book of Oa and Ganthet are all not as important as I first thought, and Battle of Wills and Willworld would only just barely scrape into a potential first pick list and only if I was intent on trying to focus on a team with plenty of willpower (GL and EE). Oh yeah, if you crack Oa, you take it. If you get passed Oa, you take it. It should be up near the top of the list. In general, I think GL is over-drafted, particularly in Canberra. For this reason, I try to avoid it unless I open/get passed the goods. Added to the GL problem is that the willpower archetype gets talked up a lot (thanks again TBS), so there is a fair bit of competition for those guys. I think this has made trying to focus on a more beats-oriented EE build even more attractive. It allows you to value cards differently to the other drafters and, hopefully, get a better run as a result. It is true that willpower builds can nibble away at your character base and will mean you usually have to have a secondary team (which means valuing team ups very highly to satisfy some heavy team-stamping). With all of this in mind, I went into the next draft (after the one described above) very keen to force EE. It was a five-person draft. My cause was helped in that Ross Schafer, who was seated to my right, managed an almost mono-Anti-Matter deck. Pete McCook, to Ross' right, was heavily into Manhunters. Scott Ward, to Pete's right, opened an Oa in the first pack and didn't look back. Heng, who was to my left, competed with me a little for EE, but I was always going to get the better of that exchange. GL were my secondary team, which caused me some angst when it came to deck building, as Scott passed almost no GL and Heng was toying around with them too (which was bad for me in the second pack). This time, in addition to an Empire of Tears, I also picked up a Prison Planet. HOT. I also got double Femme Fatality. Anyway, three of us finished on 3-1 (Scott, Ross and I) with Scott beating me, me beating Ross and Ross beating Scott. The highlight play of the night for me was having my pet Harlequin (teamed up with EE) take down a Manhunter Giant with the help of two Femme Fatality and Prison Planet (to get some breakthrough and force the discard). 
Meanwhile the lowlight was in my loss to Scott, in which I stunned his G'Nort and played Emerald Twilight to get rid of the little pest, only to have Scott play a highly random Dimming of the Starheart to sap Dr. Light's willpower so that I didn't have enough to meet the KO card's requirement. Scott went on to drop Kyle Rayner (4) and I never had another opportunity to kill dog-boy. We ended up rolling a dice to work out the top placings and my "2" meant that I got a Parallax instead of an Oa or Prison Planet…sigh. I've decided that my ideal curve for EE (looking at common and uncommon characters only) looked like this …
2 - Hector Hammond or Tattooed Man I still don't worry too much about one-drops, but Henry King Jr. <> Brainwave, Sonar and The Shark aren't too bad. They particularly help with Empire of Tears. I would run more ones and twos if I picked up an early Empire of Tears, Goldface or Chopping Block. With this in mind, I'm now operating with the following rough pick order (note that all cards listed are common and uncommon)…
Obviously, if you get passed a Prison Planet, you take it. I tend to favour Manhunters for a secondary team, mainly because they have decent fives and sixes, where EE can be a bit weak. They also have Harlequin (did I mention I like her). Finally - and this is only a theory - I like the idea of using Sleeper Agents and Manhunter Engineers to build up a big swarm on turn six to assist in the quick kill. Well, I'm not sure if I'm made a lick of sense or shared anything of use whatsoever, but at very least I've given my fellow Canberrans a heads-up of what to expect at the next GL draft. Until next time, *Bamf* 
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