Editor: Staff Wednesday 5th October 2005.
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Editor: Staff Wednesday 5th October 2005.
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The Evolution of Draft – Early Avengers
PCLA is looming on the horizon, and with the prospect of three separate Avengers drafts on Day 2, the topic is hot indeed. Part of the reason for this seems to be that no one really has laid claims to ‘breaking' the format. Avengers has given us something that no other VS set has really yet to accomplish – multiple, very viable, archetypes – many of which are only now, 2/3 of the way through the Limited season, coming to light. In the past, drafting was all about picking an affiliation or two, making sure you had enough characters to fill a pre-determined curve, and then mixing in 10-12 non-character cards to taste. Green Lantern was the first set to really turn this theory on its ear, or at least it had the potential to. It seemed that a lot of people ‘gave up' on Green Lantern as too random a draft format without ultimately unlocking its potential. But one thing I heard a fair bit:
“Hey, these one-drops are pretty good…” Enter Avengers. At our local Sneak Peeks, we had record numbers – more than double the GL attendance - as the thought of playing with Captain America and bashing with the Hulk obviously sat well with people. Seemed good to me too. This in turn led to an abundance of drafting not seen since the start of WoS. A quick check of the ratings page shows that I've done about 25 sanctioned Avengers drafts. I've also done at least half a dozen or so unsanctioned ones. A reasonable amount for the nine weeks since its release. Avengers as a draft set really rewards the long time CCG player. There is a depth there that allows a person to actually draft a deck, rather than just a pile of affiliated cards that seem to go together. This leads to new and varied ways to value cards, as deck synergy starts to outweigh the power of the individual card. In the beginning
I suppose with a set NAMED Avengers, people have the tendency to look towards that affiliation straightaway. This was definitely true locally, as players fought hard for their Quicksilver's and their Carol Danvers'. At face value, most of the Avengers characters have amazing abilities while remaining at least on curve in regards to ATK/DEF ratios. Everyone has a story of Quicksilver/Legendary Battles wiping out an entire board… of Carol Danvers and Natasha Romanoff bouncing a 5 drop while stunning a 3 in the process. There is certainly a lot of power in the Avengers affiliation, and everyone wanted a piece of it But everyone couldn't just draft Avengers, and Thunderbolts seemed the logical choice for the team-up. You could pretty much guarantee there would be 3 to 4 Avengers/Tbolts players on any given draft table, fighting for cards the whole way through. Even still, when it came to the last round, it was quite often an Avengers/Tbolts amalgamation taking out the draft, with the 16/16 Hercules putting a decisive end to all opponents. And then we have:
At this early stage in Avengers draft, The Wrecking Crew lapped the table. Marcus Daniels was 3 rd last pick. Masters of Evil in general were looked on with distaste as just a bunch of average characters with more-or-less useless abilities. Mystic Summons was often disregarded as completely unplayable, or only marginally playable if for some reason you ‘had to underdrop' Early Faces decks were essentially curve Masters of Evil/Tbolts decks with FoE as the teamup. It gave a bit of bonus in later team attacks if you managed to keep your 2 and 3 drop around for that long. I'm obviously using terms like “Early”, or “At the beginning” a fair bit – keep in mind that I'm talking in relatively small time frames. At the moment we're probably up to about the end of week 1 of drafting the set. In any case, the Faces player had pretty much free reign of whatever picks he wanted, and it soon became apparent that perhaps ‘curving out' wasn't the ideal way in which to play this archetype. So, for the second time in as many sets, an off-curve strategy was born. Looking back pre-GL, a ‘recommended' character curve for draft may look something like: 2 slot – 2 or 3 3 slot – 4 4 slot – 4 or 5 5 slot – 3 6 slot – 2 or 3 7 slot – 2 With the advent of the FoE deck, we began to see curves that looked more like: 1 slot – 4 or 5 2 slot – 5 3 slot – 4 or 5 4 slot – 2 5 slot – 1 6 slot – 1 7 slot – 1 Quite different. Some of the hardcore Faces drafters even forgo the drops higher than 4 all together. Personally I prefer options, especially if I have Mystic Summons, so I try and keep at least a 6 and a 7 in the mix. Kang 7 is always a good drop, and it gives you the opportunity to actually play for 7 when you get stuck with the odd initiative and can't manage the win on turn 5. So what does this mean at the draft table? It became quickly apparent. The Faces player(s) were grabbing all the guys they needed to fill their curve. The Avengers/Tbolts players were grabbing their Quicksilvers, Carols, and She Hulks. The Faces players realized that Dane 2, Wasp and Natasha were all viable in their decks too. The Avengers/Tbolts players ended up scraping for 2-drops in the 3 rd pack, passing solid blue on to the waiting Faces players, who eagerly snapped them up. The Avengers/Tbolts players ended up with decks that seemed solid, if a bit top heavy, that were perhaps a bit short on blue pumps, but had the ‘relevant' cards like Legendary Battles. The Faces players finished out their curve by playing the ‘unwanted' off-affiliation guys like Basilisk, Vermin, Phat and Mammomax. (and soon realized that these guys were very, very good) The Faces player then sits down to play the Avengers/Tbolts player. They win the flip and choose Evens. Evens! Who chooses Evens? It's all about Turn 7 smashing with Hercules or Beetle 7. The Avengers player plays a resource and passes, even going so far as to start drawing the cards for turn 2. The Faces player recruits Radioactive Man. The Avengers player chuckles, “who plays one-drops?” and whispers ‘noob' under his breath. The Faces player then plays Haywire on Turn 2. Avengers guy picks it up and reads it with a frown. Haywire takes out Wasp for the subsequent turn 3 and Radioactive Man again pings the head. Turn 3 sees a Quicksilver for Avengers and the Faces guy plays Beetle 2 and discards to get Joystick out of his deck and plays her as well. Avengers guy has a furrowed brow. Quicksilver swings in and Faces guy flips Faces and reinforces for 2. Turn 4 sees a Mystic Summons for Heinrich Zemo, which is now flanked by 3 angry characters. Avengers recruits Carol Danvers. Beetle flies in and takes out the 4, Joystick bashes Wasp and Haywire makes sure Quicksilver doesn't untap. Heinrich bashes the face and the laughed at Radioactive Man is now in for 3. The later turns don't matter as this game is over. The Faces player didn't play a single pump barring the team-up and has yet dominated the board completely – even in light of a pretty good character draw for the Avengers guy. And there we have the Faces of Evil deck. It won. A lot. Pretty much every draft at the beginning. Faces of Evil was a first pick nearly every time – even if you weren't currently going that strategy. It was the most feared bit of blue you could play. But the reality is that, while obviously good, Faces of Evil is not what made the Faces deck good. The Faces deck was good because it hit drops from 1-4 without fail, every time. It had the option of a 1 and a 2 on turn 3 with a combined power of more than most 3 drops. In fact it had options for multiple drops all along the curve. This meant that if the curve player underdropped it was very bad times for them. It allowed for a better recovery as losing one guy when you have 5 or 6 is not much as compared to losing one guy when you have two. If you happened to watch a Faces of Evil vs X draft game at this stage, on turn 5, you may see the Faces player with 14 resource points worth of guys still on the board, while the opponent may have 9 if they are lucky. Remembering back to Man of Steel drafting, if you missed your two drop, you were probably ok unless they managed the Silver Banshee/Mercy combo. If you miss your two against the Faces player, the game is over. Full stop. So what IS the point? The Faces of Evil deck was good primarily because it was the first widely accepted off-curve draft deck in VS limited. This is something all competitive VS players NEED to take a bit of time to consider. Next Up – the Metagame shifts again – or “How to Beat Faces of Evil”
“Hey, these one drops are pretty good…”
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