[{"text":"Another DC Deck-Building tournament on the books means another metagame to sit down and parse through! A lot has changed since the Tennessee Championship in July and the players in Waco were excited to plunge head first into new terrain. Most of the players at the top of the Player Ratings showed up to slug it out, and, while I missed the cut for Top 8, seeing Kevin Wand and Jeffrey Artigues end up with another 1st and 2nd place finish respectively made me proud. Hopefully they leave some trophies for the rest of us!<br><br>With Jeff\u2019s (ninjafriend in the DCDB discord group) help, I\u2019ve compiled all the results for each team in this Google doc (goo.gl\/VVQAaS). Although there are plenty of other factors that go into winning a match, including draft order and lucrative star VP cards appearing in the line-up, I believe a lot of valuable conclusions about the metagame can be drawn from this data."},{"header":"Rough Beats, Boy"},{"double":[{"src":"x01217255x01-alan.jpeg"},{"src":"ttg620215ttg-beas.jpeg"}]},{"text":"Players pegged Alan Scott\/Beast Boy as one of the best teams going into Waco, and most of the room bought into the hype. 64% of matches featured the Super Power hungry duo, making it the most picked team of the tournament. Naturally, other players saw this as an opportunity to play teams that would hinder them from getting their fill of the Lineup. Notably, Oliver Queen\/Roy Harper was the third most picked team of the tournament, especially by those playing right before Alan Scott\/Beast Boy."},{"double":[{"src":"x02145734x02-oliv.jpeg"},{"src":"x02346717x02-roy-.jpeg"}]},{"text":"Many players implemented a similar strategy of eating up Super Powers with other teams as well, translating to an average match-point earning of 1.6 for Alan Scott\/Beast Boy. Most of the team\u2019s losses were concentrated in 4-player matches, which is understandable since there is one more player available to opt for a counter-pick. Therefore, I would be more cautious and not force the team in games where I could get punished for playing it."},{"header":"Swimming With The Sharks"},{"image":[{"src":"c03314911c03-king.jpeg"},{"caption":""}]},{"double":[{"src":"c03608766c03-kill.jpeg"},{"src":"fe-206972fe-sines.jpeg"}]},{"text":"King Shark has been biding his time, waiting until the metagame was just vulnerable enough to bite into, and Waco proved to be his feeding grounds. Killer Frost and Sinestro variants ended up in 57% of matches, with Frost outperforming Sinestro by 0.5 average match-points despite being played three times as often. Killer Frost is definitely the preferred teammate considering its speed and ability to destroy cards that the player going after you wants. This makes it a clean counter-pick in front of an Alan Scott\/Beast Boy player, which several players used to their advantage during the day. If the latter sees less play, perhaps the rest of the table would instead turn their attention to beating Frost instead, or at least forcing the King Shark player to play Sinestro. Either way, the team is definitely public enemy #1 going forward, and further testing should prove whether its success can be curtailed or not."},{"header":"None For Ones"},{"text":"The phrase uttered the most throughout the tournament was &#34;pass on 1s,&#34; but it was unsurprising. Long gone are the days of first picking Bizzaro, who is now a 2. Of the remaining Tier-1 Main Characters, only a handful are even worth considering: Kyle Rayner, Black Manta, and Phantom Girl. The players in Waco recognized this and barely bothered with 1-2-3 combinations. There are a couple reasons for this aversion to the Tier-1 stack. The first is that, by picking a 1, you are missing out on the opportunity to counter-pick one of your opponent\u2019s teams.  The second is that locking yourself into a 1-2-3 Main Character combination leaves you open to being hate-drafted (i.e. the player before you taking Trickster\/Arsenal after you take Kyle Rayner\/Captain Boomerang). In an effort to avoid both of these misfortunes, I expect players to continue passing on Tier-1s in ranked games."},{"header":"Gotta Go Fast!"},{"text":"Many players recognized that playing first was better than picking first in this metagame, since choosing a high profile team in the first seat left you at the mercy of the players drafting after you. Because of this, many players over the course of the tournament had the first pick forced upon them. The favored strategy for these players was to stay open for as long as possible, usually picking a 3-3 team. My teammates even came up with a strategy where you pick Animal Man\/The Flash and steal going first from another team aiming for first dibs on the line-up."},{"double":[{"src":"c01155157c01-anim.jpeg"},{"src":"bs-908827bs-the-f.jpeg"}]},{"text":"In practice, that team\u2019s average match-point earning was brought down by playing it in 4-player games when we shouldn\u2019t have, but there are so many other successful 3-3 combinations worth playing in that seat that include Animal Man, Shazam!, Rorschach, Kalibak, Red Lantern Supergirl, and more. Hopefully players find those that work best for future tournaments."},{"header":"The Golden Age Is Over"},{"image":[{"src":"x05655752x05-gold.jpeg"},{"caption":""}]},{"text":"Oh Golden Glider! Once Queen of DCDB and now one of the most underwhelming picks in the game. While Glider should have more than the 0 match points she ended up with (in Round 4 Sang Jung conceded to me even though he ended up with more VP), the danger of losing the game by handing out VP to the wrong person is too great to risk. I know that several players choose her out of comfort, but I believe there is not enough of a draw to pick her over any of the other viable teams in this metagame."},{"header":"recap"},{"text":"The overall consensus from players was that this metagame proved to be more enjoyable than the past ones. Although I have a few concerns moving forward, hopefully the competitive environment continues to reward drafting and playing well.<br>"}]