[{"text":"The Dallas team and I have been tearing up the competitive DC Deck-Building scene lately, with my win at the Texas Championship in April (https:\/\/www.dcdeckbuilding.com\/article.php?id=10794) and Kevin Wand winning a tournament in June (https:\/\/www.dcdeckbuilding.com\/article.php?id=10810). Unfortunately, the majority of us couldn\u2019t make it out to the Tennessee Championship on the 21st, except for my brother, Alec May. Although he made the finals there, he ultimately came home without a trophy and fell to #2 in the Player Ratings (https:\/\/www.dcdeckbuilding.com\/ratings\/). "},{"text":"Thankfully, Crisis 4 is on the horizon (http:\/\/www.dcdeckbuilding.com\/x.php?id=10834), and we\u2019re excited to get to play with some of the new Characters once their initial Tiers are figured out. Still, it is important to look at the data from the previous tournament in order to determine what strategies seem best and which should be left in the Main Character stack. Here is all the data I amassed from the Tennessee Championship and the testing we did: (https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1-fAB-FZEachwLyxsCsniscut2RG_7Yj0kRbLtuPO6ZU\/edit#gid=272636004)."},{"image":[{"src":"cap640872cap54053.png"},{"caption":""}]},{"header":"the good"},{"double":[{"src":"har435300harley-q.jpg"},{"src":"red214379red-lant.jpg"}]},{"text":"Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl was undeniably the best team in Tennessee. It won five matches, the most of any MC combination played at the tournament. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these games involved a player on Bizarro\/Kid Flash\/Darkseid. In our testing, my team and I determined that letting someone else pick Bizarro\/Kid Flash and then playing Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl gave us the best odds of winning a match. While not a hard counter, the card advantage amassed from guaranteed Red Lantern Supergirl triggers translated to consistent VP gains. This is not a new discovery, however; when Red Lantern Supergirl was raised from Tier-2 to Tier-3, it was noted how &#34;in competitive play, destroying cards is rampant, and when mixed with 4 player tournament games, this character can be quite unhealthy. While paired with Harley Quinn, your card advantage can become too overwhelming for opponents.&#34; (https:\/\/www.dcdeckbuilding.com\/article.php?id=10782) As long as people want to keep running destruction-based teams, including new Arsenal teams, I see no reason you shouldn\u2019t punish them for it."},{"header":"the bad"},{"double":[{"src":"kid260783kid-flas.jpg"},{"src":"the670368the-come.jpg"}]},{"sbs":[{"src":"gre234428green-ar.jpg"},{"caption":"My pick for the worst team in Tennessee has to be Kid Flash\/Comedian\/Green Arrow. This MC combination was played twice (three times if you count Kid Flash\/Kid Flash TTG\/Black Manta\/Green Arrow) and failed to rack up any match points. The allure here is getting to hate-draft Kid Flash from the Bizarro player, but if this is the best team you can play, you are better off letting your opponent play Darkseid and draft a team that can keep up with it. Weird how being dependant on a single card type flipping out into the line-up stack up poorly against teams that don\u2019t have that restriction! If you want to buy Villians that badly, you are better off playing something like Indigo\/Manhunter that gives you a second type to benefit from. <div> <\/div>"}]},{"header":"the kalibak"},{"double":[{"src":"kal618304kalibak-.jpg"},{"src":"blu656707blue-bee.jpg"}]},{"text":"I wanted to talk about our Kalibak team, which underperformed but has a lot of potential. A few games into our testing, we discovered that Kalibak in combination with Blue Beetle gave an eight card hand on the second turn, at the cost of passing on the first one. I crunched the numbers to figure out how much power we were likely to generate with various starting hands:"},{"image":[{"src":"cap871935capture.png"},{"caption":""}]},{"text":"Based on this, it is optimal to pass with a 2 or 3 Punch hand on Turn 1 to give us the highest chance to buy a 6 or 7 cost card on Turn 2 and start running away with the game. Black Manta slotted in as our last Tier Point, letting us see the card we bought as soon as possible.&nbsp; In testing, the team had some really explosive wins, as well as a few unfortunate losses where it couldn\u2019t build momentum. It seemed like that latter ended up being the case in Tennessee, but I hope more people try out the team and send me their thoughts."},{"header":"the overrated"},{"double":[{"src":"biz95080bizarro-.jpg"},{"src":"kid32626kid-flas.jpg"}]},{"double":[{"src":"dar61558darkseid.jpg"},{"src":"car947722card-bac.jpg"}]},{"text":"Bizarro\/Kid Flash\/Darkseid had its fair share of match wins at three, but it only was when another player, for whatever reason, chose not to counter-pick Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl. The worst part is that in two of these matches, Harley Quinn was played as part of a 1-2-3 MC combination. I\u2019m going to chalk this up to bad drafting, since our testing showed us that if you want to beat Darkseid you can."},{"double":[{"src":"sha33332shazam-m.jpg"},{"src":"big919208big-bard.jpg"}]},{"text":"Shazam!\/Big Barda also won three matches, but I have a lot of doubts about how good it is, considering it also lost over half its total matches. The way the team currently plays out is a lot like rolling dice: you\u2019re hoping to roll high and win big. John Huff nearly did exactly this over the course of the tournament, but, to all of our surprise, his hot streak finally ran out the semi-finals. That said, I do want Shazam! to have a place in the metagame, since the character has such a unique ability to competitive play (letting you purchase cards in addition to a Super-Villian). While I wouldn\u2019t pair any of the Crisis 4 Characters with Shazam!, I am crossing my fingers that some existing MCs get lowered to Tier-3.&nbsp;"},{"header":"The Underrated"},{"double":[{"src":"kin38081king-sha.jpg"},{"src":"sin268481sinestro.jpg"}]},{"text":"King Shark\/Sinestro won its only match in Tennessee, but I suspect that it was not played enough. A lot of people, including the Dallas team, discounted it on account of its inability to keep up in the previous couple of metagames; however, Teamwork, the bane of King Shark, was much more rampant in those metagames than in this one. Sinestro also doesn\u2019t feed the Red Lantern Supergirl player the way Killer Frost does, although you\u2019re open to draft either by taking King Shark. This team is definitely on my shortlist for future testing."},{"header":"Apokolips Now"},{"text":"Based on the current data, a problem exists in the metagame. If the rest of the table is playing average teams, Bizarro\/Kid Flash\/Darkseid should have an easy path to victory; however, the first seat or second seat could just draft the parasitic Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl and generate insurmountable card advantage. I don\u2019t think either scenario is healthy for competitive play. Therefore, something must change. One solution to this would be for players to draft Bizarro in a different combination, preferably one that doesn\u2019t entice a Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl counter-pick. This would effectively remove both teams from the match. The issue with this though is that you would be trusting your opponents to draft correctly. This solution also does nothing to alleviate the problem of being the fourth player in a draft, who cannot implement this reliably and is therefore subject to the whims of the rest of the table. A better solution would be to raise Bizarro to Tier-2, which would hopefully nerf the team just enough to diminish the presence of Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl. As I mentioned earlier though, Harley Quinn\/Red Lantern Supergirl can still prey upon upcoming Arsenal teams or other destruction-based teams, at which point we\u2019ve just given our existing meta a cosmetic upgrade. Raising Harley Quinn to Tier-4 as well could alleviate these worries, and I\u2019m sure giving Characters other than her a chance to win tournaments would be a welcome change of pace. Regardless of what ends up happening, I know the rest of my crew and I will put in the work take down the next one! "}]