If you want to say whats defining the meta so far I'd say speed.

How will chopping block define a meta when the more powerfull and abusive hounds of ahab didnt make a single top 8 in the previous modern PC.

Green Lantern Corps characters are just better in every way than their Men of Steel counterparts. Why?

Every character has flight and range

As opposed to Men of Steel, who don't unless they have "super" in their name.

Plus, every team was designed as a curve deck in Men of Steel, while GLC had just the opposite on antimatter, GL, and EE. It also so happens they also got tutorable KO effects for their swarm decks, the bane of curve decks. The result is an off curve metagame.

The only two affiliations that come close to being able to curve are darkside elite/LoA and superman, but they have such consistency issues without two-three straight tutors (willworld, emerald dawn, ring has chosen) that every swarm deck has that it is barely worth looking into.

I like the sound of that.

What happens overall if speed and swarm are the only way to go? Skill wins out?

Generally the difference made in a format by skill will decrease as it speeds up. The main exception to this is combo, which can be incredibly convoluted and fast. Generally, however, a metagame composed of fast aggro decks will tend to reward either small deckbuilding tweaks (David Price winning Pro Tour LA 98 in large part due to adding Giant Strength to his very fast mono-red beatdown deck, and beating all the other very fast mono-red beatdown decks in the process) or luck on the day. Initiative will be stupidly important; I wouldn't at all be surprised if number of coin-flips won at PC: Indy correlated very strongly with match wins on day 1.

If you want to increase the extent to which actual play-skill on the day will matter, games need to either go longer or tend towards fast combo instead of fast aggro. Games going longer tends to even out draws; missing your 3-drop in current DC Modern looks like it may well be almost instantly fatal, regardless of the skill you bring to the table. The more turns you can mathematically survive through a bad draw, the more opportunities you are provided for skill and Jedi powers to pull you out of the hole.

Also, formats that are KO-heavy can't help but be less skill-intensive than those that aren't, because there are fewer options when the characters die.
Oh, and while your theory is correct in general, obviously some aggro is more skill-intensive than others. Emerald Enemies blitz, for example, requires some skill and punishes misplays rather brutally.

As for a defining card in DC Modern, I wouldn't pick just one, but there are some 'obstacle cards' that a deck has to be able to handle to have a chance. Chopping Block is one of those of course, and another is Remoni-Notra. I've seen a few otherwise very good decks that aren't viable because they flat out lose to the deadly combo of Remoni-Notra + not having turn five initiative.

The problem in my mind is that they've suddenly printed a slew of incredibly efficient KO effects that are essentially unpreventable. Previously, while KO effects existed, you could play around them or build countermeasures into your deck (Lazarus Pit, for example, or Nice Try.)

The problem with the new ones is that they randomly circumvent every available countermeasure, and they are also much stronger than previous examples. Chopping Block, for example, is ridiculous. It's a 0-cost equipment that doesn't just give the equipped character a Finishing Move ability, it gives it a better Finishing Move ability. And you can play it from your hand.

When you add in Damsels in Distress, Remoni Notra and Femme Fatality, you suddenly have KO effects that have no answer in the entire format. There are no defensive pumps, there's nothing playable that protects your stunned characters, and recovery effects, one of the traditional foils to KO effects, do nothing. When you go on to compare the quality of the offensive pumps and characters to the defensive pumps and characters, it's even worse.

It's no wonder that stall decks are rendered unplayable; UDE simply haven't printed any cards that would help them. Any cards that they did print that would suit stall decks, let's take Izaya, Highfather or Guardians Reborn, are invalidated by the much more powerful tools given to swarm decks.

Throw in the fact that a multitude of KO effects tends to mean that whoever has the upper hand keeps the upper hand, and you have one boring format.

I mean, I'm not bored with it yet, but I'm pretty sure I will be.

Couldn't agree more, and this bothers me b/c it's rendered an entire set obselete. There's nothing in that Man of Steel that can even hope to compete w/a GLC-flavored KO deck.

ghetto....I am pretty sure a hounds of ahab deck top 8'd PC Amsterdam. :cheeky:

I agree as well. How bad is it that I would play Yancy Street in every single deck I build in this format?

Oh, and those teams also have awful search compared to team willpower.

...er, I assume you mean "drafting skill", because otherwise I'm not sure what the heck you're talkin' about, Stu. Top 8 will be comprised of the best draft players to make day 2, like it always does, and then their decks aren't necessarily going to be representative of the best decks in the format. Honor Among Thieves won in Amsterdam despite the fact that it's a very, very luck-dependent deck, schizophrenically switching between games from "absolutely dominant" to "misses three drops and collapses".

Gencon will likely be the same. A lot of people will play "the best" decks, but a few good drafters will make day two playing Darkseid's Elite blitz or something (which isn't a bad deck per se, but it's not that reliable in terms of draw) and they'll pwn the drafts and make day three and we'll have people once again mistakenly screaming about the "power" of DE blitz.

When he said the top 8 will be "pwned" I believe he was referring to the eventual winner. Regardless of day 1 performance the winner still has to favourably finish over a potential 11 matches. Also, unless they managed a 9-0 or 8-1 draft the top 8 will consist of people who went 9-3 and better on day 1.

While not the most optimal reflection of the top DC Modern decks, I doubt there will be much Darkseid Blitz in day 3.

Looking at the last 2 PCs, in NY everyone who made top 8 was atleast 9-3 after day 1. In Amsterdam there were 2 people who went from 8-4 to top 8, but 4 of the top 8 after day 1 remained top 8 after day 2. So if you're planning on going 7-5 and then making top 8, think again :). It's very very difficult to 9-0 a draft day.

Join the club.

That sounds about right.

This thread has turned rather brilliant all of a sudden.