Let's dial back to a couple of weeks ago, and remember the three things every squad should have:
1) Ways to beat your opponent
2) Ways to stop your opponent from beating you
3) Ways to make sure 1 and 2 happen when you need them
These points haven't changed! No matter how much you analyze where your energy is going to come from, and how, and when, you still need to accomplish these things. What that knowledge does give us, though, is some direction.
Balancing Your Theme
Like I'd said before, most of the time, when you go about making a squad, you're going to start by thinking about how you're going to beat your opponent, and build from there. Maybe you'll feel like exploring unblockables, and pick up Soaring Angel. Maybe you've got Tsarina Black Widow in your hot little hands and are dying to see what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you're an old-school Magic player who liked playing direct damage decks, and settled on Flame On! Human Torch. You'll have this kernel of an idea that you want to explore, and the question from there is: where do I go next?
The answer, of course, depends on what exactly you picked, but as I laid out before, a good next step still is to consider what goes well with that card. There are lots of very natural combos - various Iron Man cards or Hulks and that Flame On! Human Torch, Higher Ground Angel and Tsarina (or other 'spin down' characters, for that matter), Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Strange and Soaring Angel, to continue our examples.
We take a look at these options, see where they place us cost-wise, and plan ahead accordingly. For example, getting that Hulk to go with our Human Torch puts us at a 4 and a 6; an Iron Man would be a 4 or a 5 on top of that/instead of that, and all of these are medium-to-pricey characters to field. That seems like we're leaning a little bit to the expensive side of things, not a good place to be if we're looking to be fielding lots of characters to have HT pew pew all over the place. So clearly we'd want to look into some cheaper characters, possibly ones that'll help us draw extra dice to help pay for our beefy bevy of blast-enablers; sounds like a job for Mutate #666 Beast.
With the Tsarina and Higher Ground Angel idea, we've got a solid start to a brutal weenie squad, and we're still very good on cost with a 2 and a three, both of which field cheaply; we don't really need to worry about getting too expensive. We could probably use a defensive option so we don't need to hang any of our attackers back, and we might want some larger guys to prevent a durable opponent from grinding our little guys to the used pile through turns and turns of crushing us with larger numbers. Without needing to worry about getting to expensive yet, we could consider something like Jack Deadpool or McRook Punisher to help take out, or punch out, those bigger guys, or maybe Quasar Nova to add some draw potential to our beef.
Overall, what we're looking at as we go through picking our offensive team is finding where that thematic coherence of abilities working together meets a good 'curve' for energy usage - some cheaper characters to field earlier and fill in holes with later, or use for energy, and some larger ones to bring in the win...or lots of smaller ones and ways to keep them all in play. Ultimately there's a point when you'll want to stop focusing here; in Constructed, I'd probably say it's probably four or five cards, depending on if you've got anything that can already act as an assassin or in some other strong form of enemy-hindering role, or any draw aid characters already enlisted. In sealed deck, that'll probably be more like two.
Plugging Holes
We then go on to pick solve problems our theme would have, or fill in holes on our buy/fielding cost profile. If we realize we have a crippling weakness to Angelo/Doom decks, maybe we need to pick up that Mjolnir, or one of the Magnetos with that villain-rerolling global. If we have somehow managed to not take anything that costs less than 4, we should probably snap up something at cost 2; if all our guys run high TFC, we probably want something that doesn't (and, ideally, is also cheap to buy, so we can squeeze it in). We'll have a few slots to do this in constructed - leaving two, maybe three slots more generic opponent-stoppers, or draw aids, if we don't already have them. Again, space will be much tighter in sealed, to the point that I'd say you're probably better off just making sure you have a good, general-purpose opponent control card rather than covering specific threats, unless you feel they'll be very common, and if you're running really high on cost...you may want to rethink your offensive approach.
Our remaining spots need to go to letting us stop our opponent from winning, and helping us do our thing faster. With any luck, we've identified ways to go about doing this in the previous step, like our proto-Tsarina squad looking into McRook for his added punch, or the Human Torch team picking up Mutate #666. If not, now is the time to figure out what works best with our team; can we afford the five-cost assassin/control Cadillacs of Gem Keeper Loki or Wind Rider Storm, or do we need to go with the more affordable options in African Princess Storm or McRook? Maybe James Rhodes War Machine is an option because we're using Iron Man; should we consider that? Or maybe we feel our squad is really weak against a Tsarina rush, and want to grab Genetics Expert Beast; what are we doing for energy if we're locked out of Mutate #666, then?
This is where the juggling really happens, and as you can guess, it'll be ten times worse in Sealed, when all you have for sure is four slots. In constructed, even if you plotted out a big fancy offensive team with six characters, you'll still have a spot for an assassin and something to help you draw, or two assassins of varying cost (though, if you've got six cards that don't include either of those, and all of which feel vital, you might have a squad that's a little on the complicated side, which likely will run into problems with speed decks...which you'll need to account for). With only four...you're either running two offensive cards, one assassin, and one draw aid, or three offensive cards with one or more doing double duty and the last card filling in as needed, and you've also got to make sure you're not unbalancing yourself in costs - easy to do with only four data points. There are, of course, more things to factor in with that format - what exactly you can plan on for your other four cards, for one, and the fact that you're not going to be able to get any of the starter set cards, and aren't likely to get a fourth die for them if you should take them, for another, but we'll get to that another time as "How to Build For Sealed Deck" is a full topic in its own right.
Wrapping Up
Essentially, those three basic points are the core of an effective squad; knowing about purchase and fielding costs really just adds another layer to it, that informs how you pick things according to your points. It'll steer you towards that Nova instead of that Hulk when you've already got one or two big guys; it'll suggest you grab African Princess Storm instead of a Loki or even McRook. Or maybe you'll consult it, and you'll see - "no, I'm not going off the deep end there, I can fit them in," or even "this is looking a little light, I need to work in something beefier." It's the spices to the basic ingredients of the offense/defense/speed, tying it together and bringing it flavor, and when you figure it out - something I hope to continue touching on in future posts - it will really make everything pop.
I hope you've enjoyed this introductory series on squad building, and look forward to finally getting on to talking about how to count dice and read your opponent's coming turns next time, in How To Get Kicked Out Of Vegas, If Vegas Played Dice Masters!
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