By: Jason Collins
The motto of all the Married with Clix meta game content is “Practice makes your team better” and practice comes in many forms. Playing the game in any environment can be considered practice and sitting down and mapping out the strengths and weaknesses of a team even before rolling dice can be considered practice. But sometimes, practice isn’t just a solo adventure.
When preparing for major tournaments, a lot of players prefer to keep to a close knit group of players in order to flesh out their builds. It’s beneficial to form teams of clix players; usually friends, all interested in trying to share and collect ideas to better improve their builds and make themselves aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their builds. All the while keeping knowledge of what you’re running close to the chest because sometimes secrecy is potent when attending a tournament. So what can you do to best manage your team and make sure you and your friends are getting the best possible outcome?
Collaborate on Builds
“Hey what do you think of my team?”
“Do you think this will work?”
“I like this character, check out this build!”
This is what my Facebook inbox looks like. Some of it come from fans of my show, but most of it from my teammates on the Meta Lab. It’s one of the most important aspects of having a team. You end up having a group of people you’re comfortable passing your ideas to without hesitation. Most importantly this will also be a group willing to question your choices. This is an important aspect to team building because if one of your teammates or fellow players questions a piece’s involvement and you can’t see the answer as obvious, you have to question that pieces involvement yourself and possibly make a change.
Also, if your friend turns around and asks “What does it do?” then you have the chance to explain it. There’s a great deal of value in explaining your thought process out loud (or via text) to another person. It allows you to better process what may turn out to be a strength or weakness in your build or you may get caught or catch yourself on important rules you may have overlooked. The audience is there to help you as well. Sometimes another clix player you may not be friends with or on a team with, is absorbing ideas to use in their own ways or to prep themselves against you. Paranoid though it may sound, not everyone is there to help you get better, but having a team of people you trust can go a long way towards making sure that 100% of the give and take is moving in the right direction.
*As a disclaimer I don’t actively believe anyone is taking my ideas and/or using them against me. But sometimes a conversation won’t necessarily come with a commitment to help you make something better.
Structured Practice
“Alright, who’s net-decking today?”
“Well that didn’t work!”
“I think I could change that outcome!”
We, at the Meta Lab, on occasion, get together and practice. We do what we can to build our teams and pound them against the wall of the metagame. There is value in having a structured practice. So let’s discuss what a good team does during practice.
Data Collection
This is by far the most important aspect of practice. Team practice isn’t a player proving ground. It’s not to prove who the best is, that’s for the tournament. A practice session is a team/build proving ground. You need to be able to see what the team is doing AND what the player is doing with that team and question behaviors. During a practice game, the goal is to instill habits and ensure your build is using all the proper tools to accomplish the task. So, teammates will take a second during games to remind each other of important aspects such as, using your resources, remembering your ATAs, pointing out bonuses etc.
If your team does well when it wins the map roll, take a game or two and have the other player choose a map that might not work for you and would be advantageous to them. It helps to have an idea how to pilot a build without the usual advantages. Data collection comes from playing against the builds that players expect to see, and feel will be difficult, as well as from making mistakes AND playing a team well. Getting information is an important outcome of a good practice.
Developing Habits
Sometimes you need to develop some new habits or fix some bad habits. Often times, it’s difficult to fix theses habits on your own or in the wilderness of organized play, so it helps to have a group willing to patiently work with you to improve these habits.
As an example with my own issues regarding patience, my team has been trying to tell me to take my time, work through my ideas, and has been patient with me talking out my turns. If you are or have a player you work with who needs to step away from a type of build, or needs to expand passed a familiar build, work with them to get beyond that. Help them develop their skills with strategies with some of your own.
Create Better Strategy
It’s always best to have at least 3 players in a practice. Two players playing, one observing. The reason for this is, even in practice, each player will have their own observations and ideas, but they will have a slightly biased slant. An extra observer will be able to add more unbiased observations and offer both players some ideas they may have missed.
During games, you’ll want to hold onto your strategy observations until after the game is over. When you see a move a player takes, let them make that move, and question it later. But give the player a chance to bring it up first. If they don’t point out a questionable or weird move they made, that’s the time for you to check their head. If you think it cost them the practice game make them aware of it, and if they recognize the issue they can use that information to either play their team differently or to adjust their build to avoid repeating the mistake later on. There are many undeniable returns to having a group to practice with and is one of the biggest advantages to being part of a team.
*Look to a future article for a full description on how to actually run and operate a team practice as there is more to actually running one than what’s here.
Road Trip Love
Look, when it comes to competitive Heroclix play there’s a fair bit of travelling involved. Travelling costs money. It costs less if you travel in a group. Sharing the costs of gas, hotel rooms, and food(?) can take some of the financial stress off of the players on the team. As well, nothing is better than the stories and camaraderie that is developed by a bunch of friends going to an event and enjoying themselves and playing their butts off. This sort of bond can help really strengthen a group as a whole and improve the communication between all the players.
Hopefully I’ve managed to explain in enough detail, the advantages to being part of a heroclix playing team. Join us next time as I discuss in greater detail, how to run and organize a structured practice session.
