Normally, I am not one for “tooting my own horn,” but today I plan on trumpeting like Gabriel at the Pearly Gates.

First off, I have finally succeeded in assigning my good friend and teammate Shane Wiggans a nickname that will follow him. If you read my Marvel Team-Up preview article for Devil-Slayer a few weeks back, then you may recall that I dubbed Vs. System’s favorite lawyer with the moniker of “Wiggy.” Since then, I have seen several people refer to Shane by his new pseudonym. I suppose that it’s mostly due to the irony that someone with no hair would have a nickname like “Wiggy.” Nevertheless, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that I can find new and inventive ways to give Mr. Wiggans all kinds of grief.

Secondly, I think that I may have written the funniest message board post on any message board ever. For those of you who frequent VsRealms, you may recall a thread entitled “Who Is Kergillian?” Of course, Kergillian is our resident expert on comic book lore and a frequent Easter Egg in Vs. System cards (see Funky’s Big Rat Code and Sewer System). Rather than explain the above, I decided to give a fictionalized account of Kergy’s past. In the process, I managed to ridicule crayons, pleather handbags, Canada, and numerous Metagame.com writers (including Shane Wiggans . . . again).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I had an epiphany regarding one of my pet decks. Last December, I shared with you my take on Ryan “WalterKovacs” Alarie’s deck destruction concept that used Suicide multiple times to force an opponent to send many, many cards to his or her KO’d pile. In multi-player, my build was just plain amazing, as I could effectively deck an entire table of players by turn 6 or 7. I loved the deck concept so much that I decided to start working on a version of the deck that was suitable for one-on-one play.

When I first started looking at ways to make the deck destruction deck (henceforth referred to as “DDD”—not to be confused with the Carlos Mencia gag) viable in one-on-one play, I had to reevaluate the engine that makes the discard loop possible. Originally, I would use Manhunter Giant / Suicide many times in a row to force all of my character cards into the KO’d pile. After that, I was free to use Strength of the Grave to return the cards to my deck. Unfortunately, this combo didn’t translate well into one-on-one play. Sure, I could continue to use the Manhunter Giant / Suicide combo to put cards into my KO’d pile, but honestly—what would be the point? Other than getting an extra defensive boost from Strength of the Grave, the loop would really serve no purpose.

In his original post (which I summarized in my article), Ryan mentioned that Skinner and Mark Shaw were both possibilities for making use of all the extra cards in your hand. Therefore, I tried both of them out. While they were both decent, neither one was exceptional. I figured that for all the work the deck put into running its opponent out of cards, there needed to be a greater payoff.

I started to look outside the box for options. I did a pretty lengthy series of searches using Dylan “DocX” Northrup’s Vs. System card search engine (http://www.io.com/~docx/vs/search.php). My initial inclination was to see if there was a card that had an effect along the lines of “Discard a card à Gain 1 endurance,” as endurance loss is substantial in the early turns with this deck. To my knowledge, no such card existed, and Dylan’s search engine confirmed this sad fact. Next, I looked for other effective ways to utilize excessive cards in hand. Initially, Martian Manhunter, Manhunter from Mars and Black Adam, Lord of Kahndaq seemed like good candidates; however, their 8-drop status seemed to keep them out of contention (especially when I could simply recruit The Joker, Emperor Joker on turn 8 and automatically win the game).

Then I looked at a lower-cost alternative: Bastion. The Sentinel MVP seemed to have quite a bit going for him. With a team-up, Bastion could make every one of my character cards effective and certainly enable the loop with Strength of the Grave. Still, this seemed a bit too prohibitive, as Bastion absolutely had to have a team-up to work. In addition, Bastion did nothing to utilize the remaining cards in hand (like the search cards that suddenly became dead once I had my entire deck in my hand thanks to The Fall of Oa).

To be fair, the next step probably should have been an automatic one, but it actually took me a few days to stumble across the Injustice Gang version of Bastion: Ocean Master. Now this was the card that I was looking for. He does everything that Bastion would do for the deck, only better. The stat boost that Ocean Master provides is permanent, in the form of +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters. Also, Ocean Master can use any card in hand as a discard. (So long, extra copies of UN Building!) Most importantly, Ocean Master doesn’t need a team-up to be effective in the deck. I was already playing Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose in the build, so a team-up with Injustice Gang would be pretty simple.

I began testing with various builds of the deck to determine Ocean Master’s effectiveness. I found that when I was able to deck out my opponent and bring Ocean Master into play, the game was over. It didn’t matter how many characters or attack pumps my opponents had; they could not take down Ocean Master.* As a result, I ended up taking Emperor Joker completely out. Since the games ended on turn 6 or 7 at the latest, Emperor Joker was no longer necessary as a win condition. As a side benefit, the removal of Emperor Joker made the deck Sliver Age legal.**

It’s time for me to reveal to you my crazy concoction, the DDD. Fueled by the power of the brother of an Atlantean King, this unassuming deck can put your opponent’s entire deck into his or her KO’d pile, and then put giants on your side of the board that no opponent will ever be able to beat down.

At 1, we have Manhunter Clone showing up four times. I can’t say enough about this little guy, as he is just plain amazing in this deck. It’s extremely tempting to make him a mulligan condition, as he puts so many cards in the KO’d pile all by himself. His evasion is also useful, as we can ensure he will stick around for later turns by ducking out of the way whenever threatened. Also at 1, we have the highly underrated Orb. When I was searching for Underworld 1-drops to include in the deck, I discovered how great this guy could be. Because he has concealed, Orb will usually stick around for as long as you need him. But what really makes Orb good in the deck is his discard payment power. While we only have a few characters with concealed in the deck, we have enough to make Orb’s effect relevant. Just getting to see an additional one or two cards a game can make a huge difference in setting up a highly complex strategy. In addition, there is a certain character with concealed—Deadshot, Dead Aim—that we prefer to have in the KO’d pile. All in all, Orb is a highly effective splash in our build.

Speaking of Deadshot, Dead Aim, he is a definite “four-of” in our build. He has nice synergy with several of the cards in our deck, and he really shines as a free Secret Society character who can be KO’d multiple times in a turn for Manhunter Giant’s effect. His main reason for inclusion, though, is that he allows us to put Scandal to good use. Another Secret Society 2-drop that can certainly aid us is James Jesse ◊ Trickster. If Manhunter Clone is good for our deck, then Trickster is great. Trickster effectively turns every character on our side of the board into a way to deplete our opponent’s deck. If we are lucky enough to hit Manhunter Clone and Trickster on our first two turns, then we should have little trouble decking our opponents out by turn 6. With Manhunter Clone double-evading, these two can deplete our opponent’s deck by five cards a turn just by themselves. Throw in a copy of The Fall of Oa, and that number jumps to seven cards a turn!

Our final 2-drop needs little introduction. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose is one of the lynchpin cards in several successful competitive decks. In our deck, her role is not nearly as significant, as we are only going to be playing two different locations. What, then, is the reason for her inclusion? For starters, one of our locations is absolutely critical to have every game, so we need her as insurance to find that location. In addition, Ivy is an Injustice Gang character (as stated earlier), so she can enable some of our later turns. Finally, she’s a 3 ATK / 3 DEF 2-drop, which certainly ain’t shabby!

Things really start changing at 3. You should recall that one of the key cards to the multi-player version of the DDD utilized Suicide to great effect—so much so that he was the featured card for the article. After testing with him in the one-on-one build, I wasn’t very satisfied with the results I was getting. Usually, I would only get to return him to play once per game using his effect. Since this only resulted in an additional six cards from my opponent’s deck during a game, I thought I might be able to put the 3-drop spot to better use. After much contemplation, I went back to an old deck destruction standby: Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist. I have featured this version of Lex in a number of my articles. I believe him to be woefully underappreciated, as he has an effect with very few peers when it comes to plot twist disruption. In addition, Lex gives us a lot more than just disruption. His forced draw effect is just as effective at whittling a deck down as any deck depletion effect. Also, having another early Injustice Gang character will enable a few different plot twists that might be better suited for one-on-one play.

As a precautionary play on turn 3, we have a single copy of Skinner. If we ever reach turn 6 and we are forced to underdrop a few characters to deplete the remainder of our opponent’s deck, Skinner can be a temporary outlet for putting cards into the KO’d pile. He gets a nice stat boost for every card we pitch, so it’s certainly feasible to win games without Ocean Master in play.

As with the multi-player build, we will be taking turn 4 to underdrop some characters for additional setup. If we missed some of our important early drops, this is a good time for us to get them into play so that we can get the deck destruction engine up and running at full force.

At 5, we have the king of deck destruction, Manhunter Giant. Alongside The Fall of Oa and the other deck depletion effects we have at our disposal, Manhunter Giant can pretty much assure an opposing deck-out on turn 6. With Deadshot in play, we can deplete a significant number of cards at a time. During the build phase, we exhaust Deadshot to The Fall of Oa, then KO him for Manhunter Giant’s effect. We then exhaust Lex Luthor to bring Deadshot back into play and repeat. Then we exhaust Manhunter Giant for another go-round. With just a few cards in play, we can hit our opponent’s deck for nine cards without losing any board presence.

Our other 5-drop is not in the deck so much as a turn 5 play, but rather as a second finisher. When we manage to completely deck out our opponent, he or she should have plenty of character cards in the KO’d pile. This is the kind of meal that is fit for Mephisto, Soulstealer. While his initial stats are not at all grand, he can become an absolute behemoth once he “steals the souls” of opposing characters. After an opponent is decked out, his or her KO’d pile will have, on average, about 20 character cards. Thus, our hidden 5-drop will average 25 ATK. While this is not quite as overwhelming as our 6-drop, it is still big enough to take down pretty much any other character in the game.

We’ve already discussed the possibilities with Ocean Master at 6 in some detail. Our other 6-drop is, of course, Scandal. With strong ongoing plot twists in our deck like The Fall of Oa and Funky’s Big Rat Code, Scandal is a powerful search card that can be the difference between our deck’s success and failure. Since Deadshot is such a prominent part of the deck, we should rarely have a problem using Scandal to search out two or three ongoing plot twists a game.

Onward to plot twists. First, we need to identify the relevant plot twists in our deck engine. Obviously, one of the key components for our deck-out strategy is the Manhunter plot twist, The Fall of Oa. We have plenty of other elements that actually aid in running our opponents out of cards; however, The Fall of Oa also leads us to our late game by allowing us to put our deck into our hand. With Ocean Master putting our now-enormous hand to good use, we need to complete the loop by adding a card that puts cards from our KO’d pile back into our deck. With the versatility that Strength of the Grave offers, it is the perfect fit for our deck. In addition, it can make a fine defensive pump in earlier turns to help us survive until our critical turn 6.

As is the case with any combo deck, we want plenty of search available to us so that we can hit our optimal character curve. We are certainly going to include four copies of Enemy of My Enemy. DDD is the type of deck that Enemy of My Enemy was designed for. Five different teams have significant representation in our deck, so we want a search card that gives us the flexibility to find any of these characters. In addition, we’ll also play four copies of Secret Files. Just like Enemy of my Enemy, Secret Files can find any character in our deck. Granted, it also allows our opponent to search for a card, but considering the accelerated draw sub-theme that we have with the Injustice Gang, this really isn’t a bad thing.

Regarding team-ups, there is really only one clear-cut choice for our deck. Since our goal is to run opponents out of cards, we absolutely, positively want four copies of Funky’s Big Rat Code. It’s a team-up, it helps us deck out our opponent . . . it’s perfect! Often, we will want to use Scandal to search out extra copies even after we have all of our characters teamed-up just for the extra cards we can send to our opponent’s KO’d pile.

Our final plot twist is purely a defensive choice. Since we have so many characters with concealed and evasion, we suffer a great risk of losing a good deal of endurance from our opponents’ attacks. We have to survive until turn 6 for our deck’s win condition to go off, so we need some defensive help. The Injustice Gang probably has the strongest defensive plot twist choice available to us in Power Siphon. Our opponents will usually have plenty of cards in hand, so we should get a substantial defensive boost when we play the Siphon. With one or two copies, we can prevent enough potential endurance loss to get us safely to the key sixth turn.

Our locations are few, but quite important. First, we have a single copy of Infernal Gateway. This location gives us the ability to perpetuate our loop by allowing us to return copies of Strength of the Grave from the KO’d pile to our hand. It can also be useful for getting other cards from the KO’d pile that we had to discard in earlier turns.

Another critical location for us is UN Building. Only a few decks actually play enough different teams to necessitate playing a three-team team-up card. Our deck, though, has plenty of teams to fuel this team-up. The simple truth is that UN Building provides a great deal of efficiency, as it performs the function that two regular team-ups would for us. Considering that it can be brought directly into play with Poison Ivy’s effect, it is a card we should be able to have in play every game.

Finally, let’s look at our equipment cards. We need to first consider problems that might arise from our reliance on a single character as a win condition. In most cases, our opponent won’t have any suitable responses to deal with our oversized Ocean Master. There are, however, cards like Colonel Yon-Rogg and X-Treme Maneuver that could incapacitate Ocean Master outside of combat. For this reason, we will play a single copy of Cloak of Nabu. By nullifying effects that can target Ocean Master, we can help ensure that he remains a forceful presence on our side of the board. And since we’ll be placing our entire deck into our hand once our opponent decks out, we don’t need to play any cards to search out Cloak of Nabu—it will always be right in hand when we need it!

Finally, we have a nasty little trick for messing with our opponents. In the article for the original build, I mentioned Ryan’s idea to add Planet Weapon to the deck to force your opponent to lose a resource. Upon reflection on this idea, I decided to refine it and add a copy of Reality Gem. While Reality Gem doesn’t have the burn effect of Planet Weapon, it can be used multiple times in a turn thanks to our characters with evasion. Assuming that we control the initiative on turn 6, we could very easily knock our opponent back two or three resources.

That’s the build. Let’s take a look at our completed effort:

DDD! (60 cards)

Characters (33)

4 Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk

4 Orb, Drake Shannon

4 Deadshot, Dead Aim

4 James Jesse ◊ Trickster, Giovanni Giuseppe

3 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

4 Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist

1 Skinner, Psychotic Shredder

3 Manhunter Giant, Army

1 Mephisto, Soulstealer

1 Ocean Master, Son of Atlan

4 Scandal, Savage Spawn

Plot Twists (21)

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Funky’s Big Rat Code

4 Power Siphon

4 Secret Files

2 Strength of the Grave

3 The Fall of Oa

Locations (4)

1 Infernal Gateway

3 UN Building, Team-Up

Equipment (2)

1 Cloak of Nabu, Fate Artifact

1 Reality Gem, Infinity Gem

Initiative choice is always going to be even so that we have the chance to act first on turn 6. Should we get odds, though, we should still be able to complete our optimal board setup. The mulligan condition will be for Lex Luthor or some way to search for him. Our 3-drop enables most of our early game, so we always want to see him in play.

Is This the End?

I’ve finished with my fourth article on a deck destruction variant. For a deck type that sees little to no play in the Vs. System metagame, this archetype would seem to be overrepresented in Breaking Ground. Still, it is an archetype that will probably continue to grow in the future, and it has a great deal of potential. Looking at this version, there are certainly issues with the build that need to be addressed (like the perils of underdropping on turn 4). In that regard, I plan on making it an ongoing pet project—one that you will certainly read more about in future articles. Feel free to build up and try this unique concoction for yourself. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

That does it for another week. Take care, and I’ll see you back here next week for another innovative deck idea.

*My best example of this statement is a game that I played against Kree press in Tulsa over the Christmas holidays. My opponent had initiative on 6, with something absurd like eight ready characters. In addition, all of his characters were being boosted by The Lunatic Legion, and the five that had been recruited that turn were getting an extra +2 ATK from Shatterax. On my side of the board, I had Ocean Master equipped with Cloak of Nabu and a hidden Deadshot. My opponent attacked with everyone into Ocean Master. With a Hala activation and two copies of Live Kree . . . or Die!, the attack was something around 85 ATK. I discarded 34 cards to give Ocean Master +17 ATK / +17 DEF (29 DEF total). Then I played Strength of the Grave to return 29 character cards to my deck for +29 DEF (58 DEF total). After exhausting Deadshot for The Fall of Oa to return my deck to my hand, I discarded another 26 cards to give Ocean Master +13 ATK / +13 DEF (71 DEF total). After pitching three more cards to Infernal Gateway to return Strength of the Grave to my hand, I played Strength of the Grave again for another +29 DEF (100 DEF total!)  With the attack bouncing and my opponent facing down a 41 ATK / 42 DEF Ocean Master, he scooped. Heh heh heh!

**At least until after Pro Circuit Sydney!

Michael Barnes (AKA BigSpooky) is an avid Vs. System player who is a founding member of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC). When he isn’t concocting crazy deck ideas that no sane person would think of, he occupies his spare time working as an accountant in Dallas, TX. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or straight-up flattery that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.