So, if I haven’t made it evident yet, I’m a huge Arkham fan. I’m constantly testing various Arkham Inmates Control builds, trying to juice a tier one deck out of my favorite band of misfit maniacs. Going into Superman, Man of Steel, my hopes were high. In short, I was promised an 8-drop. I don’t remember by whom . . . in fact, it could just be that I felt I was owed an 8-drop by that point. Either way, I wanted one.

I got one, too. Unfortunately, just like the kid who wants a hot new toy for Christmas, I felt like the victim of a horrible bait and switch. Instead of a two foot tall killer robot, I opened a proverbial light bulb oven. Except The Joker, Emperor Joker can’t bake me frosted treats in which to drown my sorrows.

Since then, I’ve moved on. I’ve accomplished some great success with the deck, due in large part to Smiles, Everyone, which is the best thing ever. World peace? Freedom from disease? They all pale when held up to my love for Smiles.

Sure, we’ve all looked at Emperor Joker, and though a deck destruction deck doesn’t yet seem viable, the theme of deck destruction does have some very interesting support cards. I think those cards are worth taking a look at. I’m going to approach this card group from a pure mill-style mentality—if it peels cards off the top of your opponent’s deck and throws them somewhere he or she can’t get them, it’s in the group. If it can strip cards from the opponent’s deck, but only particular cards via a search mechanic (like The Source), I’m not going to include it here.

So, we have seven cards in this group—four characters, two plot twists, and one location. Those seven cards span four different teams—Team Superman, Spider-Friends, Arkham Inmates, and Revenge Squad. Let’s check out the characters first.

The four characters are Madame Web, Prankster, the aforementioned Emperor Joker, and Black Cat, Felicia Hardy. Out of the four, only The Joker, Emperor Joker has loyalty or a pseudo-loyalty effect.

Prankster is the cheapest of the group and is arguably the most useful, provided you can keep him alive. His effect can be used one of two ways. Either you can use him to try to make sure your opponent doesn’t hit his or her drops (by calling the next turn’s resource total as your declared number), or you can use general and acquired knowledge about your opponent’s deck to try to strip him or her of as many cards as possible. This versatility is nice. In a normal deck that uses Revenge Squad characters, Prankster is a great source of disruption to your opponent’s curve. Meanwhile, in a deck that runs Prankster primarily for his potential mill power, his first use can still come in handy for slowing down an opponent’s offensive. This is important if you’re mixing a bunch of teams together and can’t reliably reinforce your characters.

In Sealed Pack, Prankster is a small, but explosive, bomb. Not only can he provide invaluable amounts of curve disruption, but he also takes out half of the set’s top ten plot twists. Not a fan of your opponent using I Hate Magic! to jump the curve? Call 2, and you not only eliminate the best plot twist in the format, but you can also nuke Path of Destruction, Stopped Cold, Up, Up, and Away, and even Boom Tube. In an environment where 2-drop plot twists are frequently picked over characters, Prankster can be game-breaking.

Next up is Madame Web. Back when I wrote the preview for Madame Web, I was pretty enthused about the card. Not only can she give intelligence and disruption, but she can also help you stack your deck so you hit your curve. Despite the latter’s use in the character-search-challenged Spider Friends arsenal, Madame Web generally takes a back seat to Ricochet and Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Though Madame Web is nice in theory, she seems to be too fragile for a conventional deck in an environment where turn 3 aggression is the norm.

That said, her ability to mill away two cards a turn is of serious note. When compared to Madame Web, Daily Planet and X-Ray Vision look like drops in a bucket. Though she’s too fragile for a dedicated Spider-Friends deck in the current Constructed environment, Madame Web may be a future star player. Her cost could come in handy, fitting as it does under the umbrella of Granny Goodness.

Also on the Spider-Friends team is Black Cat, Felicia Hardy. Capable of reliably grinding down the opponent’s deck by one or two cards per turn (depending on who controls the initiative), Felicia has the magic 7 ATK needed to be a serious 4-drop, and she also has one of the best effects available. She’s underplayed in current Spider-Friends decks, due in part to the popularity of her 2-drop alter ego. With Marvel Knights looming on the horizon, though, she’s another card to look out for.

In a dedicated deck destruction deck, Black Cat offers what many themed decks lack—decent freakin’ stats. All too often, an off the wall synergistic deck will sacrifice offensive capabilities to accomplish its theme, and that generally dooms the idea. That’s not the case here, however, as Black Cat can stun back most 4-drop characters, and also packs a wallop when attacking down the curve (which is ideal, since her controller can use her effect twice if the opponent is forced to attack back).

Lastly for the character lineup is my own personal light bulb oven, The Joker, Emperor Joker. I joke about the card, but if one is to successfully employ a deck depletion strategy, The Joker is a must—he provides the deck with its win condition. In any other type of deck, his loyalty, below-the-curve stats, and lack range and flight would make him sub-par, but in a mill deck, he’s quite good. Even though the Arkham cell blocks have no other deck destruction with which to feed Joker’s loyalty requirement, there’s always Penguin, whose effect can double the card-crunching goodness that Daily Planet offers each turn.

Daily Planet is, unfortunately, the beginning of the schism in this theme. It’s a solid contribution to the cause, despite only being able to strip one card per turn (sans Penguin). The fact that its loyalty-esque effect requires one to play Team Superman is one of the biggest challenges for a deck destruction strategy. While Daily Planet’s low threshold of 1 lets the party get started exceedingly early, it and X-Ray Vision are just good enough to be alluring and just poor enough to be annoying. Planet, if played on turn 1, can mean the difference between winning and losing when Emperor Joker hits on turn 8. If Penguin is recruited on turn 3 and actually stays in play until the end of the game, a single Daily Planet can be worth fourteen cards from the opponent’s deck. That is, of course, assuming a vacuum of play, but if Daily Planet eliminates even half of its ideal potential, that represents a substantial amount of deck damage.

X-Ray Vision is . . . worse. It seems to have been designed for a Team Superman protection deck that counts on having Perry White and Jimmy Olsen in its back row, where they nothing but stare through buildings and people’s clothes. That being said, it’s an interesting indulgence if you don’t have to reinforce and want to take a few peeks at what your opponent has in store for you. It might have a place in such a deck, assuming the deck first establishes a place for itself in the current environment. Thus far, Superman Protection hasn’t seen much play. X-Ray Vision seems counterintuitive to a dedicated deck destruction strategy, because it requires two Team Superman characters on the field. The only reason we’d even want to recruit one, let alone two, is to satisfy Daily Planet’s condition.

Luckily, the final card in the group is a lot less scrupulous. Overpowered is arguably the best card in the group, primarily because of its ridiculous ease of use. Madame Web and Prankster are great for their ability to strip away more than one card at a time, but Overpowered gets rid of five.

If a game goes to turn 8, your opponent will have naturally drawn through twenty cards. Cards like Signal Flare and Boris can up that count into the mid-twenties. Four Overpowereds can knock out another twenty cards. Drawing all four copies is tricky, but still, that leaves just fifteen to twenty cards for Prankster, Madame Web, Black Cat, Daily Planet, and the Joker to take out. Success in this manner seems just tantalizingly out of reach of reality. Overpowered brings the goal to a “so close, but so far away” position. Without it, dedicated deck destruction themes aren’t even worth considering.

Of course, Overpowered is viable outside of dedicated strategies. Prankster is incredibly good, and will see play in Revenge Squad decks. Mixed with four copies of Overpowered, the Revenge Squad can make it very difficult for an opponent to hit his or her drops. Mix that up with a few cards that prey on weak victims (namely Parasite and Lex Luthor, Power Armor), and you’ve got a workable skeleton for a very competitive deck. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this will see play, either in a mono-Squad build or something similar, and though it’s doubtful that Overpowered will immediately play a starring role, it could and should become a staple in the archetype.

In a period where dedicated mill isn’t quite viable, the goal of studying this card group is to understand exactly how mill effects effect the current and future environments. Currently, they don’t effect the environment—no documented successful deck runs any of the above cards. In the near future, however, deck destruction could be a big part of Spider-Friends, New Gods, and especially Revenge Squad. My money is on a Revenge Squad Control variant dominating in the next four months. Totally freakin’ broken? I’ll take the plunge and say yes, absolutely. Mono Revenge Squad is looking pretty hot, and Doom/Revenge Squad is looking even better.

Deck destruction is going to play a big role in Vs. in 2005. Be ready for it when it hits.

-Jason Grabher-Meyer

Questions? Comments? Email me at jason@metagame.com.