Welcome back to the Brotherhood of Assassins Deck Clinic. Today I’ll be working through as many as I can of the options—both old and unused, and new and untried—for updating the deck for today’s Golden Age environment. If you missed the last part of this series, you can find it here.

For reference, here is the list I’ll be using as the starting point for the process:

Brotherhood of Assassins

Tom Reeve

Characters

4 Talia, Daughter of the Demon’s Head

4 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff

4 Mystique, Raven Darkholme

4 Merlyn, Deadly Archer

1 Ra’s al Ghul, Immortal Villain

3 Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr

3 Quicksilver, Speed Demon

1 Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff

4 Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin

3 Magneto, Master of Magnetism

1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

Plot Twists

4 The Demon’s Head

3 Insignificant Threat

3 Tower of Babel

Locations

4 Lost City

4 Metropolis

4 Mountain Stronghold

3 Avalon Space Station

1 Flying Fortress

1 Latverian Embassy

1 Lazarus Pit

The easiest way to go about the update is to pick the deck apart into key sections, look at each individually, and then examine the updated list and adjust if we see serious problems with what are likely to be popular matchups.

Brotherhood of Assassins breaks down into a few key card groups: core characters, “tech” or otherwise non-core characters, core resources, and optional utility resources. With the exception of core resources (Avalon Space Station; Lost City; and a location team-up are not really up for debate), each group has decisions to make.

Let’s go through some of the questions each group raises, starting with the core characters.

Which early drops?

First of all, we’ll consider the 1-drops. The original deck has none, and I see no real reason to change that. There may be characters at this cost that fill “tech” character slots, but they certainly aren’t key to the functioning of the deck. At 2, the original deck played Talia, Daughter of the Demon’s Head. This version of Talia has two problems. First, even with a whopping 18 locations in the original deck, she only had around a 50% chance of hitting a location. Second, her stats are abysmal. 3 DEF is decent, but not enough to make up for her paltry single point of ATK. Thankfully, Infinite Crisis provided an upgrade in the form of Talia, Beloved Betrayer, who trades in that unreliable ability for a much more appealing 3 ATK / 3 DEF. There are a few 2-drops flagged up last week that search for locations, but none of them really fit. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose has no one cheap to KO to her ability, and all three (San, The Alienated One; Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose; and Kelex, Faithful Servant) open the deck up to Betrayal. This, combined with our need to get the Brotherhood and League teamed-up, leaves us happily packing four copies of Talia, Beloved Betrayer as our 2-drop of choice.

At 3, we want to start looking out for Lost City-friendly characters. This means Brotherhood 3-drops, both for powering-up and making sure we can team-up early. Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff has unimpressive stats but shares a name with a character who could end up one of our primary 5-drops. We won’t include him on his independent merits, but he is an easy source of additional characters named Quicksilver. The Brotherhood character I’d include happily on his own merits is Avalanche, Freedom Force, whose payment power gives you reliable access to something the original list was lacking—resource row disruption. Although there aren’t any more versions of Avalanche up the curve, Avalanche, Seismic Shockwave from The X-Men starter deck is a 3-drop as well. We should also keep an eye out for characters higher up the curve who have the Physical trait.

Which 4-drop?

Here the original four-of character is Merlyn, Deadly Archer. While Merlyn does offer another version up the curve now—Merlyn, Archer Assassin, a 6-drop from the Batman starter deck—it’s another 4-drop from that starter that is my preferred choice. Ra’s al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis has average stats but one of the most brutally effective powers in the game: “Whenever Ra's al Ghul causes breakthrough while attacking a character, KO that character.” Even a single point of breakthrough, and the defender goes straight to the KO’d pile. It doesn’t even matter if the character wasn’t being stunned (say, Nimrod, Mutant Hunter)—it still takes a dirt nap. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. With Lost City available to beef his 7 ATK up to a more respectable 10 or 13 without much trouble, he can threaten an automatic KO on characters higher up the curve than might be expected.

Which 5-drop?

Here it looks like we have a relatively straightforward decision to make. The original deck played an even split between Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr and Quicksilver, Speed Demon. The decision is relatively simple; with full-curve decks like Big Brotherhood and Curve Sentinels far less popular, Magneto’s triggered power has become less and less critical. Gone are the days when Magneto could exhaust a boosted Sentinel Mark V, Army on turn 5. Reinforcement, too, has become less dependent on formation, with cards like Catcher’s Mitt rendering exhaustion during combat irrelevant. If we do keep a copy of Magneto, it will be to provide formation disruption so Ra’s al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis can do his job better.

Quicksilver, then, is the choice for primary 5-drop. His stats are a little low, but the ability to attack twice more than makes up for that small failing—particularly if we include Nth Metal in our deck. Nth Metal effectively provides double the bonus on Quicksilver, as it will trigger for each attack. We already know that we can run some copies of his cheaper version, Pietro Maximoff. This means the only question is whether we still want to run Avalanche as well, which will obviously affect the numbers of both Avalanche and Quicksilver.

We will also run a copy of Bane, Ubu, as he provides a League of Assassins 5-drop (and an emergency, if likely to be very small, 7-drop) in case we aren’t teamed-up yet and need to use Mountain Stronghold to search for a 5-drop.

Which higher drops?

Here it’s the Brotherhood characters that take over. At 6 we have a number of strong options—Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin from the original deck, and Blob, Freedom Force and Mystique, Freedom Force from The X-Men. Both Freedom Force 6-drops provide Physical characters for Avalanche, Freedom Force in the 3-drop slot, which is an advantage. Both characters have useful powers, but unless a copy of the 4-drop Blob, Fred Dukes ends up being included, Mystique’s ability to provide an additional 6 points of ATK to Quicksilver across two attacks will swing the decision in her favor. With Mystique, Freedom Force as our primary 6-drop, it’s tempting to also include a copy of her Marvel Origins 6-drop version for the powerful discard ability, without compromising our ability to power-up either version.

For our 7- and 8-drops, only the numbers are likely to change; we probably won’t need as many as three copies of Magneto, Master of Magnetism with our greater access to search cards. One copy of Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head will stay as our flagship 8-drop.

Moving on to the rest of the core choices, the resources will start with some relatively simple additions—four copies each of Lost City; Avalon Space Station; Checkmate Safe House (which is a location and will team-up two teams, with the Team-Up version to protect from some resource replacement effects); and Mountain Stronghold. The Demon’s Head will also be added at this stage, with four copies providing Brotherhood of Assassins increased stability over traditional Big Brotherhood decks.

Let’s put down a first draft of the deck core and see how many slots we have left to play with for tech characters and resources. We’ll overestimate the number of copies of core characters we’ll need for now, as we can always tweak downwards or replace with tech slots.

Characters

4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer

4 Avalanche, Freedom Force

4 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff

4 Ra’s al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis

4 Quicksilver, Speed Demon

1 Bane, Ubu

4 Mystique, Freedom Force

2 Magneto, Master of Magnetism

1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

Plot Twists

4 The Demon’s Head

Locations

4 Lost City

4 Avalon Space Station

4 Checkmate Safe House

4 Mountain Stronghold

That’s 48 cards so far, 28 of them characters; most of the slack in the deck is in the resources. With just a few character slots available, let’s look at some of the options for tech characters.

What “tech” characters fit, and which are needed in today’s Golden Age?

Coming to this section of the deck after playing Deep Green in Silver Age is going to require some restraint. Without Ahmed Samsarra, White King in the deck, I can't assume that we'll have access to the multiple team-ups that characters like Asmodeus, Duke of Hell require, and in addition, I have to take Betrayal into consideration. As such, off-team characters that need to be recruited (unlike, for example, Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction) will have to be kept either to a bare minimum or out of the deck entirely. With that said, even on our primary teams there are some contenders for these slots.

Ubu, Ra's al Ghul's Bodyguard

Ubu provides two things: a League of Assassins 3-drop that can be searched out with Mountain Stronghold, and an enormous body attached to a powerful ability. How much we can take advantage of that ability will depend on whether we end up with respectable numbers of characters with range, but a single copy of Ubu is worth consideration. His loyalty is one downside, the other being that the Teen Titans can get him out of the way with Terra without his size or ability ever coming into play. Dr. Doom, similarly, can happily Reign of Terror him back to hand.

Merlyn, Deadly Archer

In some matchups, particularly the less combat-intensive ones, Merlyn's capacity for board control will be invaluable. He provides a way to break up Child Lock decks by sniping away one or another of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman, dumps Teen Titans and High Voltage low drops straight in the KO’d pile (regardless of Heroic Sacrifice or evasion), and does so for virtually no real cost. Without the ability to hide him with Rook Control or get his counter back, and without Ahmed Samsarra, White King fixing the resource row, he won't be as reliable as he was in Silver Age, but there's still a strong argument for a copy in the deck

Ra's al Ghul, Immortal Villain

Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff

Back in the day, Scarlet Witch was a useful source of endurance loss even against opponents who had the board completely locked down. Characters from Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend to Puppet Master, Philip Masters and Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards looked a lot less attractive with “Pay 5 endurance” tacked on to their activation costs. Scarlet Witch is purely a metagame call. She's a star against certain categories of stall and control decks, with a largely irrelevant text box in more aggressive and combat-intensive matchups.

Talia, Daughter of Madness

The new 5-drop version of Talia has one serious problem in the Brotherhood of Assassins deck: Her ability is only useful if we can discard a non-Talia 2-drop with the 5-drop in play . . . but Talia, Beloved Betrayer is our primary 2-drop. Nice as the tricks she can play are, adding Talia in a tech slot would necessitate also running extra 2-drops (probably Hassim, Loyal Retainer for a free ATK pump that can be deployed mid-combat). That’s a lot of deck space for a character that will generally be inferior to Quicksilver, Speed Demon while in play.

The Walking Plot Twists

To make use of teammate Ian Vincent's term, this heading encompasses those characters you never actually want to recruit. The ones that I see as serious options are Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster; Adam Strange, Champion of Rann; Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction; and . . . Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity. Not expecting the last one? I'm not entirely surprised. Arkham, much like his team as a whole, has noticeably flown under the radar. Regardless, attacking an exhausted character is pretty common these days, be it a High Voltage character that just shot you in the kneecaps with its Advanced Hardware; Terra, Tara Markov; Golden Archer, Wyatt McDonald; or a character that's simply exhausted to reinforce another character already. Mikado and Mosha’s stock has dropped somewhat in Golden Age, with Electric Eve, Live Wire’s evasion and A Child Named Valeria providing frustrating protection for key 1-drops. Adam Strange, on the other hand, can spoil Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl’s party despite the protection of both her daughter and her invisibility counter.

Which optional resources provide the most help to our game plan and can be most disruptive to our opponents’ game plans?

Burgers and fries. Beaches and ice-cream. Caffeine and online gaming. Some things are just meant to be together. And this is true of a number of the resources that are on the short list for inclusion in our new Brotherhood of Assassins build.

Flame Trap and Total Anarchy

The “Classic.” This is the cheeseburger with fries and a Coke, a staple of Big Brotherhood since mammoths were roaming the frozen tundra (and being hunted by caveman archers named Roy, no doubt). Simple, effective—a little bit limited. The presence of the League of Assassins in the deck gives us one interesting option (possibly an outlandish sauce drizzled over the fries) in the form of Lazarus Pit, which can be used to protect our characters from the ravages of Total Anarchy. Trade 3-drops, and only my opponent’s character KO's? I'll take that deal any day of the week. This particular pairing also provides something the deck can otherwise be light on—options for attacking combo decks. If Lazarus Pit isn't used with Total Anarchy, Absolute Dominance is also available as an option. Brotherhood of Assassins really couldn't care less if Talia, Beloved Betrayer sticks around to the later turns, while Avalanche, Freedom Force is valuable for as long as he can be kept around.

Nth Metal and Misappropriation

This combo is the (relatively) new kid on the block, perhaps representing the happy pairing of internet poker and sleep deprivation. Here Nth Metal is the big hitter, providing a near-permanent boost to the equipped character. Misappropriation rides on its coattails, with the ability of Misappropriation to move Nth Metal and get multiple uses in a single turn preventing it from being a dead card against equipment-free decks. Against decks with equipment, a well-timed Misappropriation can be backbreaking. It is impressive against Good Guys decks with their own Nth Metal triggers, stall decks relying on Catcher's Mitt for reinforcement, and High Voltage decks left reeling by the mid-combat theft of an Advanced Hardware. Misappropriation can also remove Utility Belt, allowing characters like Merlyn to do their jobs without interference.

Tower of Babel and Teen Titans

While only one of these will be in your deck, be assured that Tower of Babel

and the Teen Titans go together as well as napalm and boy bands. Well, as long as you're the maniac with the flamethrower, that is. A picture of Tower of Babel wearing a particularly impressive crown and standing over a heap of defeated Titans is actually in the secret Pro Players’ Handbook illustrating the chapter on “How to Redefine a Matchup with One Well-Placed Card.”

Why yes, that is a bit of a cop out. One of the issues with the original deck was that sometimes it wouldn't draw a Brotherhood 3-drop—despite running eight of them— and would be unable to team-up until such a late stage that the game was effectively over. Enemy of My Enemy neatly steps in to fill the gap, increasing our chances of hitting our chosen drops without forcing us to actually run more characters of those costs. Enemy of My Enemy is the new card that offers the most help to us, rather than presenting new options for beating down our opponents. It will earn space in the deck; the only question in my mind is whether to play three or four copies. Given the relatively simple two-team nature of the deck and the presence of a solid primary search card, three should be sufficient. That should only change if we have more off-team tech characters than I’m expecting.

There are a number of other possible inclusions. One of my personal top five favorite cards is Insignificant Threat, which punishes attempted up-curve attacks like nothing else in the game. There is a host of locations that could be valuable one-ofs. Yancy Street and Lazarus Pit can protect our stunned characters, Flying Fortress and Savage Land provide flexibility with offensive options, and Latverian Embassy is always an option to disrupt careless opponents. One copy of Avalon Space Station could, as one reader noted, be replaced by our choice of Slaughter Swamp or Soul World. Of those specific options, Slaughter Swamp would be best suited if we were in a position to search out Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster more often than not (which would likely mean running high on search cards), while Soul World's endurance payments probably only make sense if we are running Misappropriation to steal Advanced Hardware or Flamethrower from High Voltage characters. Without disrupting the burn, Soul World would probably be prohibitively expensive to keep running.

Final List

Characters

1 Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity

1 Adam Strange, Champion of Rann

4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer

4 Avalanche, Freedom Force

3 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff

4 Ra’s al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis

1 Ra’s al Ghul, Immortal Villain

1 Merlyn, Deadly Archer

4 Quicksilver, Speed Demon

1 Bane, Ubu

2 Mystique, Freedom Force

1 Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin

2 Magneto, Master of Magnetism

1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

Plot Twists

4 The Demon’s Head

3 Misappropriation

3 Enemy of My Enemy

Locations

4 Lost City

4 Avalon Space Station

4 Checkmate Safe House

4 Mountain Stronghold

Equipment

4 Nth Metal

Obviously, there are a few ways to take the deck. The list above is an attempt to give the deck solid options against the most heavily played decks; the optional resource slots feature Nth Metal for its raw power backed up by the disruption of Misappropriation. These slots—particularly Misappropriation, but also Adam Strange, Champion of Rann—are the ones that are most adaptable based on your local metagame. This list should be solid in a metagame heavy with High Voltage. If you see a lot of Titans, team-based short-curve, or off-curve aggro decks, the copies of Misappropriation can come out for Tower of Babel; Flame Trap; or Insignificant Threat. If there’s a complete absence of stall or other controlling decks in your local metagame, you could drop a copy of Magneto, Master of Magnetism for the forth copy of Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff, and drop Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin for either another utility card or another character. Perhaps a copy of Mystique, Villainous Shapeshifter from The X-Men starter deck would work well.

As always, I’m taking submissions for future articles by e-mail at vsdeckclinic@googlemail.com. In particular, take note of Jeff Donais’s article on September 26, which sets out a change to the Modern Age format. Rather than the two most recent DC or Marvel expansions, the Modern Age format will soon include all four of those most recent expansions. Currently, that would mean The X-Men, Heralds of Galactus, Justice League of America, and Infinite Crisis. The introduction of a new format is always a chance to stretch your deckbuilding muscles without having to worry so much about how a deck will play in a pre-existing metagame, so have fun with it!

Tom Reeve is a member of the Anglo-Canadian Alliance (like the Rebel Alliance, but with public transport instead of X-Wings) and would-be professional layabout from London, England. While his love of all things ninja has resulted in an arguably unhealthy affinity for the League of Assassins, that particular quirk turned into a healthy plus with the birth of the Silver Age deck Deep Green, with which teammate Ian Vincent took home the Pro Circuit San Francisco trophy to dear old Blighty.