Are you ready?

Are you r-r-r-r-r-r-ready?

To the thousands of Vs. System players reading this preview and the millions of gamers around the world, ladies and gentlemen . . . LET’S GET READY TO REEEAAA-DYYY!

This is, no doubt, the reason why Cosmic Radiation is held in such high regard. In the first year of Vs. System, Cosmic Radiation was pretty much synonymous with combo decks. Any card that can allow a player to draw oodles of cards, burn for a bunch of damage, or gain twenty-five ballot counters for Rigged Elections must be respected. In fact, any combo that hinges off characters readying inside of a turn can be (and probably has been) exploited by this Fantastic Four power card.

The very first Pro Circuit saw its fair share of Cosmic Radiation. Prior to the PC, several players in my area had been testing decks that used Cosmic Radiation to ready an attacking character, then exhaust it for Team Tactics to double the attacker’s ATK. When the combo worked it was absolutely devastating, often hitting for more than 50 endurance in a single attack. Moving closer to the PC proper, I recall the final round of the Last Chance Qualifier in which I played. I had managed to steer my The Brave and the Bold deck through a The New Brotherhood deck and a Gamma Doom deck. In the final round, I faced off against an ingenious Cosmic Radiation burn deck. My opponent used several copies of GCPD Officer in the early turns to stave off damage and establish board presence. On turn 5, a team-up with the Fantastic Four allowed him to play Mr. Fantastic, Stretch, followed by a slew of Advanced Hardware. After exhausting all of his characters in play for Advanced Hardware’s effect (using Mr. Fantastic to transfer the equipment to each character), he used Cosmic Radiation to ready his cops for an extra bout of burn. It was a rather vicious combo that almost always killed on turn 5. Through the power of Flame Trap and Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon, I was able to scrape by with the victory. But that was not the last time that I would see Cosmic Radiation that weekend.

In the first round of the Pro Circuit, I had the great (mis)fortune to be paired against Niles Rowland. Despite my earlier success against a Fantastic Four burn deck, I was wholly unprepared for Niles’s mono-Fantastic Four burn deck. It was very much like the Fantasticar decks that were so popular at the PC, but it swapped out the standard character and equipment compliment of the Fantastic Four beatdown decks for more burn-oriented cards like Human Torch, Hotshot and Advanced Hardware. The result was a rather thorough thrashing. Niles crushed my smaller characters on his initiatives, then used his burn cards along with Cosmic Radiation to hurt me even more during my attacks. While Niles did manage to burn me out in that match, I was able to exact revenge in round 4 when I took down his teammate David Frayer, who was playing the identical deck. Probably the only reason that I was able to dispatch David was that he didn’t draw a single copy of Cosmic Radiation during the match.

Of course, no discussion of the inaugural Pro Circuit would be complete without mentioning the Cinderella deck of the PC, Rigged Elections. I faced off against PC runner-up Craig Edwards and the vaunted Your Move Games Rigged Elections deck in round 5. The deck was a brilliant synergy of search and board control effects that used A Child Named Valeria to keep its player’s board intact. After setting up the requisite team-ups between Fantastic Four, Gotham Knights, and Arkham Inmates, the player would exhaust the characters on his or her side of the board to add ballot counters to Rigged Elections. Once the board was exhausted, he or she would use Cosmic Radiation to ready all of his or her characters in play, including Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred would be activated to find another copy of Cosmic Radiation and then recruited once more. The procedure was repeated several more times, with Alfred finding as many copies of Cosmic Radiation as necessary. Barring disruption, the Rigged Elections player usually had little trouble getting twenty-five ballot counters during the recruit step on turn 5. It was a brilliant call for a metagame dominated by almost pure beatdown decks (though it eventually fell to the disruptive dominance of Common Enemy).

After witnessing the power of Cosmic Radiation in the Rigged Elections build, several innovative players started developing decks to harness the power of the Fantastic Four’s readying card. Prior to joining UDE’s R&D group, “The” Ben Seck used Cosmic Radiation to take his acclaimed Cosmic Cops to a championship at the Melbourne $10K. Much like the YMG Rigged Elections deck, Cosmic Cops fused the search power of the Gotham Knights with the Fantastic Four’s control and combo cards, A Child Named Valeria, and Cosmic Radiation. The deck aimed to stall until turn 7, when Batman, The Dark Knight would come into play. With four copies of Cosmic Radiation at the deck’s disposal, all of the characters in play could be exhausted multiple times to draw cards for Batman’s effect. While he was only one character, most opponents did not have an answer to a 50 ATK / 50 DEF Dark Knight!

You may not think that it could get any better than having a 7-drop that is twice the size of Mageddon, but shortly after the second Pro Circuit, a new force started to make its presence felt. Prior to $10K London in January 2005, few people had heard the name Dean Sohnle. But following his complete and total dominance of the $10K with his Fantastic Four equipment deck (later dubbed “Fantastic Fun”), Dean went from virtual unknown to Vs. System superstar. Dean and his Fantastic Fun deck became the scourge of the European $10K scene, taking home another $10K trophy in Amsterdam and very nearly bringing home a third in Paris. Had Kristian Kockott not cleverly teched in a copy of Micro-Sentinels to deal with the Fantastic Fun matchup, Dean would’ve undoubtedly been the first three-time $10K winner. Of course, the feather in Mr. Sohnle’s cap came at PC: LA 2005, when he took his Fantastic Fun deck to the finals. In one of the most memorable PC finals in Vs. System’s short history, Dean waged battle against Karl Horn’s New School deck. The momentum shifted back and forth over the course of five games. In the end, Karl took the championship. Still, Fantastic Fun had made an indelible mark on Vs. System.

Fantastic Fun was one of the most (if not the most) difficult and complex decks to play in Vs. System history. Much like its predecessors Rigged Elections and Cosmic Cops, Fantastic Fun used A Child Named Valeria and Cosmic Radiation to great effect. But instead of utilizing Cosmic Radiation to fuel off-team combos, Fantastic Fun readied characters to add additional burn damage with cards like Flamethrower. Under the protection of A Child Named Valeria, the smaller characters could easily attack up the curve (with the +5 ATK boost from Flamethrower), then ready with Cosmic Radiation to exhaust for an additional 5 endurance loss. The combo possibilities for the deck seemed infinite, and required a great deal of skill and thought to be effective. For those few Vs. System players who could properly navigate the beast that was Fantastic Fun, the chances of victory in any given matchup were almost always favorable.

The recent banning of Antarctic Research Base put a temporary hold on Fantastic Fun (we’ll have to see what Marvel Team-Up has in the way of a replacement), but this did not stop creative players from finding ways to use and abuse the Fantastic Four combo cards. Several new and interesting iterations of Rigged Elections have popped up at $10K events and Pro Circuits since the original YMG build made its mark at the first Pro Circuit. Englishman Sam Roads also made the Vs. System public sit up and take notice when he took his pet deck, “Both Guns Blazing,” to the Top 8 of $10K Gen Con UK. If you thought Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Sharpshooter was vicious before, just imagine how ferocious he can be when he has Cosmic Radiation readying characters to be exhausted to his effect. Maybe this souped-up Arsenal can take down the Big Bat . . .

Even with the wide variety of builds featuring Cosmic Radiation that we have already seen, there are still a number of possibilities for this versatile and powerful card. Imagine how devastating High Voltage could become with a Fantastic Four team-up. Advanced Hardware and Golden Archer would burn for twice the regular amount! What if we threw Cosmic Radiation into X-Stall? Rogue, Power Absorption; Mimic; and Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath already combine to burn for a bundle on turn 7. With a single copy of Cosmic Radiation, they would inflict double the endurance loss on an opponent. With a 9 ATK 5-drop in play, this trio could hit your opponent for 54 damage! Of course, if dealing damage ain’t your thing, maybe healing damage is. Just imagine the fun that could be had with a team-up between Fantastic Four and Heralds of Galactus (made easier by the fact that Human Torch, The Invisible Man is dual-affiliated already). Worldeater Apparatus becomes an amazing source of endurance gain when you ready your characters a couple of times with Cosmic Radiation.

The bottom line is this: Cosmic Radiation is an amazing card that is sure to be the foundation of many combo decks for some time to come. We have barely scratched the surface of what readying effects are capable of. With further set releases, we are sure to have additional effects that benefit from a global readying card like Cosmic Radiation.

And now, thanks to the new Vs. System Gallery Packs, you can have a playset of Extended Art Cosmic Radiations to splash in the combo deck of your choice!