Part 1
Welcome back to Deck Clinic. When we left off, we’d just settled on a first draft of a decklist for this week’s patient.
At this point, it’s worth noting the “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” card list (courtesy of the Beach Boys). These are cards that we haven’t found space for yet but would quite like to play. Even if we don’t end up playing any of these cards, I would recommend keeping them in mind; they are some of the more likely cards that you might find useful if you want to adapt the final list to deal with particular local problems:
It’s also worth making a note of the key questions about our current inclusions.
- Is Sturmer, War Dog worth his slot, or is he just a cute trick that doesn’t actually bring value to the deck?
- The big question of which 2-drop? We have two attractive options at 2: She-Thing, Sharon Ventura and Vykin, Forever People. Both have implications for the balance of characters at the 4- and 5-drop points in the curve. Making the right decision here is important.
- Is Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing necessary? My instinct says that he will be crucial against controlling decks that run Utility Belt and swarms of small characters, as those decks can negate Asmodeus’s resource-KO activated power and prevent us from easily manipulating the resource count. Using Thing to bounce all those small characters (the likely recipients of the Belts) should open our opponent up to Asmodeus. The question, however, is whether those decks are common enough to justify his inclusion.
- Can we get away without Mikado and Mosha, Roy Harper ◊ Speedy, Mercurial Marksman, or some other way to get free stuns or KO’s on cheap aggressive characters? Of particular concern are the High Voltage 1-drops, led by Electric Eve, King Snake, and Ape X.
- Is our insurance package for Ahmed Samsarra enough to keep him safe? In particular, do we have a problem with recruiting Maxwell Lord on turn 5, given the lack of a “hard” insurance card like Fifth Dimension or The Science Spire? Or can we reliably avoid both Kings being stunned during wrap-up by using recovery effects?
When you finish a first draft of a deck, it’s always a good idea to have a good think, do a bunch of solitaire test draws to get a feel for the resource and character curves, and make sure there aren’t serious loyalty issues (something we’ll be looking out for with Scott Free). Play through a few solitaire draws, considering what you’d do in common situations with the available cards. Keep an eye on what your access to off-team characters or searchable resources looks like, whether your resource row is too crowded, and so on.
One of the first things that came up is that Sturmer really isn’t as interesting as he looks. For other New Gods decks, the same single copy of Sturmer might be quite useful and provide a handy supplement to The Exchange, but with access to Ahmed-fetched Brother I Satellites and Enemy of My Enemy, Sturmer is just not as good as the fourth copy of Enemy. Other than that, the basic structure of the deck hangs together well. As always, you need to be careful what you set in your resource row, taking into account that, for example, you don’t want three key locations in the row on turn 3, only to find that you need to use Ahmed to search for Dr. Fate’s Tower. OMAC Robots and Mr. Mxyzptlk are good choices for the resource row, as they can easily be retrieved after being KO’d by Ahmed.
Thing doesn’t seem to be necessary. I wouldn’t play him unless you have an unusually large number of Utility Belt–packing, Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend decks being played. Against everything other than Utility Belt decks, seven resources is the least likely number for the game to see.
She-Thing turns out to not be nearly as effective against High Voltage as hoped. With a decent draw, High Voltage is capable of protecting its equipped characters, and without Mikado and Mosha to clear the way, her equipment removal ability is unlikely to trigger. The other downside with She-Thing is that, unlike Vykin, She-Thing only provides easier access to your 4- and 5-drop, making it marginally more likely that you will be unable to search for Takion on turn 6. For these reasons, along with the added utility that the Vykin curve gets from The Source and New Genesis (Ahmed searching out New Genesis on turn 3 against Teen Titans has the potential to keep your opponent’s entire board exhausted), I would recommend the Vykin curve.
Without the possibility of searching for Invisible Woman, Sue Storm with Brother I Satellite, I recommend the inclusion of a copy of Merlyn, Deadly Archer, one of my favorite cards, as an alternate 4-drop that can be fetched with Enemy if we need it. (As if anyone could doubt that I’d include a copy in a Checkmate deck with Ahmed Samsarra . . .) Sue Storm will earn a single slot, as with the odd initiative she enables the quite brutal set-up of herself, Annihilation Protocol, and Ahmed. This doesn’t seem too scary until you throw a Cosmic Radiation into the mix, resulting in the KO’ing of most of your opponent’s board.
Mr. Fantastic, Stretch can stay on his own merits; the ability to move both Cloak of Nabu and Knight Armor around proved extremely powerful, and with a Fantastic Four team-up, he enables Cosmic Radiation. With his high DEF, a useful ability, and a useful affiliation, he is the 5-drop we will want to recruit in most situations. Against certain decks, we will need to recruit Scott Free ◊ Mister Miracle, Escape Artist on turn 5 simply to keep our endurance total high, and sometimes we won’t have a copy of Enemy of My Enemy to search for Stretch, forcing us to fall back on Maxwell Lord or Annihilation Protocol. Thankfully, we shouldn’t need to use Cosmic Radiation to ready Takion very often; the combination of Coast City, Rook Control, New Genesis (on a character protecting him), and the defensive equipment makes him a surprisingly tough cookie to crack. Against Titans, you will want to make sure that you have Cloak of Nabu on the table when you recruit Takion so you can protect him from Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Sharpshooter.
With New Gods characters as the primary drops on turns 2 and 4, we should be able to rely on Brother I Satellite for our core curve. A single Enemy of My Enemy can search for Mr. Fantastic or Silver Surfer, the former also allowing the latter to be searched out with Satellite. Sticking to a Checkmate / New Gods core curve also justifies removing UN Building for the fourth copy of Checkmate Safe House.
The only final change is to add a copy of Straight to the Grave. It’s another search card, but one that can net us cards in hand (when played from the resource row to fetch Mr. Mxyzptlk or an OMAC), and after turn 3, can always fetch a needed character after Ahmed searches for Slaughter Swamp. Mainly, it improves our odds of hitting our off-team drops of choice in the mid-game (such as the Fantastic Four characters at 4 and 5 if we feel we’ll need Cosmic Radiation on turn 6, or Asmodeus at 6).
Without any further ado, here’s the final list I would recommend taking out for a spin.
Final List
Characters
1 Connie Webb, Knight
3 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster
4 Vykin, Forever People
1 Sarge Steel, Knight
4 Ahmed Samsarra, White King
3 Izaya ◊ Highfather, The Inheritor
1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
1 Merlyn, Deadly Archer
1 Elimination Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, Army
2 Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot, Army
1 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch
1 Maxwell Lord, Black King
1 Scott Free ◊ Mister Miracle, Escape Artist
2 Huntress, Reluctant Queen
1 Takion ◊ Highfather, Josh Saunders
1 Asmodeus, Duke of Hell
1 Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd
1 Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch
Plot Twists
4 Enemy of My Enemy
1 Straight to the Grave
3 Cosmic Radiation
Locations
4 Brother I Satellite
4 Checkmate Safe House
2 Brother Eye
1 The Source
1 Slaughter Swamp
1 Coast City
1 Rook Control
1 The Alley
1 New Genesis
1 Dr. Fate’s Tower
Equipment
4 Knight Armor
1 Cloak of Nabu
Play Notes
Two specific decks deserve special mention, as even a cursory glance at the results of the recent Golden Age $10K tournament would indicate: Teen Titans and High Voltage. Of the two matchups, Teen Titans will be the more straightforward. There are a few key things you will need to do: The first is recruit Ahmed Samsarra to the hidden area. Titans will generally have no way to reach him, which also means you can get maximum benefit from Rook Control later on. The second is to set up to avoid Terra, Tara Markov being able to stun Ahmed Samsarra if possible; if you have the odd initiatives, you’ll want to use Ahmed to search for Dr. Fate’s Tower and search for Cloak of Nabu, equipping it to Ahmed that turn. With the even initiatives, you can afford to wait until the build phase of turn 4 (although it may not be correct to do so).
On turn 5, Mr. Fantastic, Stretch and Maxwell Lord, Black King both have appeal. Maxwell, going into turn 6, can restrict usage of Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Sharpshooter to the build phase, while Mr. Fantastic can move Cloak of Nabu with Roy activations on the chain.
On turn 6, Takion will hopefully end up in the hidden area via Rook Control with Cloak of Nabu protecting him from direct stuns from Roy Harper. Skip to turn 8, Enemy of My Enemy for Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch, and end the game with an activation.
Obviously, it won’t always play out quite this simply, particularly if the Titans players you’re facing run Meltdown (only some do) to KO Cloak of Nabu. Even if they do KO the Cloak, your recovery effects, hidden characters, and Huntress, Reluctant Queen should prevent your opponent from seriously exploiting direct stuns, multiple team attacks, and Removed from Continuity to gain board presence. If your opponent KO’s the Cloak of Nabu, then you’ll need to keep your board presence up with Izaya and New Genesis, protecting key characters (particularly Izaya himself) with Rook Control and Coast City.
High Voltage is much tougher and the more difficult of the two matchups, and this highlights the biggest difficulty when it comes to building decks for current Golden Age. Building decks that can beat either Teen Titans or High Voltage is a perfectly achievable aim. Unfortunately, building a deck that can reliably beat both and still be resilient enough to handle the less conventional or predictable decks is a huge undertaking. However, there are some things you can do to improve matters: The first is to recruit Ahmed in the visible area, ideally with a Knight Armor. If you hit Vykin, equipping a Knight Armor to him will help as well, making you more likely to keep characters exhausted going into turn 4.
On turn 4, if you have the initiative, go for Merlyn, Deadly Archer if possible and KO Black Panther, King of Wakanda. On turn 5, Annihilation Protocol is probably the best; the OMAC can attack or be attacked and then be recovered with New Genesis or Izaya after trading stuns with an opposing character, allowing one of your non-Army characters to be exhausted for the KO. If this keeps Deathstroke the Terminator, Lethal Weapon or Golden Archer, Wyatt McDonald off the table, the endurance you’ll save on the next turn will quite possibly outweigh the damage you can do on the attack. In this matchup, you’ll need to balance your options carefully on turn 6; this is one matchup where you will quite possibly not want to use Asmodeus or Takion and instead choose to attack to force damage through. Either 8-drop should be sufficient to dominate the board if you go with the Takion plan. Which one you’ll want to use will vary depending on your endurance total and your opponent’s board position.
Final Thoughts
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this deck as much as I’ve enjoyed tinkering with it. Unlike with the Morlock deck that I featured in the first Deck Clinic, I’ve hopefully been able to shed some light this time on how best to set up a particular board position from which you will consistently win the game. In this case, that position is a particular 6-drop, ready and unstunned during the recovery phase of turn 6, along with an 8-drop or a way to search for an 8-drop. Making the achievement of that position more reliable involved making some significant changes, particularly the shift toward and then back away from a Fantastic Four-heavy curve rather than the final curve of primarily Checkmate and New Gods characters.
Working out the most reliable way to set up such a position while also taking into consideration the fact that your churlish opponent will be busy trying to do Bad Things to your characters is one of the best deckbuilding skills you can practice if you have any interest in playing controlling or stalling decks. Sometimes, you have to work backward from that position. If Takion is stunned when the recovery phase rolls around, how am I going to get him working again? What good, on-team, 8-drops and higher are there to search for with Brother I Satellite if I don’t draw Enemy of My Enemy? Finding answers to those questions can be the key to understanding how a deck can work, and can also send up a warning signal that a deck won’t work if we need too many things to go right to set up a particular goal. In this case, the demands made on us aren’t too great as far as many matchups go, although we have problems with the super-fast High Voltage deck. To be fair, this leaves us in quite illustrious company; High Voltage isn’t the easiest deck in the world to beat consistently while remaining competitive against anything else.
As usual, if you have any ideas for future editions of the Deck Clinic, email them to me at vsdeckclinic@googlemail.com.