This week in Deck Clinic, I’m taking a look at a strategy that’s been flying under the radar since it was first made possible with the release of Justice League of America. It’s a simple enough idea. What’s the only thing better than Dr. Doom? Two Dr. Dooms, of course! Or, given the Heralds of Galactus reboot of the team, anything from two to five Dr. Dooms of different costs, drawn together from different fragments of the comic-book universe by the reality-warping power of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Today’s Deck Clinic patient is a veritable Doomstravaganza, with versions of the good Doctor at six different spots on the curve—from 3-drop Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival to 8-drop Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria.

 

Crisis Doom

Submitter: the_puritan at VsRealms.com

 

Characters
4 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom

3 Valeria Von Doom, Heir to Latveria

4 Kang, One of Many

3 Robot Sentry, Army

3 Doom-Bot, Army

4 Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival

4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius

1 Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom

1 Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant

1 Dr. Doom, Scientific Sorcerer

1 Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria

 

Plot Twists

4 Crisis on Infinite Earths

4 Faces of Doom

3 Mask of Doom

4 Reign of Terror

4 Mystical Paralysis

4 Expendable Ally

3 Flying Kick

1 Lust for Power

 

Locations

4 Doomstadt, Castle Doom

In his submission, the_puritan talked about a few cards he’d like to make more use of, and he mentioned a particular problem that needed some work—the lack of a 5-drop Dr. Doom that can be searched for with Faces of Doom or Mask of Doom. Additions he’d been considering were Armies of Doom to bring back Doom-Bot, Army for an extra attack or for Mystical Paralysis; Time Thief as a silver bullet against stall strategies; Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century to reuse Reign of Terror and other plot twists; and Garth ◊ Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer as a possible Crisis-friendly 5-drop.

Managing in a Crisis

Now, Crisis on Infinite Earths has several effects on how you have to construct your deck—some dramatic, some more subtle. The main ones to be aware of while considering changes to this deck will be the following:

1) Crisis renders the loyalty keyword largely irrelevant. With Crisis face-up in the resource row, any character in play will satisfy the loyalty requirement of any character you wish to recruit. Note, however, that this only applies to true loyalty, not the non-keyworded form found on the “dual-loyalty” characters from Marvel Knights (such as Blade, The Daywalker) or the pre-keyworded form (on characters like Rogue, Powerhouse).

2) Crisis prevents you from recruiting multiple characters with the Army version safely. If you try to recruit a second copy of an Army character, Crisis will KO the copy already in play before the second can come into play.

3) Crisis, obviously, allows you to keep multiple versions of a single-named character in play.

4) While Crisis is face-up, your characters don’t have their “normal” team affiliations. This means that Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius’s disruption power won’t work, and many team-stamped tricks can’t be played. As such, we’ll need the ability to control the face-up or face-down status of Crisis. The 3-drop and 4-drop versions of Doom, along with the new 6-drop Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant, all have powers that can help with this.

With all that set out, it’s worth pointing out the two key benefits that the Crisis Doom plan gets from its multiple copies of Dr. Doom in play. The first is unique flexibility with Mystical Paralysis and Reign of Terror. Being able to play Reign on turn 3 (with Latveria or Beast, Dr. Henry McCoy)—or even on turn 4 or 6 without deviating from your “Plan A” curve or replacing a perfectly good character—gives it a greater than normal degree of flexibility. Paralysis also becomes more powerful than usual when you can exhaust a 3-drop sitting off to the side rather than taking up time in your 4-drop’s schedule turn after turn.

The second benefit is that Crisis Doom can get incredible mileage out of either Doomstadt or its all-new aggressive counterpart, Doomstadt, Castle Doom. (Sadly, Crisis on Infinite Earths doesn’t apply to locations . . .) While +3 ATK or DEF on a key character is impressive, the same bonus on multiple already-powerful characters is worth celebrating.

That last point is a good one to bring up, as it will be our first real decision: Which Doomstadt should we play, and, by inference, will our deck be aggressive or defensive? For now, given the ability to clear characters out of the way with Reign of Terror and attack multiple times with Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant (thanks to Doom-Bot in conjunction with Armies of Doom), I’m going to take the deck in a more aggressive direction. That means Doomstadt, Castle Doom.

The character base for the deck obviously needs some changes. In particular, the deck sputters out badly on turn 5. This could compromise our 6-drop’s ability to end the game with a brutal pair of 16 ATK swings by allowing our opponent to keep his 4-drop and 5-drop going into turn 6. There are two directions that we can go to work a 5-drop into the deck.

The first is to add a Doom character, such as Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army; Kristoff Von Doom, Pretender to the Throne; or Robot Destroyer, Army. This will probably mean dropping one or more copies of Mask of Doom (the less powerful, Dr. Doom-only search card) for a search card that can find our alternate 5-drop. Our options for search cards are quite slim, however, if we’re staying on-team. The most likely candidate is Straight to the Grave, which has the added benefit of either finding Moloids, Army or putting a Doom-Bot in the KO’d pile for later retrieval with Armies of Doom. This will require running another card to make use of the character in the KO’d pile, such as Slaughter Swamp.

The second is to add an off-team 5-drop and see if we can work a copy (or a few copies) of Enemy of My Enemy into the deck. This also opens up the possibility of using other off-team characters—in particular, the very powerful characters on unpopular teams that are restricted by loyalty (for example, Psimon, Dr. Simon Jones). There are also other ways to add off-team characters without needing to recruit them: characters like Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction; Adam Strange, Champion of Rann; Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster; and Quagmire, Jerome Meyers provide benefits without needing to be recruited.

One other consideration if we're looking at Enemy of My Enemy is “Ka-Boom!-proofing” our curve. While many decks will have alternate drops they can recruit, if Crisis Doom is set back a resource by Foiled or Ka-Boom!, it can be left with no recruits. One solution is to run multiple copies of Enemy of My Enemy (replacing, I would imagine, Mask of Doom) and a backbone of off-team characters at least part of the way up the curve (probably a 4-drop through 7-drop).

Friends in Strange Places

There are a few criteria for these characters: they need aggressive stats, a particularly impressive power, or the capability to seriously disrupt our opponent. Two possible 5-drops with suitably aggressive stats would be Post, Kevin Tremain. Garth ◊ Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer has average statistics, but his power to retrieve cards from the KO'd pile (particularly against off-curve decks, allowing you to set up multiple copies of Reign of Terror for turn 6) is legendary. For disruption, the poster boy is probably Psimon, Dr. Simon Jones. If you control the initiative on turn 7, recruiting Psimon can leave many decks with no possible recruits. Another character with loyalty and a strong disruptive power is Lex Luthor, Power Armor, who can be backbreaking against decks reliant on playing out a full curve up through 7. His big drawback, of course, is that his power requires him to deal breakthrough, and his natural ATK value is quite low.

With those criteria in mind, here are some of the key characters of each type that I would consider for possible inclusion. There will necessarily be some overlap between categories, and the categories themselves are really only useful as a preliminary tool for filtering through the huge numbers of available characters.

4-drops

Aggressive:    Oliver Queen ◊ Green Arrow, Emerald Archer;

Bizarro, ME AM BIZARRO #1

Utility:           Luke Cage, Street Enforcer;

Mystique, Villainous Shapeshifter (with Mystical Paralysis to exhaust defenders)

Disruption:     Ra's al Ghul, Immortal Villain;

The Joker, Headline Stealer;

Ronan the Accuser, Starforce;

Anne-Marie Cortez, Acolyte

5-drops

Aggressive:    Thing, Heavy Hitter;

Post, Kevin Tremain;

Colossus, Steadfast Protector;

Karnak, The Shatterer

Utility:          Garth ◊ Tempest, Atlantean Sorceror;

John Henry Irons ◊ Steel, Steel-Drivin' Man (with a copy of Power Compressor and a way to search for it)

Disruption:     Scarecrow, Fearmonger;

Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid;

Metron, Time Traveler;

Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff;

Scorpion, MacDonald Gargan (for GCPD decks and breaking through Catcher's Mitt)

6-drops

Aggressive:    Callisto, Morlock Queen (if we have alternate-recruit characters like Moloids);

Scaleface, Dragon Lady;

Mystique, Freedom Force

Utility:           Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man

Disruption:     Terrax, Harbinger of Ruin;

Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind;

Eradicator, Doctor David Connor;

Lex Luthor, Power Armor

7-drops

Aggressive:    Deathstroke the Terminator, Ultimate Assassin

Utility:          Strange Visitor, Sharon Vance;

Galactus, The Maker

Disruption:     Psimon, Dr. Simon Jones;

Raven, Daughter of Trigon;

Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser

Quite the rogue's gallery. One nice thing about how the deck is starting to look is that it will be highly customizable. Want to run Power Armor Lex and Psimon for the late game no-recruits lock? You can. Want to go pure location hate with Ra's al Ghul, Immortal Villain and Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid? You can. Don't want to do anything more complicated than smash face? Allow me to recommend Scarecrow, Fearmonger and Deathstroke the Terminator, Ultimate Assassin.

As always, I'm going to try to strike a happy medium with my final suggested list, but do keep in mind the dizzying array of characters available to a Crisis deck.

Tomorrow we’ll start trying to pull all these swirling ideas into a deck!