Welcome to the first edition of the Metagame.com Vs. Deck Clinic. Each week I will be answering your emails and looking over the decks you submit. Together we will both learn a little bit more about this fledgling game and how to design winning decks. Like many of you, I have been drawn to the darker side of Vs. and have been tinkering around with a Brotherhood deck. This week’s deck was submitted by a mysterious correspondent known only as Pai.
Pai writes:
This is a basic Brotherhood Beatdown deck. Genosha is for card drawing and allowing me to go up to five resources (Ka-Boom! as well) to play Magneto or Scarlet Witch and be able to activate The New Brotherhood again. Witch will help keep special powers in check. I feel the deck needs another 1-drop but I am not impressed with what is available for Brotherhood. I am considering Ant Man even though he isn't Brotherhood. He is really good and can act as additional Blind Sided. I want to add Finishing Move, but I am unsure what to take out. I feel more 1-drops should be added if I decide to go with Finishing Move.
Please help! Thanks!
Pai's Brotherhood Beatdown Deck
Characters
4 Destiny: Irene Adler
4 Pyro: St. John Allerdyce
4 Toad: Mortimer Toynbee
4 Rogue: Anna Raven
4 Sabretooth: Feral Rage
3 Magneto: Eric Lehnsherr
4 Quicksilver: Speed Demon
3 Scarlet Witch: Wanda Maximoff
Plot Twists
4 Flying Kick
4 Ka-Boom!
4 Savage Beatdown
4 The New Brotherhood
2 Blind Sided
Locations
4 Genosha
4 Savage Land
Equipment
4 Dual Sidearms
Regarding the 1-Drops
Well, I agree that the deck needs more 1-drops, but I don’t necessarily agree with your assessment of your options available within the ranks of the Brotherhood. Since the whole point of having more 1-drops is to exploit The New Brotherhood and Savage Land, it seems counterproductive to include characters that receive no benefit from either.
Sure Lorelei, Phantazia, and Mastermind don’t seem terribly exciting on their own but any of them start off as characters with 3 ATK if you open with The New Brotherhood. Lorelei is exceptionally good at shutting down the early beatdown from opposing decks as well. The other day I was testing against a Wild Sentinel deck, and my opponent slumped in frustration when I played a Lorelei against him. I would definitely add Lorelei if you wanted another 1-drop.
I wouldn’t stop there, either. The Brotherhood deck that my friends and I have been playing features eleven 1-drops. In addition to four Destiny and four Lorelei, we have three Phantazia. Her ability seems more in line with the goals of the deck than Mastermind. The reason we wanted so many 1-drops is to overwhelm our opponents with a horde of creatures on the early turns.
Regarding Destiny . . . if you draw duplicates of her in the late game, you can use the first one during your build phase and KO it when you recruit another. You can then activate the second to target a second character, or if you are certain that you are going to stun the character you already targeted, you can target it a second time, and if you are successful, you will cause your opponent to lose 8 points of endurance.
Two Do List
Our decklist ended up with the same number of 2-drops as your deck, but the configuration was lightly different. We also have four copies of Toad, but instead of Pyro, we ended up running Avalanche. We found the 2-drop characters were dealing more damage on the attack than Pryo was dealing sitting back on his heels waiting to activate. Plus the ability to smoke a Location at any time proved valuable in testing. It means the Fantastic Four equipment decks have to cope with your Avalanche before they can draw any cards off of their Antarctic Research Base, and it is never a bad idea to have additional means to cope with opposing Savage Lands.
Toad has more than proven his worth so far. It is almost always right to return him to hand rather than let him be stunned. He also gives you a little more resilience against Flame Traps. With eleven 1-drops and eight 2-drops Flame Trap can be something of a nuisance. Returning Toad allows you to recover another character and rebuild your forces.
Outside the Family
Pai suggests going outside of the Brotherhood to add Ant Man. While I don’t agree with putting Ant Man in the 1-drop slot, I do think you can use other characters besides Brotherhood members. In the 3 slot, my playtest group has been playing with the Latverian, Darkoth. Not only is he bigger than any character available to you in the Brotherhood at the 3 slot, but his ability is invaluable in the deck. He comes with his own personal Savage Land to make up for his misalignment and also fuels your The New Brotherhoods in the process.
We also have put Quicksilver into the deck, but not the five drop Speed Demon. Instead we rounded out the 3 slot with four copies of Quicksilver: Pietro Maximoff. You wanted a beatdown deck, and with eleven 1-drops, eight 2-drops, and eight 3-drops, you have the core of an efficient beatdown deck. We obviously topped the deck out with four copies of Sabretooth: Feral Rage, but going into this past weekend’s PCQs we did not have anything that cost more than 4 in the deck.
Despite the fact that the deck we designed won the New Jersey PCQ in the hands of one Mike Clair, we later decided that there should be some number of Magneto: Eric Lehnsherr—most likely two copies—to properly exploit four copies of Genosha. I am in total agreement with the two locations that Pai included in his deck. While I want to figure out how to put in other cards such as Lost City and Avalon Space Station, something has to give. We want the deck to have as much redundancy as possible in order to ensure that it yields the right cards on the appropriate turns, and in order to get in additional locations, we need to start shaving numbers—something I am not prepared to do.
Let’s take a look at the deck we have so far, and then we can fill in the remaining plot twists and, if there is room, equipment cards.
Characters
4 Destiny: Irene Adler
4 Lorelei: Savage Land Mutate
3 Phantazia: Eileen Harshaw
4 Avalanche: Dominic Petros
4 Toad: Mortimer Toynbee
4 Darkoth: Major Desmund Pitt
4 Quicksilver: Pietro Maximoff
4 Sabretooth: Feral Rage
2 Magneto: Eric Lehnsherr
Locations
4 Savage Land
4 Genosha
An Expected Plot Twist
A couple of plot twists are so expected that they hardly deserve to be called twists at all. Four copies of The New Brotherhood are the pistons that make this deck hum. Mike Clair mulliganed any hand that did not contain at least one copy of the deck’s eponymous plot twist on his way to winning the PCQ. With eleven 1-drops in the deck, you need to open with The New Brotherhood as often as possible, or your 1-drops will feel like . . . well . . . 1-drops.
Savage Beatdown and Flying Kick are also auto inclusions in the deck. Your goal is to do as much damage as quickly as possible. If the game goes much further than the fourth or fifth turn, you will find the odds of you winning the game beginning to shift in your opponent’s favor. Of course you can control your opponent’s resources with Ka-Boom! and Foiled. I am certain about the inclusion of the former, but the latter I am on the fence about. Mike ended up playing with Foiled in the PCQ and found it to be underwhelming.
Originally our Brotherhood deck also included Blind Slided—four copies actually—but it seemed quite narrow and we were finding that Overload was much more devastating than Burn Rubber and that we weren’t having many problems with characters reinforcing. Instead, we opted for Not So Fast. It negated not only Burn Rubber but Flying Kick, One-Two Punch, and—most importantly—Overload.
One card that was suggested was Global Domination. You can negate the card drawing of Genosha, the combat trick of Savage Land, and countless other uses and keep the location locked down for the rest of the game. You could also include the powerful Overload if you are worried about the mirror match or Fantastic Four beatdown. Based on seeing a pair of Brotherhood decks in the finals of the PCQ, it might not be a bad idea, but for now we will stick with Not So Fast.
Fixed Brotherhood Beatdown
Characters
4 Destiny: Irene Adler
4 Lorelei: Savage Land Mutate
3 Phantazia: Eileen Harshaw
4 Avalanche: Dominic Petros
4 Toad: Mortimer Toynbee
4 Darkoth: Major Desmund Pitt
4 Quicksilver: Pietro Maximoff
4 Sabretooth: Feral Rage
2 Magneto: Eric Lehnsherr
Locations
4 Savage Land
4 Genosha
Plot Twists
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Flying Kick
4 The New Brotherhood
3 Not So Fast
4 Ka-Boom!
This deck is capable of leaving your opponent reeling within the first turns of the game. Turn 1, guy and The New Brotherhood. Turn 2, Toad and Savage Land. Turn 3, Avalanche and Lorelei with another The New Brotherhood. After that start, a turn four Sabretooth: Feral Rage is going to be hard for anyone to overcome. With the lower costs of the characters in this deck, a draw like this is possible, where the costs in the original deck bunched up at 3, 4, and 5, making it more difficult to play out multiple characters to give as many of them as possible the benefits of The New Brotherhood.
I hope this initial edition of the deck clinic was useful, and the next time we open, I will take a look at the many Doom decks that have been bombarding my inbox. If you would like your deck to be featured in a future deck clinic, send your decklist along with any comments you'd like to add to vsdeckhelp@yahoo.com.