On the weekend of February 24th, I went to St. Louis to participate in one of the last PCQs before the advent of the new City Championships. The weekend had been set up by the organizer, Pastimes, as a “Mega-PCQ.” The winner, along with a $250 gift card from UDE, would receive an extra $1250 direct from Pastimes. Second place would receive an iPod Shuffle along with a box of product. Not only that, but there were also two PCQs, on Saturday and Sunday, and the additional prizes would be given to both winners.
This weekend was some of the most fun I've had playing Vs. System. I wasn't able to make it out until Saturday evening, and I managed a miserable 1-3 in the Sunday PCQ (with Human Torch, The Invisible Man the cause of all three of my losses), but it was still a great time. I did a little better in limited, splitting with fellow Metagame.com columnist Michael Barnes in the finals of a side draft. I also “dominated” a draft featuring Italian and Portugese Marvel Origins packs (graciously provided by Karl Horn) because I wasn't able to read Blob, Fred Dukes or Mr. Fantastic, Stretch and figure out just how team-stamped their effects actually were. I may or may not have transferred an Italian Advanced Hardware onto an X-Men character in the back row, relying on Blob to protect him, to win a game. Oops.
Kyle Dembinski would not be denied this weekend, winning both events with his simply brutal version of High Voltage featuring Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage along with the rest of the usual suspects. The deck that finished second on Saturday, however, was the talk of the tournament. Mike Jiles, a Wisconsin player, managed to take second place with, of all things, a Darkseid deck. First, Stephen King brought back the Brotherhood, and now Darkseid is rocking the house. The list:
Mike Jiles
Mega-PCQ Runner-up
February 24, 2007
4 Dark Lantern, Mockery
4 Malice Vundabar
1 Gillotina
2 Lashina
4 Dark Firestorm, Mockery
4 Darkseid, Apokoliptian Oppressor
3 Dark Superboy, Mockery
1 Darkseid, 8th Century
1 Dark Kryptonian ◊ Dark Superboy
1 Kanto
1 Darkseid, Uxas
1 Darkseid, Apokolips Now
1 Darkseid, Nemesis
4 Cover Fire
4 Created From Hate
4 War of Attrition
3 Savage Beatdown
3 Mobilize
3 Meltdown
2 No Match for Darkseid
3 Ancient Throne
3 Dark Matter Drain
3 Soul World
Admit it—you had to click on Uxas too. That's why I love Golden Age rogue decks. There are all these little gems that you can go back and pick out if you're looking hard enough. Like TNNB, this deck focuses mostly on the new incarnation of its team. The focus on keeping your opponent's plot twists face up wasn't very developed in Superman, Man of Steel, but the power was cranked up for the Legion of Super Heroes set and all but two of the Darkseid cards in this deck come from the latter incarnation of the team.
Mike came up with the deck for Golden Age a few weeks ago, in one of those insomnia-induced brainstorming sessions we've all had occasionally. On two hours of sleep, he wrote up a sketch decklist and tuned it to bring to the Mega-PCQ. When I asked him why he decided to play it, his answer was “I like big butts,” followed (of course) by a chorus of “And he cannot lie,” by everyone we were standing near.
The true power level of this deck is nowhere near decks like Crisis Doom or High Voltage; Mike made a classic metagame call with this deck. He took a step back and looked at Golden Age, and he found three decks that would make up most of the expected metagame: the Moloids combo deck that teams-up Doom and Injustice Gang, and kills with damage from Zazzala ◊ Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive and Master of Puppets; FTN's Crisis Doom deck that puts multiple Dr. Dooms into play with Crisis on Infinite Earths; and TAWC's Quicksilver deck that tries to kill on turn 4 with two swings from an enormous Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage. Then he found a common thread that all three shared: an abnormal dependence on the resource row. The Moloids deck couldn't go off without a team-up and a Devil's Due face-up. Without Crisis on Infinite Earths, Doom has to replace its Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival with Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. With even one face-down resource, Quicksilver can't attack twice. Normal decks do things with the resource row, but in Golden, most of the decks depend on cards staying in their resource row to function at all. Darkseid attacks this common flaw.
But the deck also has game against all sorts of other decks. Ahmed Samsarra and Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose-based decks have very little game against a deck that will replace those cards as soon as they hit the resource row. TNNB doesn't get to keep its The New Brotherhoods, and the Arkham / Brotherhood team-up deck based on Lost City can't keep its Lost Cities, Avalon Space Stations, or Slaughter Swamps in the row. The only commonly played deck that isn't affected much by the Darkseid theme is High Voltage.
This deck has good early control of the row with four copies of Malice Vundabar and two of Lashina, which can be substituted into threats later with Dark Lantern and Dark Firestorm for some combat advantage and card advantage. Darkseid, Apokoliptian Oppressor lands on turn 4, providing a huge wall for the opponent to get over and some more card advantage, which keeps your hand full for cards like Ancient Throne and Dark Matter Drain. You also need a way to replace that one pesky team-up your opponent plays, though, so Mike has the full four copies of War of Attrition, along with the ability to turn it face down with Ancient Throne's power. This should be more than enough to keep your opponent's team-ups out of his or her resource row for that one critical turn (turn 4 against Crisis Doom and turn 5 against Moloids). The end result will eventually be a row full of face-down cards that the opponent either can't use or doesn't want to.
By keeping the good plot twists out of the resource row against these decks, they become mediocre curve decks (or non-curve decks, in the case of Moloids) competing against a deck that is tuned to win the mediocre curve deck mirror. Cover Fire lets you brickwall one attack, Savage Beatdown lets you attack two spots up the curve, and Ancient Throne lets you reuse both of them. You can also dictate your attacks by substituting in concealed characters and forcing your opponent to attack that Dark Superboy because he or she can't attack anyone else. Darkseid power-ups abound, with eight copies and seven search cards along with some Soul World action to keep the pain coming. Created from Hate is a sucker’s bet for your opponent if he or she flips a card, and it’s a search card with zero drawbacks for you if your opponent doesn’t choose to flip a resource face down. Kanto is especially mean now that Darkseid's Elite has the near-total control it needs over the opponent's resource row.
The deck wants even initiatives in order to better take advantage of Darkseid's ability to attack and rarely get stunned back on turn 4, and for Dark Kryptonian ◊ Dark Superboy's ability to roll into Darkseid, Nemesis on turn 7. That way, your opponent is forced to attack into 4-drop Darkseid and Dark Superboy on turn 5 in most cases, which is just a no-win situation for them. You then clean up on turn 6 with any of your 6-drops, usually Kanto if the game needs to end quickly or Dark Kryptonian if you're going to go another turn.
Unfortunately, this deck is a near auto-loss to High Voltage. All the resource row disruption does nothing to Voltage, in which every plot twist is a one-shot and doesn't need to be in the row after being used. The matchup against TNNB can be tight since replacing resources against that deck is essentially the same as drawing it cards, and even without TNB the deck is far from a mediocre curve deck. But Mike’s deck is surprisingly resilient against a lot of other strategies. Many, many decks in Golden Age depend on the resource row, from G’LOCK variants to Rigged Elections, and Darkseid's Elite simply doesn't let your opponent have a meaningful resource row. Mike decided that one-and-a-half bad matchups was no reason not to play the deck, and it paid off for him. Unfortunately, he hit the bad matchup in the finals against Dembinski's Voltage deck.
If you want to take the deck to a tournament, it’s not a bad choice at all. In fact, it’s at least a decent choice in every format. In Silver, for instance, it doesn’t have too much game against Kree, but against decks like Skrulls and Faces of Evil, your opponent is going to lose a lot of steam when their team-ups are victims of Darkseid. If you want to play this deck, you’re looking for a format in which your opponent wants to have particular cards face-up. In any format where this happens, Darkseid will be a good choice.
The decklist is pretty tight as it is. Meltdown and No Match for Darkseid are metagame dependent, but they’re almost always going to be the best choices unless you have some specific information about your metagame. Meltdown’s effectiveness against the Fate Artifacts is good enough to earn it the automatic slot. Unfortunately, when you port the deck into Silver, you lose both the older Darkseid characters and Cover Fire, as well as Savage Beatdown. Losing Kanto is annoying but not the end of the world, and Savage Beatdown can easily be made into the Marvel Team-Up card Big Leagues. For Cover Fire, you could run cards like All Hail Darkseid! or Against All Odds. The worse loss is in two weeks, when Meltdown is gone as well. Dealing with the Fate Artifacts is so important that this deck may end up running cards like Level 12 Intelligence just to make sure they can deal with the Fate set.
Of course, it isn't a rogue deck without a couple of stories. One of Mike's matches during the Swiss rounds was against a Checkmate deck. He won, as you might expect, but he got to do it in style by crowning Ahmed Samsarra with Kanto. He also managed to attack an opponent with Dark Kryptonian on turn 6 and put his opponent's only 7-drop, the biggest character in his deck, into his resource row.
It's unfortunate that Mike had to hit a bad matchup in the finals, because I think Mike's deck deserved to win the event. He took his own build of his own deck into the finals of a tournament with a $1500 purse, and almost walked away with the money on the back of Superman's nemesis. He did get a box of cards and a shiny new iPod for his efforts, though, and that should be enough. From Mike's playlist:
1. “Kryptonite” by Three Doors Down
2. “Rollin'” by Limp Bizkit
3. “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC*
With City Championships coming up, you may see quite a few Golden Age and Silver Age tournaments. Just remember to Die for Darkseid!, and he'll live for you—all the way to the Top 8.
Thanks for reading,
Mark Slack
*may not be Mike's actual playlist.