Last week, I covered some of the different tactics you can employ during multiplayer games. Today, I’ll examine a deck that was designed exclusively for multiplayer action.
Multi-Annoying
3 Ratcatcher
3 Gole
2 Desaad
2 Mad Hatter
4 Charaxes
1 Bernadeth
1 Man-Bat
1 Maxie Zeus
3 Trok
2 Blackfire
2 Lady Deathstrike
1 Scarecrow
3 Darkseid, Uxas
3 Superman, False Son
3 The Demon, Etrigan
1 Onslaught
1 Trigon
1 Imperiex
2 Anti-Life Equation
2 Arkham Asylum
1 Blackgate Prison
4 The Exchange
4 Gone But Not Forgotten
4 Kidnapping
2 Marvel Team-Up
2 No Man’s Land
2 World’s Finest
This deck uses many cards that work against all of your opponents at once. You need some thick skin to play this deck, but it sure is fun to annoy absolutely everyone at the table.
Multiplayer games can go on for many more turns than you’re used to in one-on-one games. For that reason, it is very important to dust off some of those 8-, 9-, and 10-drop characters that don’t often make it into your killer decks. It’s not even necessary to play any characters with a cost less than 3, as the other players will usually attack each others’ characters to gain board dominance and leave you alone. However, this deck intends to piss off as many people as possible so that the game (well, at least your game) doesn’t last forever. The length of multiplayer game time turns some people off . . . it can take a while. With this deck, you’ll either win or draw so much fire that you’ll get knocked out in half an hour. Some players like to build their multiplayer decks with more than 60 cards, but with this deck, you won’t see the game go that long.
The other reason I went with a full spectrum of drops is that in a multiplayer game, you never know what’s going to happen. You might get a lot of resources KO’d, you might lose your hand, or you might lose all the cards in your deck. It’s nice to have some extra characters around that can fill in whenever you have an extra resource point or two. Of course, I’ve tried to work it so that, should you find yourself without a straight curve drop, you’ll often have a boost character to play.
In the early game, the annoyance starts out hard and fast with Ratcatcher, Gole, and Desaad. Desaad is also great as a secondary recruit in later turns, when his activated power really hurts. Since you know that characters are going to die off left and right in this format, Mad Hatter is loads of fun. Not only does he make another player more vulnerable to attack, but also the character you steal protects your sorry behind from one of the many attacks you’ll suffer each turn. There’s really no chance that the character you ship back is going to be unstunned.
Charaxes has decent stats for a 3-drop and can provide some much needed board control against players who attacked before you (and whose characters are therefore exhausted). Turn 3 is also a great time to play Mad Hatter, as he can use his 1 resource point power immediately.
Turn 4 is where you find the characters that first made me want to build this multiplayer deck. It’s a crying shame that Trok and Man-Bat are both 4-drops. I wanted to use both equally, but Trok is a bit better in such a hostile environment because his bonus is immediate, whereas Man-Bat’s bonus takes a few stuns to ramp up. If he had range, he would be a touch easier to protect until the board was all stunned. Of course, Man-Bat has great synergy with Darkseid, Uxas, so I couldn’t leave him out entirely. Bernadeth is in to make recovery decks (a good strategy in a game where your board gets nuked every turn) suffer for their trouble. Finally, Maxie Zeus can be a devastating drop when you have a very early attack step, and there’s an opponent who has one or less characters in play.
On turn 5, you’re going to see some characters that are rarely seen in decks. Blackfire and Lady Deathstrike just get better as the game drags on. Blackfire will always find a target to hose. Lady D will be the best 5-drop on the board from turn 6 on, and she will give you some serious protection and deadly offensive capabilities. Scarecrow is not meant to be played on turn 5—save him for turn 11+, when you can boost him to a ridiculous level and sweep up the board. He gets big. I mean really big.
Darkseid, Uxas is pure board control and often will dispose of about a dozen stunned characters at a throw. His cosmic power rarely happens in multiplayer (as no character is safe from stunning), so the deck doesn’t support that aspect of his powers, even though Man-Bat certainly hopes for it.
Superman, False Son is more board control, but even your friends/enemies (it’s so hard to tell them apart in multiplayer) can take advantage of his triggered power. He works best when the players in front of you have very few characters and are unlikely to feel threatened by him. If all of an opponent’s characters become stunned while attacking, he or she will have nothing to fear from Superman. However, the victims of those early attack steps are going to want some big time revenge. They just won’t have any characters with which to get it.
On turn 8 and beyond, you have a chance to knock out random players at any time. The Demon, Etrigan can take out any player who is low on endurance. Onslaught will win you the game if you have the first attack step on turn 9 (barring a Jean Grey, Phoenix Force). If Jean Grey or an early Gamma Bomb happen on turn 8, Imperiex is a great turn 9 play . . . if you’re going first. If you don’t get the first attack step, Trigon is the only choice. Not only will you hose other players’ chances at playing a 10-drop, but you’ll have the biggest character on the block. Locations are very good in multiplayer, as the game goes on for 10+ turns and you get a lot of extra uses out of them, so there should be plenty of locations for Trigon to grab.
The locations are all Arkham’s show in this deck. My original build had Firepits of Apokolips in it, but it can be hard to keep a character around long enough to get it to work. Plus, if an opponent manages to foil your plan by flipping the targeted resource face up, then you lose endurance and look the fool.
Blackgate Prison is a good way to stun a 1-drop that would otherwise be Flame Trapped or stolen by another player, and you get a card for your trouble. Since so many of your characters are going to get stunned, Arkham Asylum can pick them up when they would otherwise be KO’d. No Man’s Land is downright evil, as there will often be another player taking his or her attack step after you, and you can exhaust a character that would otherwise be a threat. After turn 8, players often have only one character in play, so this card will keep you safe from half of the players in the later turns.
As for plot twists, The Exchange works very well if you draw one of your big guns early but are missing a middle drop. Kidnapping can also get you to the cards you need. Anti-Life Equation can rack up some big losses. The person to your right (who chooses last) will probably call for a vendetta on you. Hopefully, however, Gone But Not Forgotten will keep you in the game for a few extra turns.
There are only four team-up cards, as the deck can do fine without an early team-up. The deck sports more than a few unaligned characters, which are great against the ever-present-in-multiplayer Onslaught. While there are some multiplayer favorites, it’s the unexpected, unusual, and “first time I’ve ever seen that in play” cards that make multiplayer so much fun.
Questions or comments may be sent to mhyra@metagame.com.