Going into round 4, I unfortunately hadn’t seen as much new deck diversity as I was hoping for. Whether it’s the smaller turnout or the lack of available cards in the Marvel Modern Age pool, the tournament seems to be composed primarily of the standard decks that we saw at both Pro Circuit Atlanta and $10K Austin: Avengers, Hellfire Club, Squadron, Mental, and X-Faces. One deck that stands out, however, is being played by Kunihiro Kishishita. It’s a Mental deck, but it also has enough tricks up its sleeve to catch anyone who plays against him off guard.
During the round 3 feature match coverage, I was shocked when Kunihiro followed up his turn 1 Electric Eve with a turn 2 Sage, Tessa. But everything became apparent when he eventually flipped Psi-Link and dominated the board with cards like Unuscione and Magnetic Force. I sat down with Kunihiro after he had similarly dispatched an opponent playing a Squad deck.
I started out by asking him why he was splashing Energy in the deck. “I liked Magnetic Force,” Kunihiro said. “The Energy decks just weren’t that good. So I decided to try it out in a typical Mental deck a few weeks ago. At first, I wanted to try a straight Mental deck, but the X-Men [starter decks] are almost impossible to find in Japan, so I came up with this.”
After four rounds of play, he has beaten X-Faces, Avengers, Mental, and Squad, but he says his biggest obstacle is probably Hellfire. “That’s why I have the Sabretooth, Savage Killer in there; it lets you attack [an opponent’s] hidden board instead of having to go through the single visible character.” I’ll be keeping an eye on Kunihiro over the course of the day, but I expect him to be near the top, if not at the top, when the dust settles today. Taking home another $10K trophy would be quite a feat, giving him two wins in only three tournaments.
Here’s his deck list:
Characters
4 Artie
1 Electric Eve
3 Leech
4 Sage, Tessa
3 Tarot
4 Healer
2 Professor X, Headmaster
3 Unuscione
1 Hawkeye, Clinton Barton
3 Emma Frost, Friend or Foe
1 Sabretooth, Savage Killer
3 Jean Grey, Red
2 Exodus
1 Rachel Summers ◊ Phoenix
Locations
1 District X