This week’s submission comes from Jessie Raila, who shares my love of what I can only describe as the dark side of the board (more well known as the hidden area). Whether characters are getting there by buying their way out of reach of the authorities or by using powers granted to them by the mutagenic Terrigen Mists, it’s a great place to be.
Jessie’s Modern Age submission pulls together two teams with a great deal of expertise at skulking in the shadows, jumping out with a terrifying ”BOO!” and then ducking back into cover—the shadowy Hellfire Club and the Terrigen-mutated Inhumans.
Submitter: Jessie Raila
Plotting in the Mists (Modern Age)
Characters
3 Ahura, Heir to Attilan
2 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
3 Friedrich Von Roehm, Black Rook
3 San, The Alienated One
1 Crystal, Elementelle
3 Tonaja, The Responsible One
2 Jolen, The Treacherous One
1 Nahrees, The Negative One
2 Thing, Rockhead
2 Roberto Da Costa, Heir to the Throne
2 Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
2 Shinobi Shaw, White King
3 Donald Pierce, White Bishop
1 Invisible Woman, Flame On!
Plot Twists
4 Extended Family
4 Join the Club!
3 Power and Wealth
3 The Outside World
3 Army of One
2 It’s Slobberin’ Time!
Locations
3 Blue Area of the Moon
3 Shaw Industries
2 The Hellfire Club
2 Himalayan Enclave
1 Attilan
Jessie’s asked that I work without The Great Refuge or Enemy of My Enemy if possible, as access to rares is a bit of an issue; this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Not only am I apparently more comfortable than most not automatically adding “4 Enemy of My Enemy” to the start of every decklist, but also the Hellfire Club search card, Join the Club, can search out any concealed character. This means that we can search for Inhumans even before we team-up. We’ll also have the option of Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend on the first turn to improve our chances further, and if we can get Attilan going, then that too will ensure that we at least hit our curve.
Essentially, the deck is a riff on the well-trodden Hellfire Club “One Man Army” strategy: building up a hidden board while relying on a man-mountain like Shinobi Shaw, White King or Donald Pierce, White Bishop to dominate the visible area and soak up damage. The Inhumans fit into this strategy like a hand into a glove. They have an excellent set of characters suited for sniping from the hidden area, but less impressive options on the man-mountain front—obviously the work of Dr. Atkins has made it as far as Attilan. On the plus side—though they’re lacking in the kind of beefy characters available to the Hellfire Club—the Inhumans’ plot twists and locations are veritable Super Weight Gain 4000, with Power Struggle, It’s Slobberin’ Time!, Himalayan Enclave, and Blue Area of the Moon available to pump up the troops.
Given that we now have a handle on what it is we’re trying to achieve, let’s take a first look at what we want out of the character curve. For the first few turns we’re fairly indifferent about which team we want to recruit, although the Inhumans provide the characters that act as search cards (San, The Alienated One and Crystal, Elementelle) in those early turns of the game. Turn 5 is the Shinobi turn, where we really put the brakes on our opponent’s attempts to finish us off after we’ve recruited concealed characters for much of the early game. Shinobi is so central to the main game plan that we’ll need a good reason even to run an alternate 5-drop. Donald on turn 6 is important, but not as critical as Shinobi on turn 5; we have more flexibility on turn 6, as Shinobi should still be keeping pace with our opponent’s recruits thanks to his triggered power and our various location and plot twist pumps. Turn 7 currently features only a single copy of Invisible Woman, Flame On!, and that could well change—possibly with the addition of the Hellfire staple Sebastian Shaw, Black King.
Now that we have some idea of where we’re going, let’s take a look at the characters in more detail.
1-drops
I have quite stringent criteria for 1-drops in beatdown curve decks like this one. Generally, they need to have either a search ability or an alternate cost (Boliver Trask, Creator of the Sentinel Program in Curve Sentinels or Rick Jones, A Hero’s Best Friend in Avengers reservist, for example). A 1-drop needs a really dramatic text box for me to include it in a full-curve deck if it doesn’t meet either of those criteria. As such, there are two cards that I consider contenders for space in this deck. The first is Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend, the closest thing the Inhumans have to Boliver himself. The second is Hellfire Club Initiate, Army, a character who possesses deeply unimpressive stats but is able to exhaust to cards like Power and Wealth and provide a nearly free KO to Sebastian Shaw if we include him.
2-drops
Given the sheer number of powerful locations available to this team pairing, San, The Alienated One is head and shoulders above the other options at this point on the curve. We may include a backup 2-drop simply to bulk up the numbers, which would likely be a Hellfire Club character to keep the numbers up for Join the Club. Friedrich Von Roehm, Black Rook is the most likely option given our likely lack of Mental characters to fuel Sage, Tessa.
3-drops
Mastermind, Dark Dreamer has historically been a staple of One Man Army Hellfire Club decks, but thankfully the Inhumans provide some much more appealing options for concealed—optional characters in the shape of Jolen, The Treacherous One; Tonaja, The Responsible One; and Crystal, Elementelle. Jessie’s original list had trouble deciding between these three cards (each very efficient at doing a particular job), and this is understandable. Without access to The Great Refuge, however, focus is more important than variety; with less access to search effects, we want to make ourselves as likely as possible to get our core game plan going. Crystal is the character that I feel makes this most possible, allowing us to fix our resource row for Attilan, find our Team-Up, and with the inclusion of at least a single copy of Evil Alliance act as a one-shot The Hellfire Club. Four copies of Crystal will serve as our primary 3-drop. Our backup 3-drop will depend partly on how our Hellfire Club numbers look. We may run a couple copies of Mastermind to support Join the Club, or we may have space for a couple copies of one of the other Inhumans.
4-drops
The 4-drop slot is another one where our options are improved significantly by the Inhumans team. To the main Hellfire Club options of Empath, Hellion and Madelyne Pryor, Black Rook, we can add Nahrees, The Negative One and Dewoz, Dark Reflection. While Roberto Da Costa, Heir to the Throne has a useful leader power, the restriction of his triggered power to Mutants is a serious strike against him. Empath’s primary use in the past has been to allow for Army of One to be played on him on turn 4 before KO’ing him on turn 5 to flip the same Army of One face down in preparation for its use on Shinobi. With our deck’s greater reliance on locations and Team-Ups, I’m less comfortable with that plan (finding space in the resource row for an Army of One that may get stuck face down, that is). Madelyne Pryor is a more appealing option, giving ground-pounders like Shinobi and Donald flight in the later turns.
In the end, I’m going to go with Nahrees and Madelyne as the 4-drops of choice. Nahrees’s cosmic—surge power will help to drag the game into a turn 7 that we can dominate with oversized Hellfire Club characters, and Madelyne provides a valuable way to break up formations and—in emergencies—KO characters that have been made visible, disrupting cards like Shaw Industries and Army of One.
5-drops
It’s Shinobi time. The only competition for even a single 5-drop slot is Karnak, The Shatterer, who is likely to provide greater damage output over two turns than Shinobi Shaw, White King against decks that don’t attack much. Against anything even faintly aggressive, it’s all about the beefcake.
6-drops
Much as Shinobi on turn 5 provides the solid core of the deck, Donald Pierce, White Bishop provides the follow-up punch. The plan for turn 6 is for Shinobi to start the turn visible, with Donald coming down in the hidden area. When (if?) our opponent manages to take down Shinobi, we either want to recover him and move him to the hidden area with The Outside World, or simply move him to the hidden area with The Hellfire Club or Himalayan Enclave before moving Donald into the visible area with either the other location or a replaced Evil Alliance. The other option would be to run a copy of Deadly Game to search for with Power and Wealth and Attilan, although we’ll generally be better served making sure we have both locations up and running.
Other options for 6-drops are Magneto, Black Lord; Mr. Sinister, Supreme Geneticist; and Maximus the Mad, Mental Manipulator. I’m going to suggest the newbie of the pack, Mr. Sinister. While most decks would have trouble justifying a non-optional concealed 6-drop, ours doesn’t, and Mr. Sinister has both a solid 13 ATK for when we’re feeling aggressive and a brutal activated power that can thin out the characters struggling to make it past Shinobi. He’ll set up for the kill on turn 7 while giving us an always-welcome shot of endurance to help us get there.
7-drops
Although the burn ability of Invisible Woman, Flame On! is a nice bonus, a single copy of a 7-drop that we can only search out with another singleton (Attilan) or if we’re still teamed-up doesn’t feel like enough. Replacing her with a single copy of Sebastian Shaw, Black King instead makes me feel a lot more comfortable about hitting this critical drop, as he can be searched out with Join the Club.
Pulling all of that together into a curve gives us the following as a work in progress:
4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
4 San, The Alienated One
2 Friedrich Von Roehm, Black Rook
4 Crystal, Elementelle
2 Mastermind, Dark Dreamer
3 Nahrees, The Negative One
3 Madelyne Pryor, Black Rook
3 Shinobi Shaw, White King
1 Karnak, The Shatterer
3 Donald Pierce, White Bishop
1 Mr. Sinister, Supreme Geneticist
1 Sebastian Shaw, Black King
That’s thirty-one characters, fifteen of them Hellfire Club (a number we want to keep high if possible for the sake of Join the Club). Every character either has concealed or concealed—optional, making them searchable with Join the Club, and it feels like we have a solid starting point from which to start looking at the resources available to the deck. I’m leaving out the possible singleton Hellfire Club Initiate for now, as he should really be considered part of a package with Power and Wealth and Sebastian Shaw. If both of those cards make it into the final build, the Initiate likely will as well.
Check back tomorrow, when I’ll be working through the plot twists and locations for the deck and suggesting a final build. Already I can see some changes implied by the reshuffled curve. For example, with the cosmic—surge count greatly reduced, Evil Alliance overtakes Extended Family as the Team-Up of choice (although a single Family may stay to help out Nahrees, we’re unlikely ever to need multiples).
Tom Reeve is a member of the Anglo-Canadian Alliance (like the Rebel Alliance, but with public transport instead of X-Wings) and would-be professional layabout from London, England. While his love of all things ninja has resulted in an arguably unhealthy affinity for the League of Assassins, that particular quirk turned into a healthy plus with the birth of the Silver Age deck Deep Green, with which teammate Ian Vincent took home the Pro Circuit San Francisco trophy to dear old Blighty.