Welcome back to Deck Clinic. When I left off, we’d put together a new, more streamlined curve for our Fantastic Four equipment deck, aided in our quest for efficiency by the addition of Mobilize to the original build’s staple Signal Flare. Now comes the tricky part: working up the right mix of both equipment and supporting resources.

Plot Twists and Locations

The first additions will be the search cards, namely Signal Flare, Mobilize, and Tech Upgrade, the beating heart of any mono-FF equipment-based deck. Four copies of Signal Flare and three of Mobilize should be sufficient, along with a full set of Tech Upgrade. It’s Clobberin’ Time! is still hard to beat as offensive plot twists go, making completely one-sided attacks much more likely. For now, I’m going to keep the plot twists relatively light, leaving as many slots to work with as possible for the more critical equipment. 28 characters with 15 plot twists leaves us 17 slots for locations and equipment.

As for locations, the only real contenders are Pier 4 and The Baxter Building. Even in Fantastic Fun—which generally had to spend an actual resource point on The Pogo Plane to find it—only a single copy of Pier 4 made the deck. It seems likely that we’d have to do too much work to get the Pier going and really benefit from it. I’d also run more direct equipment search, such as Cannibal Tech or Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle, High-Tech Hero, rather than the less reliable Baxter Building. The other location to consider is Dr. Fate’s Tower, but with space already reserved both in the deck and on characters for multiple copies of Fantasticar, there simply won’t be space for full sets of Fate Artifacts.

Before moving on to the equipment, it’s worth a quick run-through of some of the types of plot twists that are worth keeping seriously in mind: combat pumps like Savage Beatdown; other combat-related effects like Blind Sided and Need for Speed; search cards like the aforementioned Cannibal Tech; and recursion, specifically Salvage. Resource disruption was a part of the plot twist suite of the original deck, but Reality Gem, Infinity Gem should be able to cover that particular need quite nicely.

Toys!

And here we are, where everything gets . . . difficult. While large characters are still large characters, and plot twists that search for characters are still plot twists that search for characters, equipment itself has exploded in complexity. Suddenly you don’t just have Fantasticars and Personal Force Fields, you have Fate Artifacts, Infinity Gems, equipment cards that act like plot twists, equipment cards that act like Team-Ups, and so on. Thankfully, we can remove at least one of those from consideration, having no need for Team-Ups. The rest, however . . .

The first additions will be four copies of Fantasticar. For a team capable of maintaining a sizable board through the mid-game thanks to strong stats and It’s Clobberin’ Time, even a single Car will often add +3 ATK / +3 DEF to your characters. The ability to drop multiples into play on a single turn is pretty much the “key play” of the deck, and I have little hesitation about playing four copies.

Things get a little trickier here, and this is the point where I start looking for cards that fill specific roles rather than those that are generic “good stuff.” If I want to slap “good stuff” on one of my characters it’ll probably be a Car, so other equips will need their own reasons to be there.

First, let’s think of what we could possibly ask an equipment to do for us, and then think of the options open to us.

+ATK Pumps

 Otherwise-powerful cards like Tricked-Out Sports Car are completely outclassed by Fantasticar, but there are a couple of ATK-pumping equipment worth considering. The first is Light Armor, our first pseudo-plot twist, giving us a +3 ATK pump that can be fetched mid-combat with Tech Upgrade. The second is Quadromobile, capable of retrieving a discarded Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing or Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd if the game goes long; fetching back a power-up to avoid a stunback; or simply providing +2 ATK in case we don’t have a full board of Cars. It’s the flexibility that makes it attractive. High-Tech Flare Gun gives us a substantial ATK boost that competes with a Car while providing an attractive secondary bonus, access to the hidden area. Other cards like Mindtap Mechanism and Atlantean Trident provide yet more alternatives, but these are more suited to building a single huge attacker than building a board with Cars.

Protection

This doesn’t include just +DEF boosts, but rather can be taken to include cards like Personal Force Field and Cloak of Nabu which specifically assist in avoiding the ubiquitous threat of Reign of Terror on turn 4. B.P.R.D. Signal Device (previewed by Michael Barnes and arriving in the Hellboy Essential Collection) is another great example of this type of card, providing a few critical benefits even over the omnipresent Artifact. For now, the Cloak is the right call, as it can be searched for and recruited on turn 3 against Doom, which ensures that it will be in play before the opponent has access to Reign. Later in the game, as long as you keep one character unequipped, you can (with varying levels of painful endurance loss) shuffle a single Cloak around with Mr. Fantastic, Stretch to negate any number of targeted effects. Don’t forget Human Torch, The Invisible Man when it comes to mitigating those endurance payments. Unstable Molecules is also worth mentioning: despite the lack of Antarctic Research Base to really abuse it, +3 DEF for the turn without taking up a full-time equipment slot is nothing to sneer at. The ability to pop the Molecules multiple times in a single turn (on turn 4, for example, to keep the cosmic counter on Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time) has the potential to be immensely frustrating for your opponents.

Stunned Character Removal

The ability to search for Finishing Move effects is a powerful one, and there are two options here: Chopping Block and War Wagon. Chopping Block has the benefit of the pseudo-plot twist discard payment power, while War Wagon makes up for its lack of flexibility with a pretty brutal dose of direct endurance loss (as anyone who remembers Marvel Knights Sealed Pack can testify). The downside of not being able to do anything with War Wagon until turn 5 probably tips the balance in favor of Chopping Block, which can be used earlier if a particularly tempting opportunity presents itself.

Other Utility

There are a few other equipment that can fill unique roles, and this is probably the area of the deck which can be most heavily customized to your local metagame. Catcher’s Mitt, for example, provides a second layer of reinforcement in case Human Torch, The Invisible Man or Invisible Woman, Sue Storm isn’t enough. The already-mentioned Quadromobile provides dual-use ATK pump and character recursion. Ultimate Nullifier along with more copies of Human Torch, The Invisible Man could provide an intriguing answer to some otherwise unanswerable questions (not that I can think of any critical ones right now). Reality Gem provides reusable resource hate, while Sonic Gun provides a useful silver bullet against Devil’s Due.

Let’s take a stab at pulling all of this into some kind of order. With Chopping Block and other equipment that act like plot twists, the addition of Salvage—to reuse our Cars  as well as provide some insurance for them against Meltdown—looks to be a certainty.

In the end, I decided to go for a setup that maximizes the power of Salvage. It can fetch characters back via Quadromobile, fetch +3 ATK pumps back via Light Armor, fetch Finishing Move via Chopping Block, fetch Acrobatic Dodge via Unstable Molecules, or simply pull cards back into hand to discard to Reality Gem, Mobilize, or Chopping Block’s payment power. Whatever the most painful thing we can do to our opponent is in any given matchup, we want to be able to do it a lot.

Final Thoughts

Here’s the list that I’m going to suggest as a starting point if you want to take the Fantastic Four out for a spin in today’s Golden Age. I’ve chosen High-Tech Flare Gun over Sonic Gun in the expectation that Devil’s Due will be less popular now that the Supermanhunter, Kryptonite Armor tech is out in the open (although Time Thief still gives Devil’s Due players an out against their unlikely nemesis).

Characters

4 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura

4 Human Torch, Johnny Storm

4 Thing, Ben Grimm

3 Luke Cage, Reserve Member

3 Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time

1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm

1 Human Torch, The Invisible Man

4 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch

2 Hulk, New Fantastic Four

1 Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

1 Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd

Plot Twists

4 Signal Flare

4 Tech Upgrade

4 It’s Clobberin’ Time!

4 Salvage

3 Mobilize

2 Cannibal Tech

Equipment

4 Fantasticar

1 Light Armor, Construct

1 Unstable Molecules

1 Cloak of Nabu, Fate Artifact

1 Quadromobile

1 Reality Gem, Infinity Gem

1 Chopping Block, Construct

1 High-Tech Flare Gun

Obviously, the deck is highly customizable. Not only can you tweak character numbers and inclusions very easily thanks to a strong core of search cards, but you can also search for equipment almost at will. Late-game locations can be “toolboxed” as well with the inclusion of a copy of The Pogo Plane (terraform locations for turn 5, regular locations such as Pier 4 for turn 6).

More dramatic changes are also possible, with one possibility being a team-up with the Gotham Knights for Barbara Gordon ◊ Batgirl, Guardian of Gotham; Batmobile; and Utility Belt among other cards of interest. Although at the time of this writing I’ve only seen a few cards from the Hellboy Essential Collection, the B.P.R.D. is already shaping up to be the kind of team with whom Reed Richards would get along just fine.

I’m often surprised by just how interesting even the simplest deck ideas can turn out; even straightforward strategies like the Fantastic Four plan of “recruit characters, equip characters, bash” can give a deckbuilder all sorts of options for being sneaky and fiddly. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at one of the true classics of early Vs. System, now brought up to date with a veritable Utility Belt of shiny new toys!

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.