If there’s a deck more synonymous with the concept of “net-decking” than The New Brotherhood, I don’t think I’ve heard of it. Though Fantastic Four Beatdown preceded it, it’s fair to call TNB the first truly dominant archetype of the Vs. System. From day one, TNB was the deck to beat. Though it is no longer the huge powerhouse it once was, it still wins its share of major tournaments, and its influence is still felt in the competitive environment.

But it’s not original—except when a really exceptional player runs it.

Innovation is rare in TNB decks, but players like Dave “En-Kur” Spears and Oliver Schneider still find little new twists to fit into the deck. Dave’s not here, but Oliver Schneider is, and his The New Brotherhood deck deserves a look.

Characters
4 Toad
4 Pyro
4 Rogue, Anna Raven
4 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff
4 Sabretooth, Feral Rage
4 Sauron
4 Quicksilver, Speed Demon
4 Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr

Plot Twists
4 Flying Kick
4 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Savage Beatdown
4 The New Brotherhood

Locations
4 Avalon Space Station
4 Lost City
4 Genosha

Right off the bat, if you know TNB, you can see the deviations from the standard deck. The characters are what you’d expect except for two obvious points—the standard 1-drops are all missing, and Sauron’s in the deck. The missing 1-drops really cause the deck to lose some potential offense. However, this decision allows it to fit in more copies of Toad and Pyro, giving the deck more mid-game resiliency, especially against Flame Trap (which saw a great deal of play in Minehead). The lack of 1-drops also allows for more 4-drop space. Often only four copies of Sabretooth, Feral Rage and two copies of Blob would make the cut, but running no 1-drop character allows for a total of eight 4-drops to be used with relative ease.

Those extra slots are then used for Sauron, which capitalizes on the deck’s ability to stun characters with its smaller characters before swinging with its larger ones. Sauron actually saw limited play in Brotherhood variants at the Origins $10K tournament, sometimes even in concert with Flame Trap for a nasty combo, but since then his use has been limited to casual play in many cases.

The locations in this deck are the other big departure from conventional builds. While most builds of TNB use only Savage Land and Genosha, and while Big Brotherhood uses Lost City and Avalon Space Station, this deck sacrifices Savage Land and a few plot twist slots in order to run the entire Big Brotherhood location set. The result is a somewhat unpredictable blend of the strengths of both decks. Is it a great idea for a long-term deck, or for a series of consecutive games against the same opponent? That’s debatable. But for a one-game format it’s a really interesting approach to the concept of surprise tactics. Watching Schneider’s opponents, it was obvious that at least some of them were befuddled by his deck and were unsuccessful in trying to pigeonhole it one way or another. By the time they deciphered the deck, it was often too late, and Schneider had already clinched the win.

Though Schneider’s TNB build is far from a creative masterpiece, it’s an exemplary model of innovation being applied to an existing, and in some ways very hackneyed, archetype to take advantage of the one-game tournament format. Running this type of deck was no doubt a metagame decision, and it’s an example of the new type of strategy which will play a big role in future Vs. System premier events.