Kieren “Honest” Otton embodies the truism of “You don’t have to be crazy to play Arkham Inmates … but it helps!”

The likeable co-owner of the Sydney Games Centre might be one of the “veterans” of the Melbourne $10K at 36 years of age, but he shows nothing short of youthful exuberance for he beloved Arkham loonies.

Otton convinced many of the young players in Sydney who are new to the game that Arkham is the deck to beat and to metagame against. His next mission? To dominate this tournament.

His deck, dubbed “Honest Inmates” has the dubious distinction of being the only dedicated Arkham deck to win a game on the Pro Circuit, after his business partner Chris “Foggo” Foggins carried it into PC: LA on his behalf.

Regardless of the unpopularity of the deck, Kieren refuses to abandon any character who was featured in the 60s Batman TV show as a villain, and many Sydney players have learnt the hard way to respect the Inmates.

The deck looks like this.

Characters

4 Harley Quinn

4 Puppet Master

4 Charaxes

2 Blockbuster

4 Poison Ivy

2 The Joker, Laughing Lunatic

4 Killer Croc

4 Mr Freeze

2 Bane, The Man Who Broke The Bat

3 Magneto, Master of Magnetism

2 Apocalypse

Plot Twists

4 Savage Beatdown

4 Flying Kick

4 Fear and Confusion

4 Acrobatic Dodge

3 Nasty Surprise

3 Kaboom

3 Overload

The main strategy of the deck is to keep its opponents’ characters, and thus their options, to an absolute bare minimum, by exhausting, stunning or KO’ing them. 

They key cards and combos are Puppet Master with Charaxes and Poison Ivy with Nasty Surprise and Mr Freeze.

“When it works, it’s very frustrating to play against, which makes me happy,” he says with a grin.

“If it doesn’t curve out, though, I’ll see you on table 99.”

Kieren has been putting his Inmates through their paces since DC Origins first became available. What’s more, the deck returned encouraging results at a $10K warm-up event they held a week before in Sydney.

He’s found the deck is 50-50 against Sentinels, and good against Common Enemy and Big Brotherhood. Unfortunately, though, it’s not so good (read: really bad) against Teen Titans and X-Stall (Going Rogue).

Going into the Melbourne $10K, Kieren gave his deck a 50-50 chance, which is more than most of his friends gave it. As of round 6 of the event his prediction has been pretty good, as his record is a solid 3-3.