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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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| Deck Profile: Caldelos Arellano Hanoel |
| Jason Grabher-Meyer |
| May 08, 2005 |
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 Some decks are awesome because they win. They balance utility and synergy with impeccable grace across a 60-card spread, and reading their deck list is like eating delicious dark chocolate. They inspire the mind to win and intrigue the heart with the thrill of competition. They are majestic beings, almost alive with the creativity and loving care that days of testing has infused them with.
Other decks are awesome because they’re named “Satanus, Go!” I’ll give you a few seconds to consider which one of those two possibilities this deck might be.
Congratulations! You probably got it right.
The concept behind Satanus, Go! is just too tempting. Taking all of your opponent’s characters in one fell swoop? Difficult, but it’s a concept rich in the chocolatey goodness I touched on earlier. Here’s how Caldelos Arellano Hanoel aimed to achieve that very goal.
 Characters
1 General Zod
4 Satanus
4 Mongul
1 Cassie Sandsmark ◊ Wonder Girl
2 Metallo
3 Hank Henshaw ◊ Cyborg
2 Silver Banshee
4 Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detective
3 Hank Hall ◊ Hawk
3 Dawn Granger ◊ Dove
3 Prankster
Plot Twists
4 Mega-Blast
4 Flying Kick
4 Teen Titans Go!
2 Finishing Move
2 Revenge Pact
2 Betrayal
2 Marvel Team-Up
2 World’s Finest
1 Press the Attack
1 Unmasked
2 Not So Fast
Locations
2 Suicide Slums
2 Metropolis
While this deck first appears to be on a budget, replacing the Savage Beatdowns with Mega-Blast, it isn’t. Mega-Blast is preferred over Savage Beatdown for its turn-long duration. For the un-initiated, the point of a Satanus Go! deck is to drop Satanus on turn 6, attack with him, and ready him with Teen Titans Go! so he can attack again. The aim is for Satanus to work his way up the curve so as to not get nailed by stun-back. If he eats it on the last shot, it’s no big deal, but we want Satanus to steal multiple characters before going down.
 Mongul can substitute in a pinch, dishing out a ton of pain if Hanoel hits his teamup but missed his drop. Silver Banshee makes the perfect pressure play when combined with Satanus in a team attack—stun back Satanus and you end the madness, at least for a turn, but if you neglect to stun back Silver Banshee, then she can be repeatedly readied by Teen Titans Go! for the rest of the turn. That means anything you can stun is getting KO’d, and that’s not something an opponent should take lightly.
Prankster is also of note, preventing an opponent from hitting his or her drops by repeatedly calling the on-turn or next turn’s number with his effect. It’s a nasty trick in any deck, but this one in particular can punish an opponent if they can be manipulated into missing their 5- or 6-drop. One final shot from Satanus can essentially steal a player’s complete mid-game.
From there, the rest of the deck’s lineup is a synergistic list of drop-fillers. Dove, Hawk, and Cyborg can all stun up the curve under the right conditions, General Zod and Metallo provide some control, and Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detective eliminates the need to work from the bottom to the top of an opponent’s ranks since he can eliminate the stun-back that can ruin this deck.
The unaddressed plot twists are mostly tech. Unmasked hurts Titans and Curve Sentinels, Betrayal smacks the latter and X-Stall, and Finishing Move can take down copies of Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic in order to prevent A Child Named Valeria from ever seeing the table. It kills stuff too, and on a more general level, that’s always good. Finally, Revenge Pact helps to hit drops, which is important for a deck without character-specific search that depends on one key bruiser.
Hanoel’s creation may or may not be Top 8 material, but it’s definitely a great build of an undeniably cool deck. It has some interesting ways of manipulating a game’s tempo long enough to get to where it needs to be, and when it goes off it goes off hard. Though he isn’t running a tier one deck, a lot of players were pulling for Hanoel—it’s impossible to not want to see this deck do well.
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