And so we come to the first Deck Clinic for the fourth main team in the Heralds of Galactus set, the Kree. This week’s submission interested me because it didn’t focus purely on the Kree’s “flagship” mechanic, press, but instead took as its centerpiece one of the most interesting individual characters on the team—Ronan the Accuser.

Submitter: Lee Dunn, via e-mail

Ronan’s Lunatic Legion

Okay, so here is my idea. In the comics, Ronan created the Lunatic Legion, so I thought it would be a neat idea to build a Kree deck around them—not so much a press deck as a resource control deck.

Characters

2 Nenora, Skrull Usurper

4 Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth

2 Dr. Minerva, Starforce

3 Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion

4 Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion

2 Colonel Yon-Rogg, Commander of the Helion

2 Admiral Galen Kor, Lunatic Legion

2 Katrina Luisa Van Horne ◊ Amazon, Unrepentant Hero

3 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce

1 Lunatic Legionnaires, Army

1 Bron Char, Lunatic Legion

1 Shatterax, Starforce

2 Alaris, The Outgoing One

1 Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser

Plot Twists

3 Improper Burial

4 The Infamous Seven

2 Live Kree . . . or Die!

4 Crisis on Infinite Earths

3 The Lunatic Legion

4 Remnant Fleet

Locations

4 Hala

4 Stargate

2 Penal Colony

This Deck Clinic patient is built to lock down your opponent’s resource row permanently by dropping and protecting Ronan the Accuser, Starforce while replacing any resources he or she had already managed to flip with Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion and Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion. Then it uses Crisis on Infinite Earths on turn 7 to allow Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser to join his Starforce version on the field, guaranteeing that your opponent’s resource row will be fully face-down for the 7-drop’s direct stun ability to operate at full force. Katrina Luisa Van Horne ◊ Amazon, Unrepentant Hero, if dropped along the way, can enable the Supreme Public Accuser to stun on curve, rather than down the curve, in much the same way that Sensei, Martial Arts Master has been used in League of Assassins decks to give Merlyn, Deadly Archer a boost. And while normally I’d be reluctant to rely on another 4-drop (in addition to the 4-drop Ronan) to support my strategy, the press mechanic flips this rule on its head. While dropping Ronan on turn 4 and Katrina on turn 5 would leave you in serious danger of being swamped by larger characters, Ronan on turn 4 and a press chain into Katrina on turn 5 is much more interesting.

I’m going to work on a Modern Age build, so I’ll only be using cards from The X-Men, Heralds of Galactus, Justice League of America, and Infinite Crisis. The only card in the original list not from Heralds of Galactus is Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it may well be that we don’t need to reach too far outside the home expansion of the Kree. And while it’s interesting that Crisis on Infinite Earths has been featured in consecutive Deck Clinic decks, I find it more interesting that the two decks have such a different approach to using the card. It’s flexible enough to support almost the entirety of one deck, while remaining a powerful utility card for less committed decks.

That being said, the big question I have for this deck is Crisis itself. It’s the only way to recruit the second version of Ronan without compromising the first, and yet the card has depressingly poor synergy with the rest of the deck; it prevents us from making use of some of our team-stamped resources on the key turn. It’s also a full four card slots in the deck, even though we only want it in play for exactly one phase of one turn. So ideally, I’d like to include a way to keep the Crisis turn reliable without taking up so much space. For the rest of the game, Nenora, Skrull Usurper will do a great job of keeping characters like Franklin and Luisa on-team.

Looking at the original list, there are a few changes I want to make. First, despite this not being a purely press-centric deck, I at least want a backbone of press characters to provide an option for a press chain on, for example, turn 6—a turn on which we otherwise lack good options. Without the press chain, we also can’t justify cards like Stargate and Hala, depriving us of some powerful effects. Second, I’d like either some more defensive tricks to protect Ronan, or the ability to put his cosmic counter back on if it’s removed.

Let’s take a look at the characters we’re going to need.

1-drops

Nenora, Skrull Usurper is the glue that allows the deck to run the key off-team drops (Franklin Richards and Katrina) comfortably. Ideally I’d like this number to be four. Sintariis, High Kronamaster would be nice, but with the off-team characters needing multiple copies, we won’t have space.

2-drops

Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth is obviously a particularly powerful character for this deck. The hidden area, after all, is by far the safest place for Ronan to be while he disrupts our opponent. We will need press 2-drops, and a pretty good number of them. Four copies each of Dr. Minerva, Starforce and Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion seem like a certainty thanks to their strong triggered powers, as we will often be recruiting our press 2-drops multiple times per game (we might recruit Dr. Minerva on turns 2, 5, and 6, for example). If we feel the need for any more 2-drops, we can always run a copy or two of Captain Att-Lass, Starforce (or we may replace one copy of one of the other press 2-drops with a copy of Att-Lass to give us more character diversity).

3-drops

At the 3-drop slot, Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion has the most to offer our resource disruption game plan. At least a single copy of Colonel Yon-Rogg, Commander of the Helion seems worth a slot, because he provides a Fastball Special effect after a press chain on turn 5 or 6 if our opponent has a particularly troublesome character (such as Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar).

4-drops

I don’t see the need for drastic changes here. I will, in all likelihood, be increasing the numbers of our key drops (Ronan and Katrina) at the expense of the Lunatic Legionnaires and all but one copy of a press 4-drop, either Admiral Galen Kor, Lunatic Legion or Ultimus, Starforce (probably Ultimus for his flight).

5-drops

No argument with Bron Char, Lunatic Legion or Shatterax, Starforce from me. Alaris only seems like a reasonable choice if we add some means of searching for him in the games when we can’t hide Ronan or otherwise keep his counter safe, and if we feel we need the extra protection.

6-drops

I can easily see the argument for not running a 6-drop. The deck would, in most circumstances, prefer to be running out a press chain on turn 6; making a single large character is a poor second choice. A full press chain on 6 (Minerva, Kona Lor, Dylon Cir, Ultimus, Shatterax) represents a base 28 points of ATK before Shatterax’s +2 ATK boost is taken into account. Against an opponent incapable of actually playing many of his or her resources, that sounds likely to be lethal if we have the initiative.

7-drops

With our Ronan doppelganger joining the party and the option of a pretty monstrous press chain as a backup plan, who else could we need?

You might notice that I haven’t disagreed with many of the character choices for the deck, and you’d be right. I think the biggest problem this deck currently has with its character base is the number of certain characters being played. Low numbers of key characters put too much pressure on the deck’s limited search capacity, and some aren’t searchable at all (Katrina is the main culprit here).

The following seems like it should be a more stable character core for the deck:

4 Nenora, Skrull Usurper

4 Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth

4 Dr. Minerva, Starforce

3 Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion

1 Captain Att-Lass, Starforce

3 Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion

1 Colonel Yon-Rogg, Commander of the Helion

4 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce

4 Katrina Luisa Van Horne ◊ Amazon, Unrepentant Hero

1 Ultimus, Starforce

1 Shatterax, Starforce

1 Bron Char, Lunatic Legion

1 Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser

Be sure to check in tomorrow for Part 2 of Deck Clinic, where I’ll take a look at the resources for the deck, along with some more options for helping to keep Ronan the Accuser safe and healthy all the way up to turn 7.