This week’s Deck Clinic features the coming together of a pair of teams linked by a truly commendable devotion to a single hobby. Unfortunately, that hobby is grave robbing. What can I say? Nobody’s perfect.

Submitter: Aniodia from VSRealms.com

Straight to the Dance Floor

Characters
3 Funky Flashman, Salesman Supreme

2 Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk

4 Steel Wind, Cyborg Cyclist

2 Deadshot, Floyd Lawton

2 James Jesse ◊ Trickster, Giovanni Giuseppe

4 Suicide, Chris Daniels

2 Quakemaster, Robert Coleman

4 Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death

2 Anton Hellgate, Thanatologist

3 Mephisto, Soulstealer

2 Dracula, Vlad Dracula

3 Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind

1 Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute

1 Ultra-Humanite, Evolutionary Antecedent

1 Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden

Plot Twists

4 Funky’s Big Rat Code

4 Wake the Dead

4 With Prejudice

3 Gravesite

2 Blood Hunt

Locations
4 Slaughter Swamp

3 Gorilla City

Aniodia has asked that I work without Enemy of My Enemy this week, as he doesn’t have access to it. He’s also unconvinced of the need for Straight to the Grave given the amount of deck depletion in the deck, but is open to its inclusion if needed. My first impression of the list is that it’s a fairly slow, controlling build that gums up the ground before using the traditional Secret Society end-game of Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind into a 7-drop into Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden. The Underworld characters mainly seem to be there for consistency, providing some redundancy to the deck depletion aspects of the deck.

At a first glance, the single biggest place that I feel this deck can improve is, in fact, with its usage of the Underworld team. The Underworld as a team (although this is often forgotten) has access to some incredibly powerful cards: characters like Asmodeus, Duke of Hell; Blackheart, Son of Mephisto; and Varnae, First Vampire; and resources like Black Magic, Infernal Gateway, and Strength of the Grave. What lets the team down, as Aniodia identified, is its relatively poor early game. Underworld has a painful lack of truly inspiring 2-drops, 3-drops, and 4-drops. Isn’t it a good thing that we have a second team to help us out with that?

Looking at the starting list, I can see why Aniodia is skeptical about the need for Straight to the Grave; it’s the huge quantity of deck depletion effects. I think it may well have a place, however, partly because it allows for more precise character search than the deck depletion strategy does (which is particularly useful for hitting the few copies we run of our later drops), and partly because Straight to the Grave can also search for locations, plot twists, or equipment in a Secret Society deck as long as we can retrieve them from the KO’d pile. There is one particular location that I am very keen to incorporate into this deck, as it interacts astonishingly well with an otherwise underpowered (and overlooked) 3-drop on one of our teams. Moreover, rather than simply being another deck depletion card, Straight to the Grave gives us something the other cards don’t: precision. Rather than hitting a “good enough” character, Straight to the Grave allows us to hit the perfect character for a given situation.

And what’s the location I want to include? Club Dead. Have you read this location recently? It basically says, “Pay minor cost >>> recover target stunned character.” And you can use this puppy every turn? That’s already a pretty impressive deal. But if you want to take Club Dead from impressive to ridiculous, activate Club Dead targeting a character with this power:

“At the start of the recovery phase, recover all stunned characters adjacent to [mystery card].”

Recover four stunned characters for the cost of exhausting a location and putting an Underworld character card on the bottom of your deck from your KO’d pile? But who, I hear you ask, is the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about? Step forward, Dr. Sivana, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana (or “TBS” to his friends). We can dig it.

If we want to make best use of Dr. Sivana, we’ll probably want to recruit him on turn 3 and have Club Dead ready to go on turn 4. We’re not as worried about our lower drops, especially because some may have evasion (Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk, for example). If we’re going to use Straight to the Grave to search out Club Dead, then we need to have our search card in hand before we lay a resource on turn 4. This means that if we’re using Quadromobile, for example, we’ll need to recruit it in advance on turn 3; while Salvage is more flexible, it can’t retrive characters and doesn’t provide +2 ATK and flight.

Let’s start thinking about our character base. The lower end of the curve will be all about setting up the board, smoothing out our end-game plans, and making sure we have access to the necessary resources. The mid-game will be about using Club Dead and Dr. Sivana to blunt any attempt by our opponent to gain board advantage while hopefully whittling away at the edges of his or her board. The late game is where the sleeping giant stirs, and the brutal Underworld and Secret Society curve-toppers show up to put the game away in style.

So, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

1-drops

At this point on the curve, it’s all about the Secret Society. The Underworld 1-drops are either uninteresting Army characters (Tryks, Army and New Blood, Army), have loyalty (Shelob, Queen of Spiders), rely on a heavily concealed deck (Orb, Drake Shannon), or are only useful against opposing 1-drops (Lilith, Daughter of Dracula.

On the Secret Society side, things look a lot rosier. Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk is the poster child for the Secret Society deck-depletion strategy, providing a steady trickle of cards into your KO’d pile. Funky Flashman, Salesman Supreme has a more powerful ability, but one that is slow to get online in a curve deck like this one. In an off-curve deck, using him to dig multiple cards deep from turn 2 onward can be extremely powerful, but for us, he simply won’t have the reliability and durability of the Manhunter Clone. Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster provides both a 1-drop with which to satisfy the Secret Society requirements of cards like Funky’s Big Rat Code and possible copies of Straight to the Grave. It also retains utility later in the game to fuel discard costs, such as Slaughter Swamp’s. Cheetah, Feral Feline provides a (probably unnecessary) aggressive character, and although she might allow for a bit of early damage, our deck is likely to be passive enough early on that we won’t really be able to benefit from that early aggressive push. Copperhead, Slithering Assassin is the more interesting 2 ATK / 1 DEF 1-drop. With boost he can play backup 2-drop, but he too provides less benefit than the Manhunter Clone.

2-drops

With Secret Society 1-drops and a Secret Society 3-drop coming, we’d like for this spot on the curve to be where we start dropping Underworld characters. But it’s going to be difficult to tear myself away from James Jesse ◊ Trickster, Giovanni Giuseppe, whose evasion and additional deck-depletion power are ideal for this deck. I think I’m going to split the 2-drops. Remember, we don’t actually need an Underworld character in play to use Club Dead, just one in the KO’d pile. As such, a Manhunter Clone into James Jesse opening is probably better for enabling Club Dead than actually recruiting Underworld characters. Our backup 2-drop Underworld character will be Steel Wind, Cyborg Cyclist, with the comedy motorcycle art mitigated substantially by a hefty 4 DEF and a deck-depletion activated power. If we decide later on to take this deck in a more off-curve direction, then Mortician, Toussaint Morrow and Deadshot, Floyd Lawton would both give us quite powerful options.

3-drops

Obviously, our primary drop here will be Dr. Sivana, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana. There are a couple of tech options on-team that might be worth a slot, mainly for use against decks that don’t actually stun enough of our characters to make Sivana’s power useful. Quakemaster, Robert Coleman is one example, with an efficient location-replacing activated power. The Mist, Jonathan Smythe is another possibility against defensive decks, gradually allowing us to shunt our opponent’s board into the hidden area and attack directly.

4-drops

Given the split in our 2-drops and our desire to flip our Team-Up at some point, I will be looking primarily at Underworld characters here. Thankfully, there are now two interesting candidates. The first is Blackout, Master of Darkness, whose ability to move effortlessly between the hidden and visible areas provides some nice flexibility (and options for reinforcement) while allowing him to come into play concealed before moving next to Dr. Sivana later in the turn. The second is Witch Woman, Linda Littletrees, who has solid stats, range, and a potentially useful disruptive payment power that can make use of spare character cards in our KO’d pile. Of the Secret Society characters, Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death is the most interesting for her built-in KO effect and character-stealing activated power, and we may include a single copy depending on what our character search cards end up being.

5-drops

At the 5-drop slot, we have some interesting options. Scarecrow, Fearmonger is a great way to shift our deck up into a more aggressive gear after stabilizing with Dr. Sivana, and the ability to recover him easily with the doctor should ensure that his +1 ATK / +1 DEF counter-gaining power can keep him bulking up throughout the game. On the Underworld side of things, we have two versions of Mephisto that bear noting. The Marvel Knights version, Mephisto, Soulstealer, has quite puny stats, but he also has an ability that gives him a significant offensive punch and the potential to devastate our opponent’s plans by stripping needed characters from his or her KO’d pile. On the other side of the coin, Mephisto, Lord of Hell, from the Heralds of Galactus expansion, simply provides a big, beefy body with built-in card advantage and the flexible concealed—optional. The last possibility is Zarathos, Spirit of Vengeance. With 1-drops and 2-drops with evasion, reliably recruiting this 10 ATK / 11 DEF monster may be more than just a dream.

6-drops

This is where our options really get interesting. On the one hand, we have Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind, a trademark character for many Secret Society decks. On the other hand, we have the relatively little-used Blackheart, Son of Mephisto and Asmodeus, Duke of Hell, both capable of providing an immense headache for certain types of decks. Some off-curve decks are simply incapable of stunning Blackheart, and many stall and control decks can’t survive being resource-locked by Asmodeus. At least one copy of each of these three massively disruptive characters is a certainty.

7-drops

There is a good mix of offensive and defensive options here. On offense, we have Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute and Ultra-Humanite, Evolutionary Antecedent (whose leader power is particularly interesting for a deck planning on keeping a full board around for the entire game.) On defense, we have one of the most frustrating defensive characters in the game, Varnae, First Vampire, who is able to blank the first attack that would stun him in any turn while at the same time almost guarantee a stunback.

8-drops

There are two choices here without reaching into the festering (and very, very deep) pool of off-team characters. Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden gives you a great excuse to make those “Yoink!” noises that all Secret Society players practice in front of the mirror by stealing a 6-drop for no really significant cost. Ultra-Humanite, Metahuman Manipulator is a little less efficient and has uniqueness issues, so we’ll be passing over him for now.

Now that we’ve finished a trawl through the undesirables that we’ll be recruiting, check back tomorrow to see what plot twists, locations and equipment I’ll be considering for the final build.