In last week’s return edition of O.S.B., we took a look at the hottest card to hit Vs. System since Enemy of My Enemy debuted in The X-Men expansion. In recent months, multi-team decks have totally dominated both Golden and Silver Age tournaments, all facilitated by Enemy of My Enemy. Contained within the latest expansion, Legion of Super Heroes, we have a card that aims to give mono-team decks a much needed shot in the arm. I’ve heard people crying out for someone to fix or ban Enemy of My Enemy. These people are clearly suffering from too much sun exposure. You guys want to move over here to England; no worries of that in good ’ol Blighty!

A couple years ago, my local football team was languishing in the bottom tier of English football. Then we changed our manager and bought a really good striker who would regularly score us over twenty goals a season. We eventually got promoted to the second tier of league football—the division below the likes of Manchester United. Now, our star striker was still scoring goals for fun, but our defense was not as strong. If the same people who complain about Enemy of My Enemy had anything to do with the Luton Town Football Club, we would have sold our star striker to balance the level of the team. Thankfully, they are not, and Mike Newell sits in the manager’s seat at the hallowed ground of Kenilworth Road. Mike got off his esteemed backside and brought in a new, improved defensive unit to match the abilities of our offensive force. My beloved team is better for it and continues to improve.

This is just what the clever chaps at UDE have done. Mobilize does not “fix” Enemy of My Enemy; it raises the level of mono-team decks everywhere so all of our favorite heroes and villains can be dusted off and taken into battle alongside the Enemy-enabled toolbox decks.

Last week, I took a quick look at two teams that could benefit from Mobilization, X-Statix and Arkham Inmates. This week, I want to have a look at a couple of other teams.

Spider-Friends

Spider-Friends is one team that many proclaim to be the next big thing . . . if only they had a character search card. Well, now they do. So, how can Peter Parker and chums perform in the Golden Age environment?

Characters

1 Black Cat, Master Thief

3 Jessica Drew ◊ Spider-Woman

2 Dusk

3 Cardiac

3 Ricochet

4 Spider-Man, Peter Parker

1 Julia Carpenter ◊ Spider-Woman

3 White Tiger

1 Firestar, Hot Stuff

3 Nova

3 Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man

3 Apocalypse

Plot Twists

4 Mobilize

4 Nice Try!

4 Spider Senses

4 No Man Escapes the Manhunters

3 Meltdown

3 Fun and Games

Locations

3 Slaughter Swamp

2 Soul World

Equipment

3 Reality Gem

I played a few games with this deck against a Titans player and was surprised by how effective it was. I was regularly able to counter many of the threats posed by Titans and keep their board at a very manageable level. The initiative of choice is evens and the mulligan condition is a fairly general early curve of characters.

The character selection is something I was not entirely sure about, as I have limited experience playing Spider-Friends, but I’ll go through my reasoning.

With the vast majority of my characters possessing evasion, Jessica Drew and Dusk seemed like logical choices for my primary characters. Never underestimate the importance of a +1 ATK or DEF boost. I added Black Cat, Master Thief as a personal indulgence because I love the cards that delay my opponent’s plays.

Cardiac and Ricochet make up my 3-drop characters. Neither have particularly impressive stats (particularly Cardiac), but their powers are awesome. Ricochet throws a blanket of protection over my early field, protecting my characters from all manner of nasty effects. Cardiac does a wonderful job of hurting my opponent on his or her initiative. Is there anything better than an auto-stun?

Peter Parker does what all good superheroes do—he protects those around him. He increases the potency of your characters on defense and shields your stunned characters from an Improper Burial or any other nasty demise. Julia Carpenter is a solid backup. Her ability might be costly, but it is very effective against a curve deck. We do have a fair bit of KO’d pile recursion to restock our hand, so her price should not be too extortionate.

On turn 5, we see one of my favorite Spider-Friends characters, White Tiger. He really is quite awesome, and I didn’t realize just how good he was until I started playing with the deck. He makes your opponent’s attack step a lot more complicated. Firestar, Hot Stuff is a very good alternative and hurts many of the weenie decks currently in the environment.

Nova can be monstrous for you on turn 6. Once again, the discard is not a major problem due to KO’d pile recursion. It is on this turn that you can put the game beyond your opponent with intelligent attacks.

The Amazing Spider-Man locks down turn 7 until your big man, Apocalypse, appears to seal the deal on turn 8.

The vast majority of the support cards are aimed at protecting the characters from opposition trickery, which was one of the reasons I chose Teen Titans as the first deck to test against; I think that’s called jumping in at the deep end. I was surprised at how well the deck worked against targeted abilities, and I think that is definitely its strength. Its weakness is against aggressive rush decks. Despite Spider Senses and the weenie stompers like Cardiac and Firestar, I really struggled against any kind of fast beats. While the powers of my “tech” characters worked nicely, in the end my early drops were just too small.

The inclusion of Mobilize certainly increases the viability of this deck, and against curve it’s very effective indeed. But if you expect to face a field of swarm, I’d think twice about running this deck. It may just be my build and my inexperience with the characters, but I think there is a bit more to it than that.

When I built the Spider-Friends deck, I spent a lot of time leafing through my Web of Spider-Man binder. A pang of nostalgia hit me as I skirted over the Sinister Syndicate cards; the Syndicate was the first team with which I created my own deck. Up until the Web of Spider-Man expansion, I had net-decked my way through Vs. System. The bad guys from Web of Spider-Man were the first team I got creative with. I created a deck (gave it a suitably lame name—The Bokken) and played with it continuously until the Marvel Knights expansion was released. The main problem with the deck (like so many others) was its consistency. The lack of a search card hurt it particularly badly. So, for our second Mobilization of the day, please join me on a trip down memory lane.

The idea behind The Bokken was to make it a simple, no-nonsense short-curve beats deck. My initial builds topped out at the 5-drop Green Goblin, but if we’re going to update the deck and make it more relevant for today’s game, I think we need to try to go off a little quicker.

Sinister Syndicate: The Bokken ’07

Characters

3 Vulture

4 Tombstone

2 Mendel Stromm

1 Basilisk

1 Tinkerer

2 Hammerhead

2 Electro

3 Vermin

1 The Rose, Richard Fisk

2 Boomerang

3 Rhino

2 Man-Bull

1 Alistair Smythe

1 Jackal

3 Dr. Octopus, Otto Octavius

Plot Twists

4 Mobilize

4 Trial by Fire

4 Flying Kick

4 No Man Escapes the Manhunters

3 No Fear

Locations

4 Birthing Chamber

3 Soul World

Equipment

3 Goblin Glider

As with all simple rush beatdown decks, the idea is to hit as hard and as fast as you can. As I have restricted myself to a mono-team deck, I am missing a character that could make the deck far better—Dr. Light, Master of Holograms. He could really exploit cards like Tombstone, Mendel Stromm, and Vermin. Perhaps that is a topic for another day. For now, let’s look at the characters on the team.

I normally mulligan for Tombstone, but if I have a good opening hand of low-cost characters, I’ll probably keep it. In an ideal world, I would like to recruit Hammerhead on turn 2, followed by a turn 3 play of Vermin, Vulture, and a Goblin Glider (on Vulture). The Glider is an awesome equipment, and when it’s equipped to Vulture you can generate some incredible endurance swings.

Boomerang is handy for slowing down opposing rush decks or removing vital characters, and he works quite nicely with Electro. Rhino is the powerhouse, and paying endurance to keep him around is a small cost for the benefit of his size. Generally, we can offset that cost through Vulture.

I love playing with the Syndicate—and putting four proxied copies of Mobilize into the deck certainly made it more reliable—but if we are to compare it to other rush decks currently in circulation, it is not as successful. If you are one of the purists who don’t like to blend unrealistic teams, this is certainly worth a go. The cards themselves (apart from Mobilize) are very reasonably priced and the deck does pack a punch.

Once again, we see two teams that are undoubtedly improved by Mobilize. In my opinion, out of the two, the Spider-Friends deck is more likely to compete on a reasonable level. Overall, we’ve covered four teams, and while each has been improved, we’ve yet to find one that will change the face of tournament play. Arkham Inmates and Spider-Friends are the strongest so far, but I have doubts about their ability to handle the current crop of tournament decks.

If you have some Mobilize ideas or experiences, please feel free to email me. Until next week,

Steve