Welcome to the second installment of Detective Work. This time my picture should be next to the article name, so you’ll know who to blame if you don’t like the article.* There is a lot to cover in this article, with not one but two $10K events having happened this week. I’ll highlight some of the exciting decks from those events and take a quick look at the PCQ metagame.
Let’s start in merry old England with $10K London. You can find the coverage here. No, your monitor isn’t broken and this isn’t Bizarro World. The $10K champion played neither Teen Titans nor Sentinels. Let’s take a look at Dean Sohnle’s incredible FF equipment combo deck.
Dean Sohnle
1 Human Torch, Hotshot
2 Ant Man, Scott Lang
4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards
4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl
1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
2 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch
2 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura
1 Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy
2 Thing, Ben Grimm
1 Frankie Raye, Herald of Galactus
1 Wyatt Wingfoot
4 Antarctic Research Base
1 Pier 4
1 Baxter Building
1 Salvage
4 A Child Named Valeria
3 Signal Flare
4 Cosmic Radiation
1 Foiled
2 Thinking Outside the Box
2 Personal Force Field
4 Advanced Hardware
4 Flamethrower
4 Unstable Molecules
1 War Wagon
2 The Pogo Plane
1 Fantasticar
This deck made me do a double take. Did you notice that there are no Tech Upgrades here, and only three Signal Flares to search for characters? I played a team-up version of a FF Equipment Burn deck using Alfred Pennyworth and Cosmic Radiation back at the first PC (this is the deck that spawned the Your Move Games Rigged Elections deck that made the finals of that event). That deck relied on the power of multiple search effects to get off the combo. This one forgoes search effects in favor of extensive card drawing and redundancy to get its combo going.
There are some very cool card interactions in this deck. An assortment of 1-drops helps to get around uniqueness problems (go Frankie Ray!). Pier 4 and Antarctic Research Base ensure that you can burn through your deck with a minimal number of characters in play. Thinking Outside the Box, combined with either Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards or Baxter Building, allows you to set up your draw each turn. I spent some time playing around with this deck, and though the Thinking Outside the Box combo is cool, I’m not sure if it warrants inclusion here when Tech Upgrade could be so valuable. In particular, because the second Thinking Outside the Box is a dead draw, I would probably cut one (or both) for Tech Upgrade. The other thing to notice is how few characters this deck runs—only 21! This low number is mitigated by the fact the the deck plans to draw lots of extra cards through Antarctic Research Base, but I found while playing around with it that you still hit situations where you wish you had another character to drop.
I’m not sure why this deck runs one Foiled. It seems like having a one-of reactive card like Foiled doesn’t make sense in this kind of combo deck, because there’s no way to search for it. I think that I would cut the Foiled for an extra 1-cost character.
Finally, let’s take a look at the equipment choices in this deck. Advanced Hardware and Flamethrower make up the key part of the combo, so four of each makes sense. The Pogo Plane helps a lot with the deck’s consistency, as it allows you to search for the key locations in your deck. Unstable Molecules is probably the best equipment to combo with the Antarctic Research Base, because you can play the Molecules, draw a card, KO them, and play another equipment on the same character while getting a bonus +3 DEF. The most interesting inclusion is the new Marvel Knights equipment, War Wagon. The War Wagon is incredibly powerful, providing both board control and a damage source. I am looking forward to seeing how often it will show up in straight Marvel Knights decks.
Overall, this deck looks like a powerful choice in the Titans/Sentinels metagame. Sentinels don’t stand a chance against this deck. The defensive reversals that Sentinels is famous for have very little effect on a deck focused around equipment-based damage. I’ve played a couple of games against Titans, and though that matchup is considerably more difficult than the Sentinels match is, it is a close one. The match is very difficult to play and seems to come down to how effective the Titans player can utilize Roy Harper and Terra during turns 4 through 6.
If Sohnle’s deck were the only new thing to come out of London, it would already be exciting, but looking at the Top 8, we see a Mutant Nation deck played by Andre Weinberger and a Big Brotherhood deck piloted by Jonathan Challis. Both of these decks utilize the power of Lost City, and both show some interesting innovations. I recommend taking a peek at both of these decklists, but I’ll spend a little bit of time on Jonathan’s deck here:
Jonathan Challis
Characters
4 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff
4 Mystique, Raven Darkholme
4 Sabretooth, Feral Rage
3 Blob, Fred Dukes
4 Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff
3 Quicksilver, Speed Demon
3 Sabretooth, Victor Creed
3 Mystique, Shape-Changing Assassin
4 Magneto, Master of Magnetism
3 Apocalypse
Plot Twists
4 Total Anarchy
4 Flame Trap
4 Shape Change
2 Rise to Power
4 Insignificant Threat
Locations
4 Lost City
4 Avalon Space Station
This deck has the most low-cost character hate of any deck I have seen. Running a grand total of zero 1- and 2-cost characters, this deck punishes fast starts with four Flame Traps, four Total Anarchys, and four Insignificant Threats! This is a metagame deck that is well prepared to take on Titans and its smaller Brotherhood cousin, TNB. Most of the rest of the deck is pretty standard, with the possible exception of Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff. Choosing to run Scarlet Witch is a strong statement in this kind of deck. Both Quicksilver and Magneto are powerful Brotherhood 5-drops that do a lot more to support the Lost City plan. Though Scarlet Witch has been used in other successful Big Brotherhood decks, I wonder if Jonathan had some advanced notice about Sohnle’s Equipment deck. Scarlet Witch is just about the best card you can play against a deck whose Plan A is to activate guys for direct endurance loss.
Jumping back across the pond, the $10K in LA shows us a potentially shifting metagame, with three New Brotherhood decks making the Top 8. Coverage for LA can be found here. Here is Ryan Jones’s list:
Ryan Jones
Characters
2 Destiny
2 Lorelei
2 Mastermind
2 Phantazia
2 Thornn
3 Pyro
2 Scarlet Witch, Eldritch Enchantress
1 Toad
1 Unus
1 Avalanche
2 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff
2 Rogue, Anna Raven
4 Sabretooth, Feral Rage
2 Sauron
4 Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr
Plot Twists
4 Not So Fast
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Surprise Attack
4 The Mutant Menace
4 The New Brotherhood
Locations
4 Genosha
4 Savage Land
I am sure that Danny Mandel is happy to see Unus in a Top 8 deck. This deck is very reminiscent of the original New Brotherhood decks, with the most significant addition being Scarlet Witch, Eldritch Enchantress. Is this new card enough to put New Brotherhood back on the map, or will increased metagame hate be able to keep this archetype in check? We’ll check in next week after $10K Madrid and another round of PCQs to find out.
The deck I am most interested in from the LA Top 8 is the Doom/New Gods hybrid deck piloted by Brian Eugenio.
Brian Eugenio
Characters
1 Big Barda
4 Boris
4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
1 Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria
1 Dr. Doom, Victor von Doom
1 Forager
1 Izaya ◊ Highfather
1 Lightray
1 Mark Moonrider
1 Metron
1 Orion, Dog of War
1 Scott Free ◊ Mister Miracle
1 Sub-Mariner
3 Vykin
Plot Twists
3 Astro Force
2 Betrayal
3 Faces of Doom
1 Flame Trap
3 Mystical Paralysis
3 Reign of Terror
4 Royal Decree
3 Savage Beatdown
4 The Exchange
1 Unmasked
Locations
3 Avalon Space Station
3 Doom’s Throne Room
3 Doomstadt
3 The Source
This deck is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first, of course, is that it is the first New Gods deck to make a Top 8 in a $10K event. More than that, however, this deck relies not only on the undervalued New Gods, but also on several older cards that have been traditionally overlooked by the metagame. Doom’s Throne Room is an incredibly powerful tool in a control deck, and I’m surprised that most Doom decks don’t run it. Brian makes a strong statement by running three in this deck. Drawing multiples is never a problem, because they simply become fuel to discard for more plot twists. This deck also makes great use of Avalon Space Station. Other than the requisite four copies of Boris and Doom, Diabolical Genius, the deck is a toolbox of one-of characters that can be searched for with The Exchange. Discarding key characters to either The Exchange or Doom’s Throne Room could seriously restrict this deck’s options, if not for the Space Station’s ability to retrieve them.
The other interesting card choice to highlight here is Betrayal. Betrayal can be a brutal beating against Curve Sentinels on turn 7 when it drops its off-team Magneto. Frankly, I think that it’s about time that the mutants turned on the sentinels. Betrayal is a powerful metagame card that punishes decks for “cherry-picking” an off-team character to fill in their curve. We are starting to see Betrayal pop up in decks across the board. In addition, this deck makes particular use of Betrayal by combining it with the power of The Source. Even legitimate team-up decks need to be afraid of some backstabbing once The Source takes out their fragile alliance. As I said last week, it seems to take a few months for new teams to be tested and tuned sufficiently to compete with the more established teams. It looks like the teams from Man of Steel may finally be getting their day in the sun.
Turning at last to the PCQ circuit, there are a huge variety of decks making Top 8s across the globe. The metagame breakdown looked like this:
Curve Sentinels - 6
The Brave and the Bold - 4
LOA/Brotherhood - 2
Teen Titans - 1
The New Brotherhood - 1
Big Brotherhood - 1
Cosmic Cops - 1
Common Enemy - 1
Arkham Inmates - 1
FF/New Gods - 1
Turbo Gamma Bomb - 1
New Gods/Darkseid’s Elite - 1
FF/X-Men - 1
Spider-Sentinels - 1
Psimon Says - 1
I’m running out of space in this article, so I won’t be able to highlight specific PCQ decks this week, but the number of archetypes (including only one Teen Titans deck!) shows you the diversity of decks that can get you qualified for the Pro Circuit. Check out these decks for yourself here. If your PCQs aren’t showing up, be sure to tell your tournament organizer to submit them! And if you aren’t going to PCQs, you are missing a great opportunity—if Arkham Inmates can make a Top 8, why can’t you?
Send good/bad plays, comments, and questions to JustinGary1@hotmail.com.
* Blame Humphreys.