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Wow, my first theme week. I can’t believe I made it this long. I’m touched. Sniff. Seriously though, guys, welcome to *insert chorus of trumpeters* Fantastic Four week! I am as stoked as a person can be. I’ve been saying for the last few months how amazing this summer was going to be for movies, and the Fantastic Four movie was a major contributing factor*. I’ve heard more than my share of jokes about how the movie will be awesome as long as Jessica Alba never uses her power, and I’m sure you have too. For the sake of being original, I’ll spare you.

Anyway, we writers were pretty much given free reign to speak about anything our hearts desired, as long as it tied somehow into the week’s theme. I wracked my brain for many long minutes before I came to a decision. I would write about . . . the Fantastic Four.

Follow me here, guys.

Well, not just the Fantastic Four. I figured I would also pay my respects to one of my all-time favorite Vs. System cards, Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius.

What heresy is this?! Speaking of The Fantastic Four and their archest of archenemies in the same breath? Blasphemy it is not. No, good readers, for those of you waiting on the scenic ledge of conclusion, allow me to make the intuitive leap forward for you. I’m speaking of Common Enemy.

A wise man once said, “Drastic times call for drastic measures.” This man was right. Sometimes an evil arises so foul, so . . . evil, that former enemies have no choice but to join in arms against it. In the case of Dr. Doom and the Fantastic Four, that evilest of evils was none other than the Sentinel army.

“Holy continuity breach, Batman! I didn’t know the Fantastic Four ever fought the Sentinels,” you might be thinking to yourself. Well, maybe they didn’t in your world, but in my world, it was all that we could talk about. How can we stem the purple tide? How can we put an end to the evil domination of Boliver Trask and his robot minions? Why can’t we get Super Skrull in on this action? These questions plagued us to no end.

Eventually Mr. Fantastic, being the scientific genius he is, came to us with a plan. He looked us dead in the eye and unlocked the puzzle with two small words—body armor. Kevlar Body Armor, in fact. Our eyes grew wide and our jaws hit the floor. Of course! It was all so simple! How could we have missed it? How better to stop a rampaging army of giant, mutant-hunting robots armed to the teeth than with good old fashioned Kevlar vests? They stop bullets, are dressy enough to wear to the office, and are casual enough to wear around the home. They’re perfect.

The first thing we had to do was to assemble our strike team and develop an attack plan. We decided that the first heroes to throw themselves in front of the unstoppable horde of metal would be She-Thing, She-Hulk, and Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. That’s right, he’s Luke Cage. Dr. Doom, doing what an evil super-genius does best, sent his personal servant Boris as an appetizer. Leave it to Doom to send his butler to do his dirty work.

After the initial stages of the battle began, we decided it was time for us to take control and send in the heavy hitters. We told Dr. Doom that there was a weapon of unbelievable power down on the battlefield. Predictably, he left his throne room in his safe, secure castle to go claim it. (Our backup plan was to send Wolverine down to stall. Lucky for us, Doom is very greedy.) After finding out that his weapon of unbelievable power was a mere Super Soaker, he immediately took out his frustrations on the smallest enemies he could find. His Reign of Terror quickly cleared the enemies’ ranks, which left room for the heavy hitters to move in. Thing came crashing through the side of the building, and after much poking and prodding, he delivered his trademark line: It’s Clobberin’ Time!

Clobberin’ time indeed.

Unfortunately, the Sentinels weren’t as off guard as we had thought. They sent in their champion, the nigh unstoppable Nimrod. Nimrod just shrugged off the most powerful blows we could offer and kept battling. After Bastion hit the battlefield, we knew we needed to come up with something quickly. Hulk had just gotten off work, and though still in his suit and tie, he quickly joined the fray. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Magneto swooped down out of the skies. “Excellent,” we thought, “If anyone on the planet hates Sentinels, the pawns of the mutant-hating Homo sapiens, it would be Magneto.” But alas, our celebration was short lived.

After he decided to try to permanently put our heroes out of commission, we almost gave up. Luckily for us, our fearless leader took the stage. Mr. Fantastic joined the battle, and he was not alone. He brought the one thing that might just turn this war—Kevlar Body Armor. Now wearing the courage-instilling armor, he and Hulk brazenly smashed into the Sentinel horde. The Sentinels thought they had won. However, when the dust settled and Mr. Fantastic and the Hulk remained unscathed, their robotic resolve began to waver. All it took was a Signal Flare and the battle was over, for who heeded our call for help but the herald of Galactus himself, Silver Surfer.

What a story. I’m expecting a studio to buy it as a sequel to the upcoming Fantastic Four movie any day now. It’s got everything—romance, action, even comedy. Best of all, it’s based on a true story. Very loosely based.

This fever dream of a story came partially out of the preparation Neil Reeves and Nick Little did for Pro Circuit New York. Curve Sentinels was the deck to beat at the tournament, and neither player knew what he wanted to play. They both wanted a deck that could run at least even against Sentinels while maintaining winnable matchups against the other important decks in the format. Could such an amazing combination truly exist? Apparently, they thought the answer lay in Common Enemy.

The matchup between Common Enemy and Curve Sentinels is an interesting one. It used to be that the deck with the best characters at every drop was undisputedly Common Enemy. Then, someone had to go and design Curve Sentinels. Sentinels has access to what are possibly the best 5- and 6-drops in the game in Nimrod and Bastion. Nimrod is incredibly strong on turn 5, as his repair counter makes him exceptionally difficult to stun. Even if he does manage to get stunned, the Sentinel player’s opponent will probably have exhausted enough resources that stunning anything else becomes nearly impossible. Bastion’s true strength is in turns 7 and above when multiple Genoshas can be blown to increase exponentially the player’s hand size, but don’t count him out on turn 6. His ability is ludicrously strong, and simply having him on the other side of the table is enough to make most mathematicians fry their brains when deciding on an attack.

The issue is Hounds of Ahab. Now that Overload has been banned, the Hounds of Ahab have been de-clawed a bit. However, that doesn’t mean that you won’t still hear complaints between rounds at a PC of a person being Hounds locked. Never count the Hounds out.

One of the other problems Common Enemy had with Sentinels was the 7-drop. Originally, Sentinel builds didn’t have the best 7-drops in the world. Tri-Sentinels abounded, and they aren’t the most statistically sound of all 7-drops in the game. Common Enemy had Submariner as its 7-drop, and he was more than up to the task of killing a Tri-Sentinel. But once Magneto defected, things became a bit hazier. Ol’ Mags is a bit beefier than his predecessor, and with the help of Bastion’s ability, Magneto was more than up to killing a little wing-ankled fish boy.

Something clearly had to be done. Common Enemy used to rule the combat step through superior guys and excellent combat pumps. Sentinels then usurped the throne and was well on its way to becoming the most dominant deck in Golden Age. Common Enemy was nowhere to be found.

The key addition to this deck was Mr. Fantastic, Scientific Genius. He’s a little smaller than Submariner, but his ability made him well worth the upgrade. The reasoning behind the switch can be seen in a careful examination of the marquee card in Curve Sentinels, Nimrod. Nimrod has average stats for a 5-drop. He has flight and range, but that really doesn’t move him up to tier one. What does set him head and shoulders above the rest of the characters is his repair counter. He becomes a powerhouse. Requiring two attacks to stun, Nimrod makes it really difficult for opponents to stun multiple characters on their attacks.

Kevlar Body Armor mimics this effect, though with the body armor there are two distinct differences. First, you get to attach it to your largest guys. Second, unlike when Nimrod’s counter gets removed, the Armored characters don’t exhaust. Body Armor is like a “create your own Nimrod” kit. The best part is that if you have two Armors, you get two Nimrods. What a deal! Add in a Tech Upgrade to make sure you get the full amount of Armors on turn 7, and you get a new breed of Common Enemy that should be able to give Curve Sentinels a run for its money.

Common Enemy also lets players skip out on the unbelievable fun that is the Hounds lock. Thanks to Dr. Doom and his oppression of the little characters, you can Reign of Terror the Hounds of Ahab and even a Sentinel Mark II or two off the board. The good Doctor’s seething hatred of characters smaller than himself is also helpful in virtually every other important matchup in the format. Fantastic Fun plays only a handful of characters with a cost of 4 or more. Teen Titans is the same way. Even EMS plays a remarkable number of good candidates for the Doctor’s wrath. Doom also brings another toy to the party that helps in the non-Sentinel matchups—Power Compressor. This prevents Fantastic Fun from doing much more than beating down, and it also prevents the only Teen Titan that matters (Roy Harper, Arsenal) from doing much.

In the new Golden Age format, one without the utterly broken Dr. Light combo or Overload, Common Enemy stands a good chance to rise again. Nick and Neil both went 8-4 in New York. The thing about Common Enemy is that it’s a very flexible deck. It has a definite core of characters and plot twists, but the numbers fluctuate depending on the metagame. After talking with Nick about changes he might make to the deck, I learned that the number of Reign of Terrors and Flame Traps would go up. He also said that the deck might want to try running an Apocalypse or two. Anyway, no matter how you slice it, Common Enemy has a very good chance of becoming a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming Golden Age format.

I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this and will get out when the Fantastic Four movie hits the theaters. I’ll be back next week after (hopefully) having seen the movie for myself.

By the way, here’s Nick’s decklist from NY as a reference for you future CE players out there.

Nick Little

Characters

4 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom

4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius

1 Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria

1 Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom

1 Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four

1 Hulk, New Fantastic Four

2 Luke Cage, Hero for Hire

1 Mr. Fantastic, Scientific Genius

1 Robot Destroyer, Army

4 She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters

4 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura

1 Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd

1 Thing, Heavy Hitter

1 Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

1 Wolverine, New Fantastic Four

Plot Twists

2 Betrayal

4 Common Enemy

1 Faces of Doom

1 It’s Clobberin’ Time!

Locations

Equipment

Oh yeah, if anyone knows a director who’s looking for the next FF movie, send them my way.

Questions and comments can be sent to the_priceis_right@yahoo.com.

* Batman was another major factor. I thought the movie rocked and I’m glad they got the franchise back on track. I highly recommend that everyone who hasn’t seen it go check it out.