This week’s Deck Clinic submission comes to you courtesy of fellow Metagame.com writer Steve Garrett and showcases an obscure loop generated by a “precursor” card (like a legacy card, but backwards; think Speed Force). The card in question is the other Dr. Fate—Hector Hall’s original predecessor, Kent Nelson.

Submitter: Steve Garrett

Characters

4 Detective Chimp, Bobo T. Chimpanzee

4 Ragman, Patchmonger

2 Manitou Dawn, Spirit Shaman

4 Healer, Life Giver

2 Rose Psychic, Ghost Detective

4 Storm, Leader of the Morlocks

1 Dr. Occult, Richard Occult

4 Dracula, Vlad Dracula

3 Zatanna, Showstopper

2 Dr. Fate, Kent Nelson

Plot Twists

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Forbidden Loyalties, Team-Up

4 Gravesite

2 Conjuration, Magic

Locations
4 The Alley

3 Dracula’s Castle

3 Club Dead

3 The Oblivion Bar

3 UN Building, Team-Up

Can you see what it is yet? Take your time; I’m not going anywhere.

Dracula, Vlad Dracula (teamed-up with Shadowpact and Morlocks) and The Alley face up in your resource row. You’re on a precarious 15 endurance. Play Conjuration, dropping to 0 endurance, then recruit Dr. Fate, Kent Nelson. Form with Dracula in the front row in front of Dr. Fate. Then evade Dracula. What just happened? You just took . . . 0 stun endurance loss thanks to the invulnerability granted by Dr. Fate. You chose not to pay 5 endurance to stop Dracula from recovering and moving to your front row. And your opponent lost 1 endurance thanks to The Alley.

So you evade Dracula again. And again. And again. Let’s say a few hundred thousand times? Might as well be sure, after all.

Thankfully, we can recover from such an unfortunate blow by increasing the Underworld presence at the low end of our curve. After all, it’s the Underworld and Morlocks characters that we really need early. While the Shadowpact characters are primarily included to satisfy the loyalty on Dr. Fate and allow Conjuration to be played, the Underworld and Morlocks are what will help us get there.

The first piece of thinking I want to do with this deck is to make sure that the teams I need will be recruited at the most useful points on the curve. Basically, this means not taking up space on the curve with a Shadowpact character if it’s be more important to get an Underworld character or a Morlock evader into play to get my locations working.

Character Selection

There are a few criteria we’ll be using to choose our characters: good defensive stats, endurance-gain abilities, evasion, and other abilities that help maintain board presence. Honestly, we don’t really care if we never stun an opposing character in combat as long as we can go into turn 7 with 15 endurance and set up for the Dr. Fate / Dracula loop.

A quick skim through the rosters of our three teams turns up the following choices:

Shadowpact

Blue Devil, Dan Cassidy – Big Blue is obviously out of bounds (he costs the same as Dracula, Vlad Dracula). Dan Cassidy still provides a decent body and a net gain of  2 endurance from his paired endurance-related powers.

Manitou Dawn, Spirit Shaman – Poor stats aside, it’s the restriction to Magic plot twists that will make or break Manitou. If we find ourselves running significantly more Magic than the original list, then Manitou may be worth considering. Otherwise, she won’t make the cut.

Rose Psychic, Ghost Detective – Rose is deceptively appealing, whispering in your ear that she’ll net you 3 endurance every turn. Unfortunately, a 3-drop that can never interact in combat in order for that endurance to be gained will probably cost you more in increased breakthrough than she can gain you back.

Witchfire, Rebecca Carstairs – More promising, Witchfire should be able to stun opposing 4-drops. If you’ve been bleeding too much endurance early, her pseudo-invulnerability might help you stabilize.

Zatanna, Showstopper – The only defense-oriented aspect of Zatanna is her above-average 13 DEF. Nevertheless, the ability to turn any spare endurance available on turn 6 into extra cards with which to dig for The Alley, Conjuration, or Dr. Fate for the win on turn 7 makes Zatanna a strong contender. In addition, she provides a solid 6-drop to satisfy Dr. Fate’s loyalty.

Morlocks

Tar Baby, Adhesive Ally – A Morlock staple, Tar Baby’s 3 ATK / 3 DEF stats and surprisingly effective disruptive power make him worth his weight in gold. If there’s space in a curve for a Morlock 2-drop, Tar Baby usually starts at the top of my list.

Healer, Life Giver and The Beautiful Dreamer, Dreamweaver – Both of these characters are defensive 3-drops. Healer’s proactive endurance gain, 6 DEF, and occasionally usable payment power give him the edge. He also provides an alternative pseudo-victory condition to The Alley—if you have Healer in play when you go off with Dr. Fate and Dracula, then you can gain as much endurance as you’d like in addition to burning with The Alley.

Erg, Electric Eye – Although his power will be a one-shot deal unless we include an enabler to get him back into the hidden area (such as Sewer System or Medallion of Power), his exhaustion power is otherwise just what we’re looking for.

Storm, Leader of the Morlocks – As average a body as you can get at 7 ATK / 7 DEF with no flight or range, Storm’s appeal is restricted to her ability to maintain your board and endurance total while evading on your opponent’s initiative. Unless we have space in our deck for cards like Shrapnel Blast or Backs Against the Wall, however, we may not get enough out of Storm. She’s a contender, but not an automatic inclusion.

Underworld

Orb, Drake Shannon – Often overlooked, Orb is actually quite interesting for our deck. He’s got concealed, with a minor DEF-boosting power and a more interesting card-cycling power. Granted, we’re not sure yet what proportion of our characters will be concealed, but every little bit helps.

Steel Wind, Cyborg Cyclist – A beefy 4 DEF and a deck depletion power to fuel Dracula’s Castle make Steel Wind a little more interesting than usual.

Mortician, Toussaint Morrow and Werewolf by Night, Jack Russell – These concealed and concealed—optional Underworld 2-drops are worth considering if we’re running Orb and want to make his payment power more useful.

Morbius, The Living Vampire – He has unimpressive stats, but the fact that he fetches a copy of Hypnotic Charms could make up for it.

Blackout, Master of Darkness – Putting him in the visible or hidden area as needed—for example to reinforce someone—Blackout’s discard power can help fuel Dracula’s Castle. Like a lot of the cards that make the final list, Blackout is interesting without being exceptional.

Witch Woman, Linda Littletrees – With solid defensive stats and a payment power that can prevent our opponents from pummeling us too hard with offensive pumps on any given turn, Witch Woman has potential.

Off-team

San, The Alienated One – A concealed character for Orb, San also provides a search card for The Alley, Dracula’s Castle, or other useful locations. With that potential, he could leapfrog over the on-team 2-drops in the selection process.

Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster – A number of the cards we’ve been looking at have associated discard costs, and we will almost certainly have some deck depletion elements. The ability to net cards in hand by putting the Troublesome Trickster into the KO’d pile or using him to remove the pain of discard costs may make Mr. Mxyzptlk a viable option. If only he were concealed, he’d be the perfect partner for Orb . . .

Now that we’ve run through some of the options, let’s see if we can assemble something that looks like a curve out of them.

4 Orb, Drake Shannon

4 Steel Wind, Cyborg Cyclist

4 San, The Alienated One

4 Healer, Life Giver

1 Rose Psychic, Ghost Detective

1 Morbius, The Living Vampire

4 Erg, Electric Eye

1 Witch Woman, Linda Littletrees

1 Witchfire, Rebecca Carstairs

4 Dracula, Vlad Dracula

3 Zatanna, Showstopper

3 Dr. Fate, Kent Nelson

That gives us a solid curve for our key teams. Underworld is mainly represented at 1, 2, and 5; Morlocks at 3 and 4; and Shadowpact at 6 and 7. It also gives us a solid twenty concealed characters for Orb to cycle, along with the location-fixing of San. It’s a solid starting point, although the final numbers will be subject to tweaking as always. (The numbers of Dr. Fate and Zatanna, for example, will depend to some extent on how many other search cards and card filtering mechanisms we run.)

A few notes on particular characters and numbers: San should generally be used for The Alley, both because it’s necessary for the combo to function and because it counteracts otherwise troublesome cards like Total Anarchy and Fatality, Flawless Victory. If The Alley is already in hand, San can instead be used to search out other locations. Dracula’s Castle will be the target in most of these cases, although we may end up with a single copy of a location like Sewer System to help out Erg and let us snipe away small hidden characters on our opponent’s side of the board. The inclusion of Morbius is a fairly obvious sign that I plan to include at least a single copy of Hypnotic Charms, which seems like a more efficient Team-Up than the Forbidden Loyalties in the original list; it gives us two different Team-Ups (along with UN Building) that can each team-up our three teams with a single card. Rose Psychic is there for slower matchups where we can afford to recruit a hidden character whose aim is pure endurance gain. Witch Woman is for aggressive decks, against which we’ll want a large visible body and the plot twist restriction she provides (for example, the JLI / Masters of Evil Wrecking Crew swarm deck). Witchfire is there as something of an emergency button if we feel our endurance is dropping too fast. She can help get back some ground by gaining endurance when she stuns opposing characters, particularly against decks with burn and other activated powers against which Erg will be of limited use.

Check back tomorrow, when I’ll be going through the resources available to the deck and then suggesting a final build.

Tom Reeve is a member of the Anglo-Canadian Alliance (like the Rebel Alliance, but with public transport instead of X-Wings) and would-be professional layabout from London, England. While his love of all things ninja has resulted in an arguably unhealthy affinity for the League of Assassins, that particular quirk turned into a healthy plus with the birth of the Silver Age deck Deep Green, with which teammate Ian Vincent took home the Pro Circuit San Francisco trophy to dear old Blighty.