This week’s Deck Clinic subject is a spicy little number, drawing on the power of the Spider-Fri . . . Hmmm. Featuring characters from the Marvel Kni . . . The X-Me . . .

Alien Autopsy (Modern Age)

by playswithfire on VSRealms.com

Characters

8 Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox, Army

4 Warskrull, Skrull Infiltrator

4 Wolverine, Skrunucklehead

4 Captain America, Skrull Impostor

4 Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World

4 Paibok, The Power Skrull

Plot Twists

3 Act of Defiance

3 Brave New World

4 Interstellar Offensive

4 Sworn Enemies

4 Mob Mentality

3 Special Delivery

Locations

2 Battleworld

2 Harry's Hideaway

Equipment

3 Image Inducer

2 Blackbird Blue

2 Power Gem

The deck’s creator has a few concerns, the first of which is that the deck is devoid of any search cards. There is no Skrull-stamped search card, and Enemy of My Enemy is iffy with only eight non-Skrull characters (the Multiple Men). As such, one of my first challenges will be to find a way of giving this deck better odds of hitting its curve.

Speaking of curve, that’s the other decision that needs to be made: how off-curve is this deck? It has Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox, Army, and it has two particularly key 3-drops it would like to make use of. It also has Act of Defiance and Blackbird Blue. With a number of ways to increase the ATK value of multiple smaller characters—and with less reward for a true curve strategy—this deck can get a lot of mileage out of going off-curve. Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World has a quite enormous ATK value, but on-initiative we may get more reward from recruiting Captain America, Skrull Impostor and either a Blackbird Blue or Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox, Army.

Now, the first team that I considered using to supplement the Skrull characters was the Inhumans. That path has already been noticeably well-trodden by Mark Slack, however, who has not only built a Skrull / Inhumans deck, but also actually played it at $10K Columbus. His report of the event is here: (Part 1 Part 2)

In particular, Mark’s deck included the one card that jumped straight to the top of my thoughts when I first looked at the submitted list: Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth. Franklin is one of those deceptively powerful cards that allows you to consistently and deliberately trade endurance now for board presence later; shift critical cosmic characters like Captain America, Skrull Impostor to the hidden area; and enable Wolverine, Skrunucklehead to pick up his cosmic—surge counter. I may well end up trying to fit little baby Franklin into the deck, but for now I have to decide on my second team. Thankfully, one is sitting there staring back at me: the X-Men.

The X-Men have a good amount to offer an off-curve Skrull deck. The team provides ATK pumps like X-Corp: Hong Kong; Turnabout; and Blackbird Blue. It provides recovery effects like Phoenix Rising and Rebirth that can help us maintain board presence (and trigger cosmic—surge). It provides Team-Up search in the form of X-Corp: Amsterdam and Archangel, Angel. Lastly and perhaps most importantly for us, it provides the search card Time Breach.

Thankfully, the X-Men also back up all this off-curve goodness with some intriguing characters at the bottom end of the curve. They have a good range of 3 ATK 2-drops; the “pay 0 endurance” characters like Jubilee, Jubilation Lee and Longshot, Hero of Mojoworld; and Archangel, Angel to search out the different versions of X-Corp and—via X-Corp: Amsterdam—Team-Ups.

Ideally, we would also like a way to get cosmic counters back on our Skrull 3-drops, or at least move them to the hidden area. Without using Franklin Richards and the other Inhumans tricks, Modern Age leaves us with a couple of choices. Shadowpact has Stepping Between Worlds, while the Hellfire Club offers us Deadly Game. Sadly, the Hellfire Club Team-Up Evil Alliance and the location The Hellfire Club—along with the Morlocks location Sewer System—require you to move a “character with concealed.” Taking a look at the various low-cost characters available to the Shadowpact and Hellfire Club teams, the Hellfire Club’s options are much more appealing. Courtney Ross, Once and Future Queen; Viper, White Warrior Princess; and Friedrich Von Roehm, Black Rook all show promise if we decide we want to get tricky with the hidden area.

The other option is to simply play four copies of Franklin Richards. While we won’t be as able to search for him without a full suite of Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend and The Great Refuge backing him up, we can probably fit a few copies of Lockjaw. Lockjaw may be the Inhuman’s Best Friend, but Franklin himself is certainly a Skrull’s best friend. While it’s tempting to try to get tricky with the Hellfire Club, it would only really be worth it if we could utilize the repeat-use tricks like The Hellfire Club to better effect, rather than relying on Deadly Game. The final straw is the ability to run a single copy each of Luna Maximoff, Only Human and Dewoz, Dark Reflection, and I feel like I have no option but to concede the complete superiority of the Inhumans when it comes to “hiding” cosmic characters.

Helpfully, it’s looking like we should have enough team diversity to make use of Enemy of My Enemy, which makes additions like this much more feasible. Being able to use Enemy of My Enemy also reduces the need for the full four copies of cards we’ll only need in the late game, such as Paibok, The Power Skrull.

For now, I’m going to include a few copies of Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster. Our deck is looking like it will contain a high number of cards with discard costs, and having Mxy ready to mitigate those extra costs will be a big help, particularly as we’ll be wanting to recruit multiple characters—or a character and an equipment—on some turns.

One more addition will be a copy of Black Panther, King of Wakanda, giving us both a way to search for Blackbird Blue and a way to get it into play without spending a full resource point. The final addition will be something a little less obvious: Red Shift, Rift Walker has two benefits for this deck. The first is reasonably obvious—he can shunt a particularly worrisome enemy character out of the way, allowing a Blackbird Blue-fueled board to crash directly into our opponent’s face. The other uses are a little less apparent, such as putting a cosmic counter back onto one of our characters (although sadly not a cosmic—surge character) or reusing the triggered powers of characters like Lockjaw and Archangel.

At this point, it’s time to take a stab at a list.

Characters

3 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

2 Archangel, Angel

2 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster

1 Jubilee, Jubilation Lee

1 Luna Maximoff, Only Human

4 Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth

4 Warskrull, Skrull Infiltrator

2 Shadowcat, Katya

2 Cannonball, Blast Field

1 Dazzler, Rock Star

4 Wolverine, Skrunucklehead

4 Captain America, Skrull Impostor

1 Black Panther, King of Wakanda

1 Dewoz, Dark Reflection

1 Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World

1 Paibok, The Power Skrull

1 Red Shift, Rift Walker

Plot Twists

4 Act of Defiance, Team-Up

1 Mutopia, Team-Up

1 X-Men United, Team-Up

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Interstellar Offensive

4 Turnabout

2 Time Breach

Locations

1 X-Corp: Hong Kong

2 X-Corp: Amsterdam

Equipment

2 Blackbird Blue

Of particular note if you want to really abuse the affiliation-happy nature of the deck is the interaction between Mutopia and Wolverine, Skrunucklehead. It’s nice and simple: Have Wolverine in play and unstunned. Flip Mutopia. Congratulations—you can now crossover every team affiliation in play, including the team affiliations of your opponent’s characters.

The rebuilt version of Alien Autopsy should be both more stable and more flexible than the original build while staying true to the chaotic Skrull theme. It’s also a lot more customizable. Extra characters can be switched in, with even a single recruit of a particular team spreading that affiliation across your board like a virus, enabling all kinds of team-stamped trickery. The copies of X-Corp: Amsterdam and Archangel should supplement the Warskrulls and provide reliable access to multiple copies of Act of Defiance in the resource row each game, while Enemy of My Enemy, Time Breach, and Lockjaw help you assemble the best possible curve.

This deck, more than almost any other I’ve worked on, invites alteration. Think Dr. Light, Master of Holograms would be a perfect fit? Want a copy of Kate Spencer ◊ Manhunter, Fearless Renegade to get at those pesky hidden characters? Go for it! Have some fun with the deck, and while you’re at it, remember to send in your decklists for submission to vsdeckclinic@googlemail.com. Until next time, enjoy the coverage of Pro Circuit Los Angeles and the upcoming Legion of Super Heroes previews!

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.